SFPD eliminates motors?

RRR70

Attack Helicopter
Had an SFPD guy at the store few days ago doing paperwork. We chatted a bit about all the crap that is going on right now. He told me that powers that be are thinking about eliminating motors from the department. On a scale from 1 to 10, I think this is at 11 of dumb ideas. What do you guys think?
 

two wheel tramp

exploring!
I say a 15 level of stupid. Seriously WTF. No other vehicle os as agile. Really makes no sense with the city's traffic. A motor can stil get thru when a car cant.
 

byke

Well-known member
Sometimes you just have to give dumb people what they ask for before they're able to understand that they don't want it.
 

ctwo

Merely Rhetorical
I thought they were going to eliminate traffic in SF anyway and there would be more officers on bicycles or riding the ankle express.
 

nakedape

Well-known member
Seems pretty foolish, especially for a large agency like SFPD.

Motors get hurt more often, and more seriously, than any other officer. Out for six months is surprisingly common. A lot of them are cowboys too. Effectively this would put more cops on the street, just via elimination of extended injury leaves.

Anecdotally, the only actual SFPD motor I knew personally was a raging asshole affiliated (not loosely) with 81, and carried a ball peen in his back pocket like a thug. He was 300# and had spent half his career on leave for this or that.

Devil's advocate argument here, those enduro riding officers in GGP are clutch.

The Berkeley proposal will rely on tech, not direct stops. The same way a LEO can send you a ticket in the mail based on observed violations. It would address infractions and DECREASE dangerous interactions with hostiles. The people with no address dont GAF anyway.
 

bojangle

FN # 40
Staff member
Motors get hurt more often, and more seriously, than any other officer. Out for six months is surprisingly common. A lot of them are cowboys too. Effectively this would put more cops on the street, just via elimination of extended injury leaves.

Anecdotally, the only actual SFPD motor I knew personally was a raging asshole affiliated (not loosely) with 81, and carried a ball peen in his back pocket like a thug. He was 300# and had spent half his career on leave for this or that.

Devil's advocate argument here, those enduro riding officers in GGP are clutch.

The Berkeley proposal will rely on tech, not direct stops. The same way a LEO can send you a ticket in the mail based on observed violations. It would address infractions and DECREASE dangerous interactions with hostiles. The people with no address dont GAF anyway.

Do you have a source for the bolded? Are you saying they're only going to operate speed and red light cameras, and that's it? Because that's not what I've read. (With all the legal hurdles I mentioned, that might be what they're reduced to, but I don't think that's the intended plan.)

A far as SFPD eliminating motors, sure, if they were doing the job of patrol on a motor, and you moved them all to motors, safety would increase and injuries woukd decrease. But motors work traffic enforcement, not patrol. While an officer can certainly do that job in a car, they'll be more limited in their function. Especially in a congested city like SF, motors can get through places that cars can't to catch up to violators, etc. Motors also do other assignments, such as dignitary escorts / protection, especially in a big city. I'd think on a motorcycle forum you'd have people on here who actually like motorcycles. :)
 

JHicks

Basically Homeless
Motors get hurt more often, and more seriously, than any other officer. Out for six months is surprisingly common. A lot of them are cowboys too. Effectively this would put more cops on the street, just via elimination of extended injury leaves.

Anecdotally, the only actual SFPD motor I knew personally was a raging asshole affiliated (not loosely) with 81, and carried a ball peen in his back pocket like a thug. He was 300# and had spent half his career on leave for this or that.

Devil's advocate argument here, those enduro riding officers in GGP are clutch.

The Berkeley proposal will rely on tech, not direct stops. The same way a LEO can send you a ticket in the mail based on observed violations. It would address infractions and DECREASE dangerous interactions with hostiles. The people with no address dont GAF anyway.

Absolutely incorrect. CA only allows for red light tickets in the mail, nothing else. Only Peace officers with the forward facing red light can force you to yield and pull over.
 

nakedape

Well-known member
Absolutely incorrect. CA only allows for red light tickets in the mail, nothing else. Only Peace officers with the forward facing red light can force you to yield and pull over.

Once a Ca LE entity confers LE powers on an individual that person can observe and cite without a stop as long as there is positive ID. That's precisely what the challenges to red light cameras revealed. No ID? No plead guilty, yes walk away.

The whole point as articulated by Berkeley people, is to virtually eliminate "routine" traffic stops. This is safer for cops and motorists. Let's be real for a second, in cities there's almost no traffic enforcement for infractions. CHP is the exception, but they target problem areas as a rule.

What I mean by "tech, not stops" is a traffic enforcement car will have cameras and if facial recognition gets a hit, and the violation is observed by someone with LE powers, boom, you get a ticket and that person's sole job will be to show up if it gets contested. All you have to do is beep your horn and people will look over right into the HD camera. Not to mention the network of thousands of cameras all over cities everywhere.

Where camera footage ends up and how it's secured is their main limitation. Cloud services ain't cheap and cities are broke as hell. All laws are "mere suggestions" and the old saying "when seconds count the cops are minutes away" is true, except in cities where hours are more the norm, unless you're in a rich, low crime area. It isn't low crime because rich people are more law abiding, they just aren't slugging it out for survival and tripping over laws designed to discriminate. No, the penal code is not objective. :x

We need more funding and better training for cops, not less. Our city loses half it's new officers to the sheriff after a few years cutting their teeth. Better pay, better conditions there. What do they cite as the reason for leaving? Poor working conditions due to understaffing. The "be careful what you ask for" argument doesn't carry much weight when you look at data:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/nyc-cops-did-a-work-stop-yet-crime-dropped/

"Events like these provide rare opportunities to explore questions that couldn’t be tested experimentally, for practical or ethical reasons. So Sullivan and O’Keeffe looked at crime statistics for the duration of the slowdown, and they found something surprising: reports of major crime dropped during the slowdown period."
 

motomania2007

TC/MSF/CMSP/ Instructor
Once a Ca LE entity confers LE powers on an individual that person can observe and cite without a stop as long as there is positive ID. That's precisely what the challenges to red light cameras revealed. No ID? No plead guilty, yes walk away.

The whole point as articulated by Berkeley people, is to virtually eliminate "routine" traffic stops. This is safer for cops and motorists. Let's be real for a second, in cities there's almost no traffic enforcement for infractions. CHP is the exception, but they target problem areas as a rule.

What I mean by "tech, not stops" is a traffic enforcement car will have cameras and if facial recognition gets a hit, and the violation is observed by someone with LE powers, boom, you get a ticket and that person's sole job will be to show up if it gets contested. All you have to do is beep your horn and people will look over right into the HD camera. Not to mention the network of thousands of cameras all over cities everywhere.

Where camera footage ends up and how it's secured is their main limitation. Cloud services ain't cheap and cities are broke as hell. All laws are "mere suggestions" and the old saying "when seconds count the cops are minutes away" is true, except in cities where hours are more the norm, unless you're in a rich, low crime area. It isn't low crime because rich people are more law abiding, they just aren't slugging it out for survival and tripping over laws designed to discriminate. No, the penal code is not objective. :x

We need more funding and better training for cops, not less. Our city loses half it's new officers to the sheriff after a few years cutting their teeth. Better pay, better conditions there. What do they cite as the reason for leaving? Poor working conditions due to understaffing. The "be careful what you ask for" argument doesn't carry much weight when you look at data:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/nyc-cops-did-a-work-stop-yet-crime-dropped/

"Events like these provide rare opportunities to explore questions that couldn’t be tested experimentally, for practical or ethical reasons. So Sullivan and O’Keeffe looked at crime statistics for the duration of the slowdown, and they found something surprising: reports of major crime dropped during the slowdown period."

How does that work with a mask over the driver's face?

Or wearing a helmet while riding a motorcycle?
 

bojangle

FN # 40
Staff member
Once a Ca LE entity confers LE powers on an individual that person can observe and cite without a stop as long as there is positive ID. That's precisely what the challenges to red light cameras revealed. No ID? No plead guilty, yes walk away.

The whole point as articulated by Berkeley people, is to virtually eliminate "routine" traffic stops. This is safer for cops and motorists. Let's be real for a second, in cities there's almost no traffic enforcement for infractions. CHP is the exception, but they target problem areas as a rule.

What I mean by "tech, not stops" is a traffic enforcement car will have cameras and if facial recognition gets a hit, and the violation is observed by someone with LE powers, boom, you get a ticket and that person's sole job will be to show up if it gets contested. All you have to do is beep your horn and people will look over right into the HD camera. Not to mention the network of thousands of cameras all over cities everywhere.

Where camera footage ends up and how it's secured is their main limitation. Cloud services ain't cheap and cities are broke as hell. All laws are "mere suggestions" and the old saying "when seconds count the cops are minutes away" is true, except in cities where hours are more the norm, unless you're in a rich, low crime area. It isn't low crime because rich people are more law abiding, they just aren't slugging it out for survival and tripping over laws designed to discriminate. No, the penal code is not objective. :x

We need more funding and better training for cops, not less. Our city loses half it's new officers to the sheriff after a few years cutting their teeth. Better pay, better conditions there. What do they cite as the reason for leaving? Poor working conditions due to understaffing. The "be careful what you ask for" argument doesn't carry much weight when you look at data:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/nyc-cops-did-a-work-stop-yet-crime-dropped/

"Events like these provide rare opportunities to explore questions that couldn’t be tested experimentally, for practical or ethical reasons. So Sullivan and O’Keeffe looked at crime statistics for the duration of the slowdown, and they found something surprising: reports of major crime dropped during the slowdown period."

The only camera enforcement California allows is red light cameras. There is no facial recognition software on those. California DMV photos can't be used in facial recognition databases. Red light cameras are only one of the many violations out there, and they've been fraught with problems. Like your last post, you are writing a lot of unsubstantiated claims without providing sources. This isn't what the Berkeley proposal was about.

Do you have a source for your claim of almost no infraction traffic enforcement in cities?

More than 4 million traffic tickets are given in California each year, and more than 70% of the state's criminal cases involve those citations.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-decriminalize-traffic-tickets-20170605-htmlstory.html

Hmmm, I wonder how all those tickets are being issued. :dunno

And to your final point, do you recognize the difference between crime and reported crime? Of course less police activity will lead to lower crime numbers when police aren't out there developing cases. That doesn't mean crime is not happening, and it doesn't mean society is safer. Just the opposite. That person rolling around with a stolen gun isn't stopped and arrested by police when they're not working, for example. Another type of reduced crime reporting comes from just not enough bodies to field all the calls. When police staffing is reduced well below what it should be, it often takes hours for the police to respond. Many times by the time an officer is freed up to respond, the person is no longer available to make the report, and the people get discouraged for lack of response and stop reporting things because, "what's the use". So increased police and police activity will lead to increased crime stats, but decreased overall crime, as more criminals are held accountable.
 

NorCalBusa

Member #294
Absolutely incorrect. CA only allows for red light tickets in the mail, nothing else. Only Peace officers with the forward facing red light can force you to yield and pull over.

Not quite. You must pull right and yield to any authorized emergency vehicle with at least one solid red to the front (21086a). No need for a LEO to be piloting it.
 

bojangle

FN # 40
Staff member
Not quite. You must pull right and yield to any authorized emergency vehicle with at least one solid red to the front (21086a). No need for a LEO to be piloting it.

Wrong code, but true. However, any civilian traffic enforcement vehicle would have to have obtained a specific authorized emergency vehicle permit issued by the Commissioner of the California Highway Patrol. I'm kinda doubting that CHP would do that, especially with all the other legal issues I posted.

http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=VEH&sectionNum=165
 

Shaggy

Zoinks!!!!
Traffic enforcement in cities is often the duty of traffic officers in cars and motorcycles.

The violations don’t go ignored. It’s that patrol cops often don’t have time to make car stops because they are responding to other calls for service. Proactive enforcement by a patrol cop only happens when nothing else of higher priority is occurring.

Cops assigned to traffic enforcement positions make dozens of stops daily and usually issue tickets in those situations. It’s just that there’s less of them than patrol cops. Our motor officers write 15-20 cites per day, but there’s only a handful of them compared to beat cops and they work banker’s hours.

The injury thing is also BS, IMO. Injuries happen in police work regardless of assignment. Most injuries are cumulative in nature (back injury after wearing 30lbs of gear for 10+ years, etc...). Motor officers rarely get injuries specific to their assignment from what I’ve seen.
 
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