San Francisco Police Are Now Restricted From Certain Traffic Stops. Here's Why

Updated 10 a.m. Thursday

A new San Francisco Police Department policy limiting stops for certain traffic violations took effect Wednesday, aiming to reduce disproportionate over-policing of Black and Latino people.

But while the policy marks a win for the citizen-led Police Commission, it’s also one of the last the panel approved independently before voters passed a measure placed on the March ballot by Mayor London Breed that markedly reduced its power.

The policy restricts “pretextual stops,” or traffic stops for low-level violations that officers use to investigate whether the person was involved in an unrelated crime, often based on little more than speculation.

Data shows that the stops, which generally do not result in a traffic citation, can lead to violence and even death, according to Eleana Binder, a policy manager at Glide’s Center for Social Justice.

“We are trying to stop these extended interactions that can lead to searches because they really don’t have a strong basis in public safety,” she told KQED. “Black and Latino drivers are more likely to be stopped and searched, but they are actually less likely to be found with any sort of contraband compared to white drivers.”

The new rule specifically prohibits officers from pulling over drivers for having one non-working tail light, an item hanging from a rearview mirror or one missing license plate, among other violations. It also completely bans biased stops.

The specific restrictions laid out in the San Francisco policy build on a state law that took effect this year in an attempt to limit pretextual stops. Under Assembly Bill 2773, officers are required in most cases to state the reason for a stop before asking further questions.

Max Carter-Oberstone, the vice president of the San Francisco Police Commission, said the policy mirrors others passed across the country, including in more conservative jurisdictions like Virginia and Fayetteville, North Carolina. In addition to reducing racially biased stops, it will also conserve resources at a time when police staffing is low, he said.

Though the Police Commission proposed and passed the new policy in San Francisco, its power to lead such proposals has been considerably reduced by Breed’s Proposition E.

Under that ballot measure, the Police Commission must hold a public hearing at all 10 district stations before amending the department’s procedures and the chief of police — a position appointed by the mayor — has veto power over the hearing process.

Carter-Oberstone said that would make passing the pretext ban now more difficult.

“Chief [Bill] Scott supported the pretext policy, so maybe he would continue to support it under the Prop. E regime; it’s very hard to say,” Carter-Oberstone said. “But it certainly would take away some of the commission’s power to put it into place.”

Breed and Carter-Oberstone have previously butted heads over his vote for the Police Commission’s president in 2022, and the mayor has said that the commission has gone “too far” on some reforms.

Carter-Oberstone couldn’t say whether the proposition was a direct response to the pretext proposal, which drew backlash from the union representing San Francisco police officers. But he said it did seem “politically motivated.”

“Residents of the city should know that any policy from here on out that comes out of the commission essentially only made it because of the chief’s approval and the mayor’s approval,” he told KQED. “I think the mayor of the city, whoever that person might be after January, as well as Mayor Breed now, owns every single policy that comes out of this commission going forward.”