LA Times' Bicycle Stop Report May Not be What CalBike Feels it Means
Quoting CalBike from the previous piece:
As an excellent LA Times investigation showed, police disproportionately target people on bikes, particularly Black and Latino men, stopping them for small infractions and then subjecting them to invasive searches. Disadvantaged neighborhoods are more likely to lack safe bikeways, forcing people to ride on sidewalks. Decriminalizing sidewalk riding protects vulnerable populations from police encounters that can sometimes be deadly, in addition to shielding them from traffic violence.
CalBike is leaving out a huge detail with this statement.
The LA Times Investigation primarily only looked into police stops of bicyclists in one law enforcement department: The LA County Sheriffs. (LACSD)
CalBike’s separate piece on their website, “Blockbuster LA Times Investigation Shows Police Bias in Bike Stop” which is actually the page they linked to in the above quote (not the LA Times piece itself) also hardly mentions this tidbit about LACSD. The only two times the LACSD itself is mentioned is when quoting the LA Times piece, and in a statement about LA County Supervisors asking LACSD about a ticket diversion program for bicyclists and pedestrians.
LACSD has jurisdiction over all of unincorporated Los Angeles County and provide law enforcement via contract to several cities. Roughly half of the county’s cities use LACSD instead of their own dedicated police departments for these services as well as 90 unincorporated communities and various health care facilities in the county along with a transit system and county courts. The county’s largest city, Los Angeles provides their own policing services as does the county’s second most populated city, Long Beach. That likely doesn’t stop an LACSD officer from pulling someone over in, say Downtown Los Angeles, but the likelihood of covering a minor stop in an area well patrolled by that city’s own police department seems unlikely.
If there’s a contract city, unincorporated community, or other area subject to LACSD’s enforcement that’s an area known for high crime, it’s highly likely that they will be the ones patrolling the streets. That’s just Policing 101 for better and often, for worse. A community willing to contract out law enforcement seems on the surface one less willing to look into their own community for law enforcement, which on the surface in our view indicates a poor desire to invest in the community itself. If that’s the case, it’s no wonder communities would lack bicycle-specific infrastructure at least until progressive gentrifiers move into the area of course. Unincorporated communities typically lack the desire for residents to get together too, many are semi-rural or completely rural.
This is all left out of both LA Times’ work and CalBike’s advocacy.
CalBike’s Blockbuster article instead insists the issues the LA Times investigation reportedly discovered scales up to all law enforcement in general.
They write, “The LA Times story makes clear that police officers were using bike stops as a pretext for a stop-and-frisk type of enforcement,” and “The data paint a clear picture of a police force acting on prejudice against Latino and Black residents who ride bikes, particularly in areas where most residents are people of color.”
Stop-and-frisk is real in some locations and presumably also in Los Angeles County. Unfortunately for “progressives” and the Woke, it’s largely their policies that cause it. See 's excellent piece where he explains both that and the concept of systemic racism for people on the side of the political spectrum who tend to reject the concept.
Principle-based flaws with AB 825 aside, the idea that CalBike is demanding a statewide change on something that could possibly just be an issue with one (yet large) LEO department should make any reasonable person stop and think. Reasonable police reform and bonafide accountability (repealing quantified immunity) are not in question for them.
That’s because CalBike’s agenda is far greater than this: they want to end all armed police enforcement of traffic.
CalBike's strategy (so far) is supporting bills that slowly chip away at laws pertaining to bicyclists and pedestrians. The “Bicycle Safety Stop Bill” and the “Freedom to Walk Act” are both bills they supported for example. The former was vetoed by Governor Newsom (and the reason for supporting that bill is also heavily flawed) but the latter, often labeled as “legalizing jaywalking” was signed into law in 2022.
Woke progressive anti-policing activism in general, especially in California has led to more problems than it insists it solves, especially for individuals in marginalized groups. Often the people who push for these policies are shielded from the consequences too.
It doesn’t address safe and legal cycling practice either or law enforcement’s potential ignorance of these laws either. For all the problems policing may have, chipping away at it with unsafe and unprincipled feel good bicycle and pedestrian laws is misguided.
(There are also excellent police officers such as Kirby Beck and Clint Sandusky who understand the nuances of bicycling law. )
We’ve been unable to find any endorsement by Calbike of those two gentleman’s work (Sandusky is in CA) or that of the Orange County Bicycle Coalition, who with Cycling Savvy provided printed cards for bicyclists. This is likely because CalBike isn’t a pro-bicyclist organization, it’s an anti-car organization that worships at the altar of Wokism. Wokism runs on disempowerment, victim ideology, and in elevating their own - often “consulting firms” and unaccountable bureaucracies. Cluster B behavior is also at the front and center.
Brad with Euphoric Recall, nails the greater Woke Progressive religion to the T.
As the vanguard movement of progressive ideological fads, woke activists aren’t honest missionaries of a secular faith in which meaning and identity are derived from political activism, but dogmatic authoritarians convinced that righteous motives justify demanding of others unquestioning adherence to a totalistic political agenda. They don’t want converts, they want targets and unswerving submission.
Once confined to the fringe margins of academia, wokeness has metastasized like cancer, infecting everything from hospitals and nonprofits to corporations and the courts, where it’s now common for ideology to override civic obligation. I believe the consequences of this ideological capture aren’t fully appreciated in large part because the corporate media — ever the handmaidens of the Left — studiously avoids spotlighting them. But it’s important to understand that wokeness isn’t just a buzzword, a shibboleth that conservatives lazily apply to cultural changes that rustle their jimmies; it’s more than just the stifling of free speech and the creation of asinine neologisms, more than just an ideology shared in Twitter microclimates. It is very real, very pervasive, and very malignant, and it’s determining policy that affects millions of people.
Buyer always beware!
As for the LA Times investigation itself, it is worth digging in a bit.
The LA Times has at least three, almost four pieces relating to their investigation into bicyclist stops. One of the articles is genuinely investigative, or at least they guide readers into their methodology. The others contain a dose of editorializing - highly common of most of the reporting of the LA Times these days, as well as many anecdotes, or lived experiences as we’re now supposed to call them. Honestly some of the stories are outright frustrating, having well, had occasional negative experiences with law enforcement while cycling. Even for non-bicyclists, it’s likely difficult to not empathize with their stories.
While compelling, such stories risk misleading the reader away from the actual data or any alternative explanations. Only one side of the story is told too. Such is common with a lot of identity-based journalism and journalism-adjacent coverage these days.
The LA Times have stepped onto the recent fad in the journalism world too of moving “beyond objectivity,” (thanks
)The LA Times’ coverage of this investigation is covered in the following four stories.
“7 of every 10 bike stops by L.A. sheriff’s deputies involve Latino cyclists” by Justin Ray, Nov 8th 2021
“L.A. sheriff’s deputies use minor stops to search bicyclists, with Latinos hit hardest” by Alene Tchekmedyian, Ben Poston and Julia Barajas, Nov 4th 2021.
“Sheriff’s Department bike stops: How we reported the story,” by Alene Tchekmedyian, Ben Poston, Nov 4th 2021.
“Bicyclists share stories of being stopped by L.A. County deputies: ‘Everybody is a suspect until proven otherwise’” by Alene Tchekmedyian, Ben Poston, Nov 4th 2021.
It’s difficult to read any of these stories and not walk away with a feeling that the LACSD is guilty as charged.
If one is to attempt to strip away the emotion, and try to get best down to how the LA Times got to this conclusion. It’s probably best to look at the “Sheriff’s Department bike stops: How we reported the story,” story. In that piece, two of the authors walk through much of their methodology.
LA Times filed a public records report with the LACSD for “bike stops” made between 2017 (they don’t give the month, so we’d assume the entire year) to “the end of July.” We presume this means July 2021. LACSD gave them a list of 44,000 bike stops which included the race of the bicyclist, location, reason for stopping, and whether as as well as to what type of search was done.
As a note, LA Times’ intent, so we understand was specific to bike stops. No motorist stops, no pedestrian stops, no comparison to any other type of police-civilian encounter in general either. For the purpose of LA Times’ reporting, this is likely okay but they risk leaving out compared to what from the entire narrative. Competent investigative journalists communicate truth, using full context. This also chips at CalBike’s overall disdain for all armed police enforcement of traffic.
The researchers note that 70% of these stops were of Latino bicyclists. This sounds high of course and the Times did try to contextualize it. They used Census data and the geographical boundaries of the LACSD’s patrol areas and concluded it was just over half Latino. Woke Progressive Ideology typically asserts that if there’s a larger percentage of a group in X thing compared to their percentage of the population, then something nefarious is at play. LA Times, again doesn’t jump to this here, but their other pieces come awfully close to implying this narrative.
They also compared the stops to bike accidents (crazy they used the a-word!) The range for this was 2014 to 2018 - not the original somewhere in 2017 to July 2019! But nevertheless, they found 53% of bike crash participants were Latino. They cite both the California Highway Patrol’s SWITRS database and UC Berkeley’s TIMS database. Apparently they do not know the two are the same. TIMS is a user friendly dashboard that parses the raw data from SWITRS well mostly user friendly because even bicycle coalitions have trouble using it.
The LA Times used three different sources to figure out whether the stops were on sidewalks next to roads with bicycle something. Something as in there are four different classifications of bikeways in California, another thing CalBike and many bicycling organizations actually don’t understand, let alone even “professionals” in the bikeway consulting industry and bureaucrats such as actual City Engineers. Either case, the Times used three different sources, Census Road Data (likely only updated every ten years), County of Public Works GIS data (likely only covers roads under the actual jurisdiction of LA County, not cities or CalTrans!) and the Southern California Association of Government’s bikeway-specific GIS data - likely the most useful of any of the three. LA Times did not disclose whether the stops actually occurred when a bikeway was adjacent or not. Comparing locations alone is insufficient. To spell this out further with an example, if a stop was conducted on, say January 1st 2018 but a bikeway wasn’t installed until later and or wasn’t inventoried in either of those resources until later, then the record would show an adjacent bikeway anyways. Bike anything doesn’t exist on most roadways period so CalBike’s assertion that building bike lanes would fix either safety or these police stops is dubious.
LA Times did compare their data to other law enforcement agencies but only mention Oakland’s record of stops from 2016 to 2019. They provided no additional context on Oakland’s stops or the other agencies.
They also requested data from the state Department of Justice’s Racial Identity and Profiling Act, which requires the state’s top 15 agencies report. They parsed only one year, 2019. The link to the data is dead unfortunately. These data leave out the type of stop the Times admits, making it unable to distinguish bicycle stops from others. Out of this, they somehow discovered that bike-specific counts were undercounted though, as they stated, not all people on bikes being stopped were stopped because of a bicycle law related reason. Duh. California’s laws that require drivers (which includes bicyclists) obey traffic lights, ride on the correct side of the road, and obey stop signs are all driver-specific laws.
The Times also reviewed a super exact number of arrests that began with the suspect being stopped on a bicycle: 100. Arrest records tend to leave out personal information so the Times checked the times, dates, and locations, with their other data sources and were able to identify 63 of those arrests. That really doesn’t mean much. They did review court records and discovered 80 of those arrests either led to new charges or the individuals had outstanding warrants when stopped.
What does all this mean?
We’d argue the Times is trying to push a certain narrative. Few readers of such media sources are willing to even question their work which allows them to get away with journalistic malpractice. Anybody pushing against powerful journalists from any publication are often put down as “fake news” or some other insult. Seeing how the Corporate Press have handled everything in the Twitter Files has been eye-opening.
Overall the fact the LA Times don’t provide any of their actual data for one to verify is a massive red flag.
CalBike’s claims too are in great need of a bit of verifying against the LA Times’ work no matter how flawed it may be.
They distill their argument for “the need to remove police from traffic enforcement” into a list of bullet points.
The police searched 85% of riders they stopped, often while holding them in the back seat of a squad car.
CalBike, leaves out the nuance of the fact this is not police in general but only a particular agency. But what they’re saying is not all too different otherwise from the copy in the LA Times piece, “L.A. sheriff’s deputies use minor stops to search bicyclists, with Latinos hit hardest”
A Los Angeles Times investigation found deputies search 85% of bike riders they stop even though they often have no reason to suspect they’ll find something illegal. Most bicyclists were held in the backseat of patrol cars while deputies rummaged through their belongings or checked for arrest warrants.
The 85% figure is likely easily verifiable but the “even though they often have no reason to suspect they’ll find something illegal,” without any context or nuance is journalistic malpractice.
Woke Progressive journalists with an anti-cop bias rely on the fact their readers likely have no clue how a police stop works. This is a feature, not a bug. If a person is being stopped specifically for a traffic infraction, it does not mean the LEO will automatically assume they need to be searched for illegal items. If a bicyclist is being held in the backseat of a police car, that’s a good indication they are being held for something far more severe than a bicycle-related traffic infraction. It is also an unfortunate truth that LEOS can take advantage (often and get away with it legally via qualified immunity) of people they stop who are unaware of how a police stop is supposed to work. Woke Progressive anti-police activists, which likely includes these “journalists” at the Times either are unaware of this because it doesn’t fit their narrative or leave it out completely.
Continuing:
Only 8% of the searches found illegal items.
Less than 6% of searches turned up drugs.
Police found weapons in less than 0.5% of bicycle searches.
None of these points are in dispute with the actual LA Times investigation - or at least what they told us. Recall nobody can actually verify the actual work.
For all the stops and searches, deputies rarely catch criminals. During searches, they find illegal items just 8% of the time, The Times’ analysis shows. Weapons were seized just 164 times — less than half a percent of all searches.
…
The data show that sheriff’s deputies discovered drugs in less than 6% of searches, The Times found.
Back to Calbike’s words:
The population of LA County is 50% Latino, but 70% of the bike riders stopped were Latino.
The LA Times piece makes no reference to the population of Latinos in the county. CalBike is likely trying the use the age-old Woke Progressive trick of asserting that disparities of any kind are only because of discrimination.
The police stopped the most riders (3,700) in East LA, a predominantly Latino neighborhood.
No reference to East LA in the investigation either. East LA is an unincorporated part of the county, not a part of Los Angeles. To say it’s “a predominantly Latino neighborhood,” is understating it and isn’t the own they feel it is. According to the 2020 Census, East LA is upwards of 95% Latino. That means the chance of police stopping anybody who isn’t Latino is ultra low. Failing to state the common reasons for the 3,700 stops too on either CalBike’s or LA Times’ count is irresponsible too.
In wealthier, whiter Malibu, police have conducted only 80 bike stops since 2017. In some affluent areas, the numbers were even lower.
In addition to being whiter, and wealthier (LA Times discusses neither as well). Malibu is a tiny city with one major thoroughfare - the PCH. Contrary to the narrative CalBike pushes here, harassment, of bicyclists in the city used to be high.
That was until bicyclist and attorney Seth Davidson as well as member of the cycling Club Big Orange protested over the issue - which was largely law enforcement ignorant of cycling laws and a dose of the city’s ultra narcissistic celebrities complaining while ignorant of CVC 21202. That tale is told over on Seth’s blog, here, here, here, and here.
In a perfect world CalBike could provide similar advocacy, or the county’s local bicycle coalition could (they used to at least), but unfortunately they have to rely, ironically on the Woke Progressive bicycling activists most hated group to make the changes: the middle aged relatively affluent white guys in lycra.
Garbage in = garbage out.
The LA Times’s analysis leaves out much - making it next to impossible for any reasonable person to assert that there’s even an issue here. So does CalBike.
To be honest, we suspect there is, and it stems far more on the issues in
's earlier referenced article, as well as general ignorance of cycling laws both on behalf of law enforcement and people bicycling. The lack of proper bicycle education, even though local bicycle coalitions teach safety courses, is likely part of it too. It's intuitive to a lot of people not familiar with cycling safety that because a bicycle is NOT a car, that it may belong on a sidewalk. Sidewalk cycling (especially for children) though in fact carries a higher risk of crashes than riding on the road, bike lanes or not, obeying the rules of the road for drivers of vehicles.There are likely policing issues too that can be at least partially be explained by the Woke Progressive narrative - with LACSD and other agencies, but unlikely because of the Woke Progressive’s thinking skills but more likely because even broken clocks are correct twice a day.
The key to getting to the bottom of any of these issues is to take a principled, data-driven approach to figuring out the cases.
Chipping away at certain laws by making risky behavior permissible, which is what AB 825 seeks to actually do, is as we said in the last piece, peak platitude-driven bicycling advocacy absurdity. These problems cannot be solved with only the flawed Woke Progressive view either instead a return to reality is needed.
Simply statistically speaking, I'd expect Latinos to be less well off, and for less well off people to bicycle more. Which could easily account for the 50% vs 70% numbers on its own, I should think.