Even as the Palisades fire and other megafires shift the focus on public safety from transportation to wildfires made more likely by climate change, many in our community are still mourning the death of a 70-year old Santa Monica resident to traffic violence from a December 22nd hit-and-run crash at Wilshire & Chelsea. In this column, I consider the tragedy in which the negligence of a single driver ended the life of a Vietnam War veteran and community member, in the context of a Safe Systems approach, which prioritizes road design and enforcement that reduces the number of crashes resulting in serious injury or death. I then show that traffic enforcement in Santa Monica is lower than in comparable cities.
It’s easy to place the blame for traffic violence on the driver, who in this case had prior arrests for DUI and dangerous driving. But just as a person who pulls the trigger in gun violence, the driver is part of a larger system of environmental and social factors. The reasons the driver thought he could violate the law by not having a front license plate or failing to yield to a pedestrian are as much social as they are psychological. A Safe Systems approach to traffic safety recognizes that responsibilities are shared by many in a system: drivers and other road users, vehicle designers and manufacturers, roadway designers and engineers, and policymakers and enforcement agencies
In February 2016, the City of Santa Monica adopted Vision Zero, setting 2026 as a target date to eliminate traffic fatalities and severe injuries on Santa Monica’s Streets. However, traffic fatalities and severe injuries reported to the Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System (SWITRS) have not decreased since 2016. I suspect some data is missing.
Effective vision zero approaches typically rely on interventions known as 3E: engineering, education, and enforcement.
Engineering – designing streets to increase lighting, add crosswalks, and reduce speeds to protect vulnerable road users. Wilshire at Chelsea had been redesigned as part of the Wilshire Safety Study to include a high-visibility crosswalk with reflective markers, with a traffic signal planned when funding became available, and lane markings to discourage lane changes before the crosswalk. It is evident in the video that Rod Sharif ignored these markings and the high-visibility crosswalk with flashing beacons.
Education – classroom and outreach programs, including police-initiated public education campaigns about the dangers of speeding or distracted driving. Santa Monica Police Department lacks the messaging about dangerous driving that some of its peer departments like Hermosa Beach and Los Angeles
Enforcement – enforcement of traffic laws is a key vision zero strategy when it leads drivers to adjust behaviors. Many traffic laws such as yielding to pedestrians, excessive speed, failure to stop at traffic signals and stop signs reinforce safe driving behaviors. The Santa Monica Police Department’s enforcement of California Vehicle Code has declined significantly in the past 15 years and is lower than most peer cities.
How does Santa Monica’s enforcement of California Vehicle Code compare to other cities?
While there is not a uniform reporting of traffic citations a city in California issues, there is uniform reporting of financial data that lists each city’s annual revenue from violations of the California Vehicle Code. The comparison below makes use of that publicly-available data.
2022 Comparison of Santa Monica and Peer Cities California Vehicle Code Fine Revenue
City | CVC Fine Revenue | CVC Fine Revenue as % of PD Budget | CVC Fine Revenue per Capita |
Santa Monica | $93,829 | 0.097% | $1.04 |
Berkeley | $4,958,339 | 5.973% | $41.68 |
Beverly Hills | $163,906 | 0.184% | $5.23 |
Culver City | $2,530,907 | 5.566% | $64.05 |
El Segundo | $398,715 | 2.032% | $23.99 |
Glendale | $6,256,004 | 6.291% | $33.06 |
Hermosa Beach | $60,937 | 0.368% | $3.21 |
Long Beach | $17,639,144 | 6.805% | $39.08 |
Manhattan Beach | $2,432,069 | 9.024% | $71.24 |
Newport Beach | $4,177,646 | 6.448% | $49.74 |
Oceanside | $3,552,398 | 5.210% | $20.63 |
Pasadena | $3,485,761 | 3.838% | $25.97 |
Redondo Beach | $67,381 | 0.182% | $0.98 |
San Francisco | $3,058,285 | 0.496% | $3.78 |
Santa Barbara | $2,488,222 | 5.211% | $28.43 |
West Hollywood | $63,053 | 0.227% | $1.83 |
Source: California State Controller’s Office City Financial Reports
Santa Monica’s enforcement of California Vehicle Code is much lower than in other coastal communities and communities in Los Angeles County. The City of Berkeley, which also has a vision zero goal, has traffic fine revenue of 40 times more per capita and 61 times more as a percentage of the police department’s budget. The neighboring community of Culver City has traffic fine revenue of 61 times more per capita.
Santa Monica’s enforcement of California Vehicle Code has also declined significantly in recent years from a peak of $674,679 or 1.026% of the police budget in Fiscal Year 2008-09 to $93,829 or 0.098% of the police budget in 2021-22. The City changed the formatting for their annual budgets and financial reports in 2020, so data is not readily available for more recent years.
While the Santa Monica Police Department doesn’t release data on the number of traffic citations, the department does include traffic stops in its Calls for Service data. The average number of traffic stops per day declined from a high of 40.8 per day in 2008 (the previously mentioned peak of revenues) to 8.6 stops per day in 2023. The downward trend begins before the COVID-19 pandemic.
I asked Santa Monica Police Department Lieutenant Erika Aklufi about Santa Monica’s enforcement of CVC lagging peer cities and declining as a percentage of the department’s budget. Lt. Aklufi’s response highlighted the role of staffing challenges in enforcing traffic laws:
Despite widespread public opinion about law enforcement in general, the SMPD does not use vehicle code enforcement as a formal revenue generator. As a department we have never been focused on fines; however, we are and always have been laser-focused on safety. I join[ed] the Santa Monica Police Department in 2006, and I find it commendable that our department budget is not reliant on traffic fines—it takes the appearance of predatory enforcement out of the equation. This is a value shared by our department members as well as our community and council members.
Lt. Erika Aklufi, via email
As we have dealt with the same officer shortages that have plagued so many police organizations, our Command Staff has had to make some very difficult decisions about how to distribute officers among our divisions. The pandemic created the perfect storm for a reduction in many police-generated revenues including traffic tickets and parking tickets (suspension of parking regulations/street sweeping). During 2020 and the early parts of 2021, officers were discouraged from doing proactive police work that might exacerbate the spread of the virus. At the same time, record numbers of officers were retiring. By the end of 2021, our Motor Unit (officers and a sergeant whose primary assignment is traffic enforcement and collision investigation) had been basically gutted. When Chief Batista joined the department in October of 2021, one of his main priorities was (and remains) increasing staffing the Motor Unit to a contingent that would be similar to what the department had in 2008-2009, your comparison year.
We agree with you wholeheartedly that there are legitimate safety reasons for increasing enforcement, one of the three E’s of Vision Zero. As our officer numbers increase, slowly but surely, Chief Batista has plans to add resources specifically focused on traffic safety, including adding members to the motor unit and programs/operations that can have a positive impact in lowering collision rates. Our community can expect to see more and more enforcement over the coming year, but never for the purpose of revenue generation.
Looking beyond personnel for traffic enforcement
A handful of California cities, including Malibu and Los Angeles, are authorized to use automated speed enforcement systems to enforce speed limits without the direct involvement of police officers. In New York and Chicago, these systems have been shown to increase compliance with posted speed limits by making speeding tickets a near certainty in certain zones. However, cities have been slow to implement these systems. I plan to address this and other options in a future post.