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A New App Aims To Make Traffic Stops Safer
An LAPD officer conducts a traffic stop.
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Courtesy LAPD Valley Traffic Division via Twitter
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The West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station is testing a new app that aims to make traffic stops safer for drivers and deputies.
If you download the “SafeStop” app on your phone, you’ll be able to video chat directly with the deputy who’s pulling you over. You will have to initiate the call first by pressing a button on the app. That will send a message to the deputy, and they will then be able to join the video call from their vehicle. The goal is to limit some of the danger of a traffic stop by introducing the driver and deputy from a distance.
“There is often tension because there is an unknown,” said Jackson Lallas, the co-founder of SafeStop. “The officer doesn’t know who they’ve pulled over, and the driver doesn’t know how it’s going to go.”
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Traffic stops are one of the most common ways the public interacts with law enforcement. The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department made more than 179,900 traffic stops in 2021, according to the The California Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board.
But they can become dangerous. About 195 people every year are killed from interactions with California law enforcement agencies, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. Traffic stops, and pedestrian stops, make up about 15% of the interactions in which a civilian is seriously injured or killed. Black and Hispanic Californians are more likely to be involved in a traffic stop and have force used against them.
“We believe that there is an opportunity for a really big improvement on both sides here,” Lallas said. “If we just solve the core cause of that tension - which we think is the big unknown that causes both sides to be really on guard when they first interact with each other.”
That’s where SafeStop comes in. The app officially launched Wednesday in West Hollywood, and using it will always be up to the driver. SafeStop says there's no way the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department can access your personal information or reach out to you directly. The company will even help you pay off some of your traffic stop ticket for a limited time, but only for routine violations.
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