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Berkeley moves toward removing police from traffic stops

The crunchy California city of Berkeley is going to remove cops from traffic enforcement and replace them with unarmed municipal workers.

The city’s council green-lit the move late Wednesday after nine hours of debate over Mayor Jesse Arreguin’s plan to create a transportation department that handles planning as well as parking and traffic enforcement.

Arreguin’s plan also calls for the formation of “new” Berkeley Police Department that does not respond to calls involving the homeless or mentally ill.

Both revamps are set to be planned and executed by a steering committee tasked “to identify a more limited role for law enforcement, and identify elements of police work that could be achieved through alternative programs, policies, systems and community investments.”

Berkeley is believed to be the first city in the county to revoke its police department’s authority over traffic since the May 25 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis cops, which sparked nationwide calls for reform.

“There may be situations where police do need to intervene and so we need to look at all that,” Arreguin said after the vote.

“We need to look at if we do move traffic enforcement out of the police department, what does that relationship look like and how will police officers work in coordination with unarmed traffic enforcement personnel?”

Arreguin’s initiative also slashes the city police department’s budget by 12 percent.

Fans of the proposal cheered its passage, though it could take months or even years to execute. Critics warned taking cops out of traffic enforcement would put whoever replaces them in danger.

A worker makes repairs to the damaged Berkeley police headquarters in Berkeley, California.
A worker makes repairs to the damaged Berkeley police headquarters in Berkeley, California.AP

“I think what Berkeley is doing is nuts,” said Mark Cronin, a director with the Los Angeles Police Protective League, a union for officers.

“I think it’s a big social experiment. I think it’s going to fail and it’s not going to take long for, unfortunately, traffic collisions, fatalities to increase exponentially.”

Similar proposals have been floated by safety advocates in New York City, where traffic enforcement has been a police responsibility for almost three decades.

On Thursday, however, Mayor Bill de Blasio defended the NYPD’s current role, calling the police department “essential to Vision Zero,” his scheme to reduce traffic deaths to zero by 2024.

“I don’t doubt for a moment the commitment of the NYPD and I just see these things differently than some of the advocates do. Traffic enforcement, I think, does belong in the NYPD,” de Blasio told reporters.

With Post wires