During a five minute commute to WYPR on Tuesday morning, I watched two drivers speed through red lights on North Avenue. Other Baltimoreans will tell you they frequently see the same.
Commissioner Richard Worley wants to crack down on that.
In the coming weeks, Baltimore City police will announce plans to enhance traffic patrol and increase traffic stops for violations, a department spokesperson confirmed.
“I am very frustrated by the increase in motorists violating traffic laws and illegally parking, serious vehicle crashes and road rage incidents. More and more drivers are disregarding speed limits, traffic signs and other traffic laws and these actions jeopardize public safety for everyone who uses the roadways,” Commissioner Worley wrote to WYPR in a statement.
“If you are going to drive on city streets, you need to obey the rules of the road. They are not mere suggestions, they may also help to avoid road rage incidents, which can escalate into shootings due to drivers who have guns in their vehicles. Abiding by these laws may save your life or someone else’s.”
Worley made the initial announcement during a Saturday morning interview with WBAL’s Jayne Miller.
During an unrelated Monday morning press conference, Mayor Brandon Scott said the initiative was a “direction from me, directly.”
The announcement is loaded with history. Unconstitutional traffic stops were a major contributing factor in how the police landed in a federal consent decree with the Department of Justice.
“My gut reaction was ‘Ok, here we go again,’” said Ray Kelly, executive director of the Citizens Policing Project, a group that works to incorporate community concerns with policing reforms.
At the time of the 2018 DOJ report, 82% of motorists pulled over in BPD traffic stops were Black while Black motorists made up less than 62% of the city’s driving population. Those stops could escalate into full vehicle searches with the justification that a driver looked “nervous.” Sometimes, stops ended up in strip searches with no evidence of contraband and sometimes stops ended in violent altercations.
Kelly worries that new traffic enforcement could end in a “regression” back to those times.
“When we start talking about road rage, and things of that nature, that's like, an excuse to kind of stop everybody, where it's not just violations that just happened people for it, but more than investigatory stops,” he said. Kelly favors relying on methods like red light and speed cameras.
When asked about concerns of racial traffic profiling, Amanda Krotki, a BPD spokesperson wrote that most of those questions “will be addressed once we make a traffic enforcement announcement in the coming weeks.
In 2022, the most recent year for which numbers are available, state data indicates that 80% of motorists pulled over in BPD traffic stops were Black.
During the interview with WBAL, Worley admitted that staffing remains a challenge.
"But we can't dwell on that because even if we hire 500 more cops tomorrow, it's going to take them a year to get out on the street and functioning," Worley said. "(We're) going to continue to do more with less (and work with our partners)."
A Baltimore Banner analysis found fatal pedestrian accidents are rising in Maryland but in 2023 they dropped slightly in Baltimore.
