The city council of Berkeley, California has passed a law that will allow civilian city workers to take over the job of making traffic stops.
What could possibly go wrong with that? If drivers can and will pull guns on armed police officers, these civilian employees who will not carry guns will make inviting targets for the bad guys.
Several cities have at least partially defunded the police, but it is believed that Berkeley is the first city to send unarmed city employees to do traffic stops.
The proposal is meant to ease the minds of those who are stopped form traffic violations.
I am sure that part is true because they do not have to worry about the unarmed city workers shooting back at them.
They do admit that there are some times when the police will be called to the scene of a traffic stop.
There will be an added cost to the city. The body bags alone could cost a fortune.
Also, once you take the money away from the police department and spend it elsewhere you may not have the money to restart the program when you find out unarmed civilians won’t cut it.
The measure is a sweeping change on how policing is done and will cut the budget for police in half.
The name of the new unarmed force is the Specialized Care Unit that will be funded with the money taken from the police force. I can see it now. “Halt in the name of the unarmed.” They’ll never see the bullets coming.
Police unions in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Jose issued a joint statement noting that reckless driving, speeding, and driving while under the influence are all examples of “traffic” enforcement violations that could be dangerous.
“We do not believe that the public wants lax enforcement of those incidents by non-sworn individuals,” the unions said, according to Fox News. “Traffic stops are some of the most dangerous actions police officers take. What happens when the felon with an illegal gun gets pulled over by the parking police? Nothing good, we’re sure of that.”
