Region’s police writing fewer traffic tickets
Experts cite staff issues, priority shifts, changes in driving habits
ALBANY — Over the last decade, local police and sheriff ’s offices have sharply curtailed the number of traffic tickets they write.
Although variations exist among departments, police agencies in Albany, Rensselaer, Saratoga and Schenectady counties wrote 99,079 tickets in 2012, compared with 55,804 in 2021, according to data from the Institute of Traffic Safety Management and Research, a research center affiliated with the University at Albany’s Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy.
That 44 percent drop cannot solely be explained by the coronavirus pandemic, which led to less enforcement and shifts in workers’ commuting habits. A Times Union analysis of the data shows that the number of tickets issued by local police had already fallen to 78,406 in 2019 before plummeting to 47,606 in 2020 and rebounding in 2021.
Police chiefs and experts who study policing attribute the decline in the number of traffic tickets to several factors, including lack of staffing, changes in driving habits, shifting priorities when it comes to public safety as well as police reforms that pushed departments to use traffic stops as a way to engage and educate drivers who violated the rules of the road.
Several police officials said they believe the number of traffic tickets does not tell the whole story. Their officers have been encouraged to use traffic stops to give verbal or written warnings, rather than a ticket that would entail a court date and a fine.
But others also see the stops as a key tool for catching people carrying guns or drugs or who have active warrants.
Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College in New York City who studies policing, said the pattern of declining traffic tickets in the last few years appeared similar to the dip in discretionary tickets written by New York City police officers that he has seen.
While there isn’t solid research to show that enforcement changes drivers’ behavior, it was common sense to have some level of traffic enforcement, Moskos said.
“There is the sense of road safety. I think the research is a bit thin in showing that enforcement actually changes behavior, but damn it, you shouldn’t be doing 80 or running red lights,” he said.
The city of Albany police saw some of the sharpest declines of any department in the region.
City police wrote 11,543 traffic tickets in 2012. That fell to 4,069 in 2019 and rose to 4,601 in 2021.
The department has struggled with severe staffing shortages that forced its leadership to curtail some patrols. The department’s traffic safety unit previously had 22 officers dedicated to it. Today it has seven.
Chief Eric Hawkins said the department still runs enforcement details aimed at specific violations, including one last year for drivers who left their cars running while they went into a store. But the first two weeks of that detail were aimed at educating the violators, rather than automatically ticketing them, Hawkins said.
“If we can get people to change behaviors, some other way besides having them pay out of their pocket for it, then we may want to consider that.”
Hawkins also said that approach is a shift from the way many departments viewed traffic safety when he became a police officer.
“A lot of places are saying, ‘We don’t have to solely write tickets in order to do that, we can take a more creative approach.’ “It makes (drivers) pause. It makes them pause and think about the behavior.”
The city has also introduced a speed hump pilot program in some areas where it saw increased speeding. The city plans to expand that program in 2023.
Hawkins said when the department is able to get close to normal staffing levels he plans to add more officers to the city’s traffic safety unit.
In the summer of 2020, as the city was wracked by then-record levels of gun violence, Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple sent deputies into the city to conduct patrols in an effort to tamp down the gun violence. Apple’s deputies have focused heavily on vehicle and traffic violations in hopes of finding drugs and guns. The result was that the sheriff ’s office was one of the only police agencies in the region to see its traffic ticket numbers increase in 2021 compared with 2019, with the number of tickets rising from 2,506 to 3,935.
Apple said specialized traffic safety units were prioritized decades ago as a way to reduce traffic fatalities. Since then, many departments have given them up because they are manpower- and equipment-intensive, he said.
“I know everybody would love to have a traffic safety unit, but it’s become more of a luxury,” he said.
While Albany’s decline was among the highest in the region, it was far from the only department to see a large decrease.
In neighboring Colonie, which routinely has one of the busiest town courts in the state due to traffic infractions, tickets fell from 8,023 in 2012 to 5,702 in 2019 and 2,909 in 2021, according to Institute of Traffic Safety Management and Research data. Deputy Chief Robert Winn said the department intentionally pulled back on its traffic enforcement during the pandemic and has since been ramping it back up. The department wrote nearly 4,000 tickets in 2022, according to Winn.
“We have always had an extremely high focus on traffic safety issues in the town of Colonie. I’ve been doing this for a long time. And since the beginning, I can remember that’s always been a huge focus of the town.”
Winn said that the town’s officers, like others in the state, are also dealing with higher call volume and have changed their approach in some cases, such as mental health calls. That approach of engaging the person in distress and trying to connect them with services, rather than calling an ambulance to transport them to the hospital, takes up more of the officers’ time, Winn said.
But Colonie has also struggled with staffing issues, he said.
Moskos agreed that the lack of staff within some departments is likely part of the explanation.
“I would expect to see a decrease in that kind of stuff ... not having the same number of people on the street and therefore not dead time to do those traffic stops,” he said.
Other departments, even those who saw staffing decreases, still saw a relatively stable number of tickets through the pandemic. Glenville police issued 4,057 tickets in 2021, nearly 700 more than it issued in 2019
The Schenectady police department issued 6,700 tickets in 2021, the most the department had handed out since 2017, according to the data.
And in Saratoga Springs, police issued nearly as many tickets in 2021, 2,247, as they did in 2019 when they wrote 2,303.
Sgt. Paul Veitch, department spokesman, said that was partially due to the department’s focus on impaired driving patrols. Veitch noted that when an officer writes a ticket for impaired driving, they often find other violations.
“People still went out and still got intoxicated and drove, those issues were there,” he said. “So, more than likely that number remains relatively stable because of our dedication to DUI (driving under the influence) enforcement overnights.”