Why San Jose must restore its traffic enforcement unit

It is long past time that we restore San Jose's Traffic Enforcement Unit beyond the current 19 officers.

We used to have a total of 50 TEU officers when our city had 945,000 people. Now with an additional 67,000 people and a total population of more than 1 million, we have fewer officers monitoring our driving behavior. To make matters worse, half of the 19 officers on the streets work a day shift and the other half is off-duty by 8 p.m., while most of our traffic fatalities occur at night.

As of this writing, we have tragically suffered 23 traffic deaths and four homicides in 2022. Yes, you read that correctly. Traffic fatalities outnumber homicides almost 6 to 1. We must restore our grossly understaffed TEU to address the bad driving behaviors on the road now — in this year's budget. Let's not study it. Let's fix it. We already know what's needed.

Traffic fatalities continue to rise in San Jose. In 2021, there were 60 traffic fatalities. So far, 2022 is on track to be worse. We're not taking traffic enforcement as seriously as we need to. While we have long budgeted for 30 or more TEU officers, we have not staffed that number since 2012. We have fully staffed the police department at 1,150 officers since 2020, but the traffic enforcement division has not been filled. Some of my colleagues think that traffic enforcement should take a backseat until the hire-ahead program is established, but we've had a hire-ahead program for two years already.

It's not just about fatalities; it's also about injuries. In 2021, there were about 2,700 traffic-related injuries in San Jose. Sadly, that is within the typical range for the last five years. Educating pedestrians and cyclists about the rules of the road and that the safest crossings are at marked crosswalks is certainly needed. I know and you know that we also need to continue to put money into other safety initiatives, such as enhanced crosswalks, bollards, bulbouts and delineators on our streets. These are all part of the city's Vision Zero Initiative to reduce and eliminate traffic deaths and severe injuries.

However, we won't make true progress toward Vision Zero until we increase enforcement to cut down on bad driving behaviors. We don't need to nudge our red-light runners or speed demons. We need to pull them over and give them a ticket before they kill someone. And the sight of a driver being pulled over to the side of the road sends a message to the rest of us that traffic laws are enforced in San Jose. It's called High Visibility Enforcement. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, High Visibility Enforcement is a universal traffic safety approach designed to create deterrence and change unlawful traffic behaviors. To cover a city of our size with more than 2,000 miles of local streets and to display high visibility, we need more TEU officers out on our roadways.

We're failing our community when we ignore the obvious and fail to enforce our laws. We need to keep our residents alive and safe.