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A bill to eliminate police traffic stops for minor infractions would produce a multitude of headaches in municipal courts, notwithstanding the proposal's high-minded ideals, New Jersey attorneys impacted by the proposal said.

Mailing tickets to the owner instead of performing a roadside stop would generate disputes about who was driving, some attorneys said about a bill introduced in the state's General Assembly on March 14. Although the bill carries a rebuttable presumption that the registered owner was the person committing the act, many drivers could be expected to claim they were not behind the wheel when the ticket is issued, those lawyers said.

The sponsor of A3603, Shanique Speight, D-Essex, cites the disparate impact of traffic stops on Black drivers, and the bill cites cases in which Blacks have died after traffic stops for minor offenses, including that of Daunte Wright, a Minnesota man killed after a police officer fired her service pistol instead of her Taser. The bill is intended to make Black drivers less of a target of police, the bill states.

"The intent of this is to reduce the loss of Black lives at the hands of law enforcement officers by using technology to reduce pretextual stops, during which a driver is detained for a minor infraction while law enforcement seek evidence of a more serious crime," the bill states.

The bill requires that any photos police take of a defendant or his vehicle be included with the ticket, and that any police dash camera or body camera footage be made available to a vehicle owner who is charged.

But eliminating traffic stops because of minor offenses would end efforts to stem the "massive flow" of illegal guns and illegal narcotics that are regularly discovered when police pull over a driver for a minor offense, said Jon-Henry Barr, a municipal prosecutor in Clark, New Jersey, and a past president of the New Jersey State Municipal Prosecutors' Association.

"For most municipal prosecutors, that will become a nightmare," said Barr. "Very often in situations where the summons is issued by mail, the registered owner inevitably denies having been the operator."

Eliminating traffic stops because of a rare misuse of force is like "throwing out the baby with the bathwater," Barr added.

Legislators who want to make it easier for drivers to avoid traffic stops should take steps to encourage compliance with traffic laws, such as making driver's license and registration fees cheaper and making it easier to restore a driver's license after suspension, Barr said.

"If legislators want to do something for the motoring public, that's what they ought to do. Not enforcing the law is a bigger threat to public safety than running the risk of these very rare instances," Barr said.

The bill states that police should still conduct traffic stops for certain offenses, including drunken driving, racing, passing on the right, passing in a no-passing zone, tailgating, reckless driving, speeding more than 30 mph over the limit and leaving the scene of an accident. The bill also says police would have authority to initiate a traffic stop when there is an arrest warrant for the car's registered owner or when an officer has reasonable cause to believe the driver has committed a crime.

The bill states that eliminating traffic stops for low-level crimes would free up officers' time and allow them to engage in more positive interactions with the public. The bill has been referred to the Assembly Law and Public Safety Committee.

Some other jurisdictions have scaled back the number of traffic stops by police. In Philadelphia, low-level traffic stops were banned in November 2021. Pittsburgh and Los Angeles have also placed restrictions on stops for less severe crimes.

Douglas Herring, a criminal defense lawyer in Princeton, New Jersey, likewise thinks that the proposed revisions would cause enforcement headaches due to registered owners claiming someone else was driving. In addition, Herring says that drivers who get a ticket some time after the alleged driving infraction are more likely to challenge a ticket than those drivers who are pulled over and have a face-to-face discussion with a police officer. But Herring also thinks that pretextual traffic stops are a widespread practice among police.

"I think it's worth it. There are no perfect solutions. It will cause problems but it will solve problems, too," Herring said. "The problems it will solve are outweighed by the problems it will create. As a society, municipal court will not be efficient is not the biggest problem we have," he said.

Jeffrey Hark, a Cherry Hill, New Jersey, attorney who handles both criminal and civil litigation, finds no merit in the legislation. Tickets written by officers who merely record a vehicle's license plate number and send out a ticket are akin to the red-light cameras that were popular a few years ago, which Hark called "a money grab for the municipality and state." In addition, he finds that some municipal police departments report to him that their dashboard cameras are broken and no footage is available.

Hark says the problem is not about disparate enforcement of traffic laws against minorities, but rather about "the way the attorney general of New Jersey has directed police to enforce the motor vehicle code. They mean to search the public for illegal weapons and illegal drugs. They are using it as an aggressive means of law enforcement. What the Legislature is telling police is back off," Hark said.