A commenter on the last Grits post suggested that a key reason the number of traffic tickets written by Texas police went down last year in Austin and elsewhere may have been cuts to the "Selective Traffic Enforcement Program" (STEP), which are federal pass-through grants distributed to law enforcement through the Texas Department of Transportation to pay for overtime devoted to traffic enforcement. And indeed, that may partially, but not fully, explain the recent decline in traffic tickets written by Texas police.
Searching around on TXDOT's website, I found this memo to law enforcement agencies (pdf) from April 2011 detailing 30% cuts to STEP grants - from $20.2 million to $14.2 million statewide - with a table at the end showing how much each department's grants were cut.
Houston, which has seen its number of traffic tickets decline, lost $360,000 with the reduction in STEP grant funds; Dallas' grant fell by a like amount. The Department of Public Safety took the biggest hit with a $424,521 reduction.
Austin lost about $158,000 in grant funding for overtime with that 30% reduction - not chump change, but not remotely enough to account for the 26% reduction in tickets they recorded in 2011. Austin PD says it wrote fewer tickets because of a policy change - "because the Highway Enforcement Command shifted its mission from citywide traffic enforcement to a focus on the major highways such as IH-35, MoPac and 183" - which seems like a more plausible explanation.
Plus, data from the Office of Court Administration showing a statewide decline in tickets processed in municipal court covered the state fiscal year from September to August, so cuts that took effect April 29 wouldn't have impacted most of that year. In other words, there are indications the decline in ticketing a) predated cuts to STEP grants and b) are too large to be completely explained by them. That's certainly one of several contributing factors, though, and perhaps reason to think the trend might continue in the near term without local traffic enforcement getting artificially pumped up through federal pork.
See related Grits posts:
Tampilkan postingan dengan label Traffic stops. Tampilkan semua postingan
Tampilkan postingan dengan label Traffic stops. Tampilkan semua postingan
Jumat, 23 Maret 2012
Kamis, 22 Maret 2012
Austin police gave 26% fewer traffic tickets in 2011
It turns out Austin's decline in the number of traffic tickets given out last year was even greater than Grits had supposed according to the city's recent racial profiling report (pdf), which I noticed via this story by Patrick George in the Austin Statesman. Grits has earlier reported that tickets processed in municipal court in Austin had declined from roughly 233,000 to 205,000 from 2010 to 2011 - part of a statewide trend.
The racial profiling report shows Austin officers last year gave far fewer tickets last year. "Austin police officers made 179,882 motor vehicle stops in 2011 compared to 232,848 in 2010," according to the city's racial profiling report. One caveat: That's comparing calendar year to calendar year whereas the Office of Court Administration is measuring the fiscal year (September to August).
Still, that's an amazing 26% fewer tickets from year to year! Said the report: "Overall, the number of stops is lower in 2011, in part, because the Highway Enforcement Command shifted its mission from citywide traffic enforcement to a focus on the major highways such as IH-35, MoPac and 183. As a consequence, the number of traffic citations declined from 224,662 in 2010 to 165,757 in 2011, a 26% reduction. The overall number of motor vehicle stops also decreased by 23%." That has trickle down effects at the jail and throughout the court system because so many arrests originate at traffic stops.
Austin also saw the number of consent searches at traffic stops decline last year, from the highest total since they began tracking in 2010 (19,519) to a more modest 2011 total (11,719)), for a 40% drop.
I went to check the same data source for other cities and was disappointed to see this on the TCLEOSE website: "Note: The link to the 2010 Racial Profiling reports from the TCLEOSE website is no longer available on-line, but may be purchased for $35 (CD disk) through Open Records Request." That's pointless. How much space does it take to archive past years' reports for comparison? I might go ahead and get a couple of years worth for comparison purposes, but that's gratuitous. At least leave the last 3-5 years of reports online to supply some context for the annual data.
The racial profiling report shows Austin officers last year gave far fewer tickets last year. "Austin police officers made 179,882 motor vehicle stops in 2011 compared to 232,848 in 2010," according to the city's racial profiling report. One caveat: That's comparing calendar year to calendar year whereas the Office of Court Administration is measuring the fiscal year (September to August).
Still, that's an amazing 26% fewer tickets from year to year! Said the report: "Overall, the number of stops is lower in 2011, in part, because the Highway Enforcement Command shifted its mission from citywide traffic enforcement to a focus on the major highways such as IH-35, MoPac and 183. As a consequence, the number of traffic citations declined from 224,662 in 2010 to 165,757 in 2011, a 26% reduction. The overall number of motor vehicle stops also decreased by 23%." That has trickle down effects at the jail and throughout the court system because so many arrests originate at traffic stops.
Austin also saw the number of consent searches at traffic stops decline last year, from the highest total since they began tracking in 2010 (19,519) to a more modest 2011 total (11,719)), for a 40% drop.
I went to check the same data source for other cities and was disappointed to see this on the TCLEOSE website: "Note: The link to the 2010 Racial Profiling reports from the TCLEOSE website is no longer available on-line, but may be purchased for $35 (CD disk) through Open Records Request." That's pointless. How much space does it take to archive past years' reports for comparison? I might go ahead and get a couple of years worth for comparison purposes, but that's gratuitous. At least leave the last 3-5 years of reports online to supply some context for the annual data.
Rabu, 21 Maret 2012
Pedestrian deaths in Austin and the trouble with drawing conclusions from small numbers
One seldom-discussed drawback with data-driven policing - particularly when its used in mid-size and smaller cities - is that small statistical samples often make drawing valid inferences problematic, and here's a good example: Writes reporter Brenda Bell, "auto-pedestrian deaths are up in Austin, even as deaths from other vehicular collisions are falling. Last year marked an 83 percent increase in pedestrian-bicyclist fatalities; there were 22, compared with a dozen in 2010." Bell reported Sunday that "This year, eight people, including one walking his bike, have already died in collisions with motor vehicles. All but one happened after dark or at dusk. One-third were hit-and-runs."
While certainly it's accurate to say there was an 83% one-year increase, when the numbers are so small that means very little as far as identifying a statistical trend of increasing deaths, and the story didn't include prior years' data. On Sunday Bell did report that "Auto-bike fatalities have averaged one per year over the past seven years," but that means the year you have two it's a hundred percent increase. Is that meaningful data, or just random fluctuation? You see the same issues with murder trends and other infrequent events. Media will report a one-year increase with tremendous drama as a possible trend, even during periods like we're in now when long-term murder rates are declining. When numbers are so small, you need multiple years of data to perform a probative trend analysis, which of course doesn't make for the most attention-grabbing news story.
Perhaps the most obvious death-causing trend evidenced in the stories is that a significant proportion of pedestrian deaths in Austin happen along Interstate 35, which for significant stretches (especially north of 51st Street) is difficult to cross legally on foot and is flanked by extremely busy frontage roads. This datapoint reinforces my sense that jaywalking can be better addressed via traffic engineering solutions that make it safer for pedestrians to get where they're going. If you're walking any significant distance along the access road on I-35, it's likely because you have no other choice.
Another notable trend mentioned is bicyclists being hit after dark, which might argue for efforts narrowly aimed at improving safety equipment. (I see cyclists these days with flashing lights on their bikes instead of reflectors that make them MUCH easier to see after dark.) Cyclists' deficient equipment can be addressed with a variety of tactics from public education, warnings or tickets for equipment violations, improved lighting for dangerous intersections and popular bike routes, etc..
For the most part, though, the city should address these mainly as traffic engineering questions as opposed to law-enforcement concerns. For example, would auto-pedestrian/bike accidents downtown be reduced by creating the proposed Nueces Bike Boulevard? (See here [pdf] for more detail.) Quite possibly. A fascinating and telling map of recent auto-pedestrian/bike accidents accompanying the story shows a large number downtown, though some are concentrated on the east and west entry corridors. Those wouldn't be affected by a north-south route on Nueces, which more aims to reduce accidents on, say, Congress and Lamar.
Instead, Austin PD took a one-size-fits-all enforcement approach, employing a hammer in lieu of a scalpel. In a highly unpopular two-week crackdown last October:
To be fair, the city does have $13.5 million in bond money available "for projects to enhance mobility and safety for pedestrians, bikers and disabled people," which should do a lot more to prevent deaths than giving pointless tickets to jaywalkers. Certainly it will do more than APD's various proposals for new city bonds at ten times the cost.
Police Chief Art Acevedo told the paper he thinks this trend - which nobody can really say is a trend yet - results from the declining moral character of the citizenry: "Drivers think (pedestrians) don't have the right to cross the street, and pedestrians think they can jump out at the last second," he said. "It used to be ... that when a pedestrian set foot in an intersection, that people stopped. I think it's a commentary on society that we've lost that respect," adding thatwe're all a bunch of drunks Austin is "one of the heaviest drinking cities in the country."
For Grits' part, I think it's a commentary on Austin PD that, although the chief and the union complain constantly they don't have enough uniformed officers, when they get them they want them deployed ticketing jaywalkers while the civilian APD crime-scene unit doesn't even investigate a majority of burglaries for lack of manpower. And it's perhaps a commentary on the local media that police pronouncements of an "increased rate of pedestrian fatalities on Austin streets" are accepted as valid based on such a limited dataset. (If earlier years' numbers of pedestrian deaths are higher than 12, it might almost seem like the data was cherrypicked.)
These two stories give us insight into Austin PDs traffic enforcement tactics but in many ways for Grits raise more questions than they answer. Once we've seen the number of pedestrian deaths by year, preferably per capita, over a longer period of time, perhaps it would be safer to draw conclusions about trends.
While certainly it's accurate to say there was an 83% one-year increase, when the numbers are so small that means very little as far as identifying a statistical trend of increasing deaths, and the story didn't include prior years' data. On Sunday Bell did report that "Auto-bike fatalities have averaged one per year over the past seven years," but that means the year you have two it's a hundred percent increase. Is that meaningful data, or just random fluctuation? You see the same issues with murder trends and other infrequent events. Media will report a one-year increase with tremendous drama as a possible trend, even during periods like we're in now when long-term murder rates are declining. When numbers are so small, you need multiple years of data to perform a probative trend analysis, which of course doesn't make for the most attention-grabbing news story.
Perhaps the most obvious death-causing trend evidenced in the stories is that a significant proportion of pedestrian deaths in Austin happen along Interstate 35, which for significant stretches (especially north of 51st Street) is difficult to cross legally on foot and is flanked by extremely busy frontage roads. This datapoint reinforces my sense that jaywalking can be better addressed via traffic engineering solutions that make it safer for pedestrians to get where they're going. If you're walking any significant distance along the access road on I-35, it's likely because you have no other choice.
Another notable trend mentioned is bicyclists being hit after dark, which might argue for efforts narrowly aimed at improving safety equipment. (I see cyclists these days with flashing lights on their bikes instead of reflectors that make them MUCH easier to see after dark.) Cyclists' deficient equipment can be addressed with a variety of tactics from public education, warnings or tickets for equipment violations, improved lighting for dangerous intersections and popular bike routes, etc..
For the most part, though, the city should address these mainly as traffic engineering questions as opposed to law-enforcement concerns. For example, would auto-pedestrian/bike accidents downtown be reduced by creating the proposed Nueces Bike Boulevard? (See here [pdf] for more detail.) Quite possibly. A fascinating and telling map of recent auto-pedestrian/bike accidents accompanying the story shows a large number downtown, though some are concentrated on the east and west entry corridors. Those wouldn't be affected by a north-south route on Nueces, which more aims to reduce accidents on, say, Congress and Lamar.
Instead, Austin PD took a one-size-fits-all enforcement approach, employing a hammer in lieu of a scalpel. In a highly unpopular two-week crackdown last October:
Pedestrians got 1,336 citations and warnings, for offenses such as failure to observe traffic signals, panhandling or stepping into roadways midblock. Drivers got 174.Ticketing cyclists may prompt them to get better equipment for biking at night - just handing out lights might even be better - but jaywalking will always be a function of convenience and opportunism. Focusing significant resources on ticketing them IMO is just silly. Meanwhile, as for Austin's much-ballyhooed "3 foot rule" that's supposed to protect "vulnerable" road users?
That lopsided scorecard is par for the course. Between 2008 and 2010, Austin police issued nearly 11,000 citations for violations of auto-pedestrian laws; only 7 percent went to drivers.
A city ordinance passed in 2009 requires vehicles to keep at least 3 feet away when passing a "vulnerable user" — a bicyclist, motorcyclist, pedestrian or runner. On four-lane roads, motorists are supposed to yield the lane entirely.So that was a bust. Now they're going to try using police as pedestrian "decoys" to ticket motorists. But with 11,000 citations for auto-pedestiran laws over three years and a supposed increase in the problem just now, it doesn't seem like the enforcement-only approach gets to the heart of the problem. Assessing tickets and fines for petty offenses while telling the public it's for their own protection comes off as self serving as it is patronizing in an era when municipal tickets are viewed as a lucrative revenue source.
Austin police have issued just eight citations — four per year — under that law.
To be fair, the city does have $13.5 million in bond money available "for projects to enhance mobility and safety for pedestrians, bikers and disabled people," which should do a lot more to prevent deaths than giving pointless tickets to jaywalkers. Certainly it will do more than APD's various proposals for new city bonds at ten times the cost.
Police Chief Art Acevedo told the paper he thinks this trend - which nobody can really say is a trend yet - results from the declining moral character of the citizenry: "Drivers think (pedestrians) don't have the right to cross the street, and pedestrians think they can jump out at the last second," he said. "It used to be ... that when a pedestrian set foot in an intersection, that people stopped. I think it's a commentary on society that we've lost that respect," adding that
For Grits' part, I think it's a commentary on Austin PD that, although the chief and the union complain constantly they don't have enough uniformed officers, when they get them they want them deployed ticketing jaywalkers while the civilian APD crime-scene unit doesn't even investigate a majority of burglaries for lack of manpower. And it's perhaps a commentary on the local media that police pronouncements of an "increased rate of pedestrian fatalities on Austin streets" are accepted as valid based on such a limited dataset. (If earlier years' numbers of pedestrian deaths are higher than 12, it might almost seem like the data was cherrypicked.)
These two stories give us insight into Austin PDs traffic enforcement tactics but in many ways for Grits raise more questions than they answer. Once we've seen the number of pedestrian deaths by year, preferably per capita, over a longer period of time, perhaps it would be safer to draw conclusions about trends.
Kamis, 01 Maret 2012
Most larger Texas police departments wrote fewer traffic tickets in 2011
I think we're unraveling a trend here. After the Dallas News reported the surprising news that the number of traffic tickets issued by Dallas PD has dramatically declined, Grits found that tickets statewide have declined as well, or at least those processed in municipal courts. So Charles Kuffner at Off the Kuff looked at Houston's data and found HPD issued 200,000+ fewer tickets in FY 2011 than in 2010, more than a 20% one-year decline. This inspired Grits to compile the number of tickets issued over the last two fiscal years in some of the largest Texas cities and remarkably, the number of new traffic cases in municipal court are dropping nearly across the board:
Check out your town's numbers if they're not on the list above. See here for FY 2010 data by city, here for FY 2011.
Check out your town's numbers if they're not on the list above. See here for FY 2010 data by city, here for FY 2011.
Selasa, 28 Februari 2012
Why are Texas cops writing fewer traffic tickets?
A story by Scott Goldstein at the Dallas Morning News ("Dallas police tickets fall by tens of thousands," Feb. 28, behind paywall) opened:
Why are Texas cops writing fewer traffic tickets? What do you think is going on?
Dallas police issued almost 59,000 fewer tickets last fiscal year than in the previous year, continuing a dramatic decline that could equate to millions of dollars less in city revenue, according to public records.What's remarkable is not just this year's drop but the overall 39% decline since '06-'07. Wondering if the same trend is occurring statewide, Grits pulled the total number of new, non-parking traffic cases filed in municipal courts in recent years from the Office of Court Administration's annual reports. I was surprised to find that FY 2011 numbers reported represented a remarkable drop of more than 600,000 traffic tickets per year, more than 10%, compared to FY 2008:
Police officials in Dallas, as in other cities reporting similar declines, offer several possible explanations for the decline in citations, most of which are generated by traffic stops.
They also emphasize that the number of traffic stops has gone up by tens of thousands, even as the number of tickets has dropped.
“We’re more interested in traffic stops, not necessarily citations,” Dallas Police Assistant Chief Tom Lawrence said. “The issuing of citations to a driver has always been the discretion of the officer, and we continue to be that way. We’re not going to change that.”
Tickets issued dropped by 67,000 in fiscal 2007-08, an additional 43,000 the next year and 18,000 in 2009-10. The total in fiscal 2006-07 was about 479,500, compared with 292,683 last year.
Lawrence said more than half of last year’s decrease is attributable to a 30 percent cut to a grant that financed officer overtime to work traffic enforcement exclusively in specified areas.
Police officials said that the federal grant is funneled through the state and that they did not know why it was cut.
Officers have other possible reasons for the decline in tickets.
Some officers say they are reluctant to write as many because they aren’t getting overtime pay for court appearances and because the citations they do write have gotten increased scrutiny from supervisors after ticket-writing scandals in recent years.
In addition, traffic unit personnel have been assigned recently to crime-fighting initiatives rather than strict traffic enforcement duties.
The decline comes as the city has seen an unprecedented eight straight years of overall crime reduction. For most of that time, the size of the force was steadily rising, thanks to a hiring push.
Total new non-parking traffic cases filed statewide in Texas municipal courts:
2006: 5,711,966Some police departments - notably Austin's - view traffic stops as their primary anti-crime strategy, particularly in so-called "hotspots," so I was surprised to notice that trend. It has budget implications, certainly, but more importantly, what is causing it? Are police deployment patterns changing, and if so, how and why? Perhaps the price of gas and a depressed economy are just making people drive less, which could make the trend meaningless if the economy picks back up. Perhaps Dallas' remarkable drop explains a disproportionate share of the total. OTOH, perhaps other cities, like Big D, are scaling back traffic enforcement in tight budget times because of limited resources. Or maybe there's something bigger going on, just as we've witnessed a steady drop in index crime rates over the last two decades.
2007: 5,581,607
2008: 5,749,780
2009: 5,684,813
2010: 5,521,029
2011: 5,148,510
Why are Texas cops writing fewer traffic tickets? What do you think is going on?
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