Do you know why we didn’t pull you over?
By Gale Holland and Gray Mollenkamp
It’s never been easier to get away with speeding or running a light in Los Angeles. Drivers and pedestrians are paying a deadly price.
The Los Angeles Police Department’s massive bunker-style station on Skid Row is edged by jagged rocks to deter homeless people looking for a safe spot to sleep for the night. Inside, the station houses the Central Traffic Division, where on a recent morning the seven officers on duty were feeling beleaguered, not by the neighborhood’s infamous squalor but by the challenge of keeping 1,139 miles of city roads safe.
Before the pandemic and George Floyd’s death, 40 officers had been assigned to Central Traffic, whose territory stretches from El Sereno to Historic South Central. Since 2020, the deployment has dropped to 20, but illness, training, work restrictions, and court time bring the number of staff actually in the office down to less than half that.
