Today, Explained - Driver’s license to kill

Episode Date: October 11, 2023

Across the country, traffic deaths are spiking. Vox’s Marin Cogan tells the tragic story of one grisly crash in Washington, DC, and we ask whether changes to traffic policing could be partly to blame. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact-checked by Serena Solin and Amanda Lewellyn, engineered by Patrick Boyd and David Herman, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It was just after 1 a.m. in Washington, D.C., on a spring morning earlier this year. A cop saw a black Lexus SUV speed through a red light, so he pulled the driver over. He stopped her and said, is there a reason that we're driving like 80 miles an hour blowing red lights? This is from his body camera footage, by the way. The officer then notices what he thinks is a cup of liquor in the passenger's hand. And he explains to the driver and the passenger, look, you can't have open liquor in a car. That's illegal. He asks to see their IDs. Moments after that, the driver speeds off. What would happen next has become the stuff of America is falling apart canon. Coming up on Today Explained, we tried to fix a big

problem with policing on our roads. But when we made changes, we might have caused another big one. The all-new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever. Want more ways to follow your faves? Check out our new player prop tracking with real-time notifications. Or how about more ways to customize your casino page

with our new favorite and recently played games tabs? And to top it all off, quick and secure withdrawals. Get more everything with FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. When we left off, a U.S. Parks police officer had pulled over a woman who was driving recklessly. He questioned her, asked for an ID, and she took off. Vox's Maren Kogan picks it up from there with the bombshell. When the driver

fled, the police officer didn't follow her. So DC police and park police, like many other police organizations across the U.S., has really strict rules about when they can chase a vehicle. And this is in part because there's been a recognition that police chases can be dangerous for people being chased, for bystanders, and for the police themselves. So there are strict rules basically saying the police cannot chase unless they are aware of a felony being committed or believe that the person poses basically a very clear danger to the public. Okay, so the police officer watches as the black Lexus speeds off, and what happens next? The Lexus driver speeds off, the police officer watches as the black Lexus speeds off. And what happens next?

The Lexus driver speeds off. The police officer clears the traffic stop, decides not to pursue. About two minutes later, D.C.'s emergency authorities get the first call about a crash on Rock Creek Parkway. Now, Noel, I know that you know Rock Creek Parkway, but just for people who don't live in D.C., it is this sort of multi-lane winding road. It runs along the Potomac River, and as it heads north into northwest D.C., it bisects Rock Creek Park. So the calls start coming in. The witnesses say that they have seen a black Lexus SUV going at a very high rate of speed, up to 100 miles per hour, cross into oncoming traffic, and strike a Honda Accord. Inside this Honda Accord were three men.

The driver was Mohamed Kamara, an immigrant from Sierra Leone who had just started driving for Lyft. And he has two passengers, Olven Torres Velasquez and Jonathan Cabrera-Mendez. After this crash happens, the three men inside the Honda Accord are killed. The Lexus driver and her passenger survive. Our team spoke with Kamara's cousin yesterday who said he often complained about reckless drivers in the district and told her that he didn't like driving to D.C. because of it. It's terrible because Mohamed doesn't deserve that, especially the kind of person that he is. They deserve better, not just Mohammed. All of the victims deserve better. as a tragedy, it raises a lot of questions about the woman who was driving that black Lexus,

right? Including, had she had a history of drinking and driving? Had she had a history of being pulled over and speeding away from cops? What do we know about her? Yeah. So one of the interesting things about DC driving records is you can actually go onto the DMV website and look up driving infractions that have been caught on traffic cameras for a specific car, if you have the license plate number. So right away, people in D.C., they hear about this horrible crash, and they look up the Lexus driver's license plate number. And there is just a litany of previous infractions caught on traffic cameras. This driver had 49 outstanding citations on their car and owed more than $17,000 in fines. Nearly all of those fines were for speeding,

and they happened, most of them, the vast majority of them happened in the months directly preceding the crash. What is the name of the woman driving the car? So we didn't immediately know, which is why I haven't mentioned her name yet. We didn't know until later in this whole process when police announced charges

in the deaths of the three men, but her name was Nikita Walker. Why was the driver, Nikita Walker, allowed to drive a car if she had all of these previous infractions? Yeah, it's a great question. So she shouldn't have been allowed to drive at all. So when the police finally announced that they were charging her with second-degree murder in connection with these deaths in May of this year. Court records revealed that she had three prior DUI convictions in D.C., and she had two more DUI charges in Virginia. So that's what we know. Court records show MPD officers found Walker passed out in her car, appearing drunk and smelling of alcohol in 2015, 2018, and 2020. A driver that has had three DUI convictions within 15 years,

according to the DMV of D.C., should not have her license, should have it revoked. What happens in these cases is after a conviction, the courts should report to the DMV that this person has been convicted of a DUI and the DMV should take her license. There was some sort of breakdown in the communication. The courts let the DMV know. The DMV never did anything about it. She was able to drive

with a valid license as a result. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser was asked today about how D.C.'s DMV did not know of these repeat offenses. Whatever gaps there are, we will fill them. And I actually think this sounds like a technology solution and a fix that could potentially make us safer on the roads. Okay, so failure to communicate by two institutions that many people have negative feelings about, to be frank, the courts and the DMV. What kind of reaction was there? Oh, it was just sheer outrage. And I think for a lot of people in D.C., Noel, this was really a turning point. I think in some ways it just confirmed what a lot of people in D.C.

already know to be true, which is that the methods in our city of enforcing safe streets have completely broken down. And people drive like maniacs as a result. I mean, I think you have probably seen it. Oh, just a few days ago, I am walking in a crosswalk where I'm supposed to be, and these kids in a hoopty round the corner, and they just don't stop. They truly just don't stop. And I go diving into the bushes.

I don't know. I mean, I would like to say that's rare, and it's not that rare. Yeah, so that is completely correct. It's not just you, and it's unfortunately not rare. I think anyone who has walked around has had this experience, and I think it's not just D.C. either, right? This is a national problem. Our chopper is live over a crash at the Ventana Apartments in Dallas. Look at that. You can see the car rammed right into the side of a vacant apartment. Tonight, the state patrol believes speed may have been the reason that a vehicle drove off

the First Avenue South Bridge in Seattle this afternoon. The man inside that vehicle died. That hit and run crash in Northeast Philadelphia, leaving a bicyclist dead this morning. In 2021, deaths on U.S. roads spiked 10.5% over the year before. So that's almost 43,000 people killed on U.S. roads. And for pedestrians, it's been especially bad. Fatalities reached a 40-year high last year. What is this in the context of, Maren? Yeah, so, I mean, a number of changes have happened in our country during the pandemic. And one of those changes is that we're at this major turning point

in traffic safety enforcement across the U.S. Across the country, many cities and states are looking to reform old policies around traffic stops and traffic fines and fees, which they recognize led to this system that was very racially unjust and unfairly punished people who were poor and in many cases, but you know, all too frequently became deadly. So across the country, we are seeing new laws that are sort of throwing out some of these draconian ticketing practices and limiting what the police can pull people over for. But the question is, what happens if we don't replace that old bad

system with something new and something better. Vox's Maren Kogan. Coming up, Maren will be back with us to talk about why we got rid of the old system and what something new and better might look like. Thank you. software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained. Ramp.com slash explained.

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Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. We're back with Vox's Maren Kogan. Maren, when we left off, you told us that large cities have changed the way they deal with traffic enforcement. They're trying to correct for some historic injustices, like racism and the way people are pulled over, the way people are ticketed. But as that has been going on, as they've been trying to correct, traffic deaths are also going

up. Where does the story of that start? Where does the story of we've got to change our wicked ways begin? Yeah. So I think the conversation around traffic enforcement and reforming those practices really starts back in 2014 with the death of Michael Brown. It starts in Ferguson. I covered this story. How does this start in Ferguson? On the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, outrage and anger. In 2014, a police officer shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, on a street in Ferguson, Missouri. And in the days following his killing, people took to the streets there to protest police violence against black civilians. This tear gas just dropped right near us. It's going to get very bad here if we don't have masks.

In the wake of that unrest, the DOJ announced that they were going to do a report into the policing practices of law enforcement in Ferguson. So a year later, they come out with this report, and it confirms what basically any black resident of Ferguson will tell you is the case. The police were issuing traffic tickets and fines at the direction of the city government as a means of generating revenue for the city's budget. So they're basically saying, the DOJ, that this is really discriminatory against Ferguson's predominantly Black residents, and it's undermining public safety and trust. Ferguson police disproportionately targeted African Americans, with 85% of vehicle stops, 90% of citations, and 93% of arrests, even though 67% of the Ferguson population is Black. People can tell that they're being taken advantage of, right?

And it wasn't just Ferguson. This was happening all across the U.S. So what happens after that? The Department of Justice is involved. So is there justice? So some momentum for policy change after this problem is identified starts picking up steam among legislatures in states and cities across the country and also among activists who are working to reform these policies. It's picking

up steam and momentum. And then in the middle of all of this, the pandemic happens. And that just changes everything. What happened during the pandemic? The first big thing is that in the immediate sort of moments after COVID arrives in the United States, we all go inside, right? We're doing the whole lockdown thing. Right now, the coronavirus is keeping most people off Bay Area freeways, but those wide open lanes are feeding some drivers need for speed. And the police are thinking about, okay, what are we going to do here? Interacting with the public is a health safety risk to our police departments, but also to the general public. So across the country, these different police departments are grappling with, can we reduce enforcement in all these different areas to reduce

risk? So that's the first few months of the pandemic. And then, of course, George Floyd is killed. George Floyd murdered by a police officer, right? A big story, something we're all aware of. But it wasn't a traffic stop. So how does that affect traffic policing? No, great question. Okay, so I should say first, these conversations had been ongoing for years.

This is something that I know you know, right? The police had been under scrutiny for too many instances of police brutality that were caught on tape, caught on camera. So we'd been having this conversation for years, and the police were already under scrutiny. And then, you know, George Floyd happened, and there was this massive response, right? It was almost like a breaking point where the country said, enough, enough. And in response to that, since so many of these incidents of police brutality had started with traffic stops, right, the police simply begin dramatically drawing back the number of traffic stops they're doing. According to a 2021 survey of over 1,000 police officers, nearly 60% said they were less likely to stop a vehicle for violating traffic laws than they were prior to 2020. So it's not just that.

I mean, the survey actually lines up with the data that is reported by different cities and states. In San Diego, police stops dropped by like 50% between 2019 and 2022, 40% in Vermont in 2020. In Seattle, traffic citations dropped 86% between 2019 and 2023. In St. Louis, Missouri, the police issued half as many tickets in 2021 as they did in 2009.

So it's happening all over the country. And meanwhile, in St. Louis, for example, traffic deaths doubled during that same time period. In Austin, the number of traffic citations dropped 90 percent between 2017 and 2021. And at the same time, the traffic deaths reached record highs. So it's not to say that one is necessarily causing the other because correlation does not equal causation, right? But clearly something is going on here. Wait, so something's going on. And also, even if correlation does not equal causation, we know for a fact that the police are less engaged with traffic enforcement than they used to be. We started realizing this in 2020 and after.

And also at the same time, traffic deaths go up. Since traffic deaths are going up, why don't the police become more involved with traffic enforcement again? I mean, I think there are a number of reasons for this, and it's really hard to say for sure definitively that it's any one thing when there are so many different jurisdictions and so many different departments across the country. I mean, part of it is that there is now this massive staffing shortage in many police departments across the U.S. An NBC News analysis of FBI data shows officer counts fell 2.3 percent from 2019 to 2022. It's prompting agencies to compete for the best officers with new incentives. A lot of police have retired in recent years and they're having a hard time hiring new people. New Orleans PD offering a $20,000 hiring bonus for experienced officers. North Las Vegas police offering $30,000 and $5,000 for moving costs. Officers who are military vets

get another five grand to sign. In the face of those staffing shortages, a lot of police departments have said, like, don't prioritize this, right? Focus on the big fish, essentially. Focus on violent crime, especially because as we know, and as I know you've covered on the show before, certain forms of violent crime have gone up during the pandemic or went up briefly during the pandemic. So that is a part of it. And then, you know, also many big cities have taken steps to limit traffic enforcement during this time. And that's been like a very, very big shift that I think, I don't know how many people are aware that we're in the midst of this sort of historic reconsideration of what traffic enforcement does in this country. But in

so many cities, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Seattle, the whole state of Virginia passed a law like this. Lawmakers are reforming traffic laws basically so that cops can't pull people over for those things that we talked about before, which often led to discriminatory policing. Busted taillights, bumper problems, driving without an inspection, all considered minor traffic violations now under Philadelphia's new driver equality bill. There's this reform movement happening, basically, to help remedy these policies that were hurting poor and Black drivers disproportionately. The measure is designed to improve race relations with police.

The problem, police say they were not told how to enforce it. All right, so the old system was replaced with a new system. What does the new system look like? How does this work? Yeah, so some parts of it are better, right? People are not losing their licenses permanently or their livelihood because they couldn't afford to pay a ticket for a broken taillight, right? People are not losing their licenses permanently or their livelihood because they couldn't afford to pay a ticket for a broken taillight, right? So changes like that are good. But there are some considerations that are getting overlooked in the process. So for example, fake tags are a huge problem in Washington, D.C. and in New York and in many other cities.

And Noel, I'm sure you have seen the fake tags. They're like little paper, like license plates that are basically stuck to the back of cars instead of the real metal plate. Yeah, they're everywhere. Okay. And they're everywhere for a reason. You can go on to Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, whatever, and buy these fake tags and put them on your car. And basically, it means that traffic cameras can't trace the vehicle back to you if you're caught on camera breaking a law. The NYPD citing these two gangland type shootings that happened in Brooklyn and late last year in Grand Prairie, Texas. A manhunt for a suspect that police say was responsible for the death of an officer was made harder because of the use of a phony paper tag. D.C. briefly

considered cracking down on these, but decided not to. And it was purportedly because they were concerned that it would have a disproportionate impact on black and brown drivers. So basically, they took this concern about equity, and they used it to not crack down on this problem of fake plates. But the problem with that is like, we still have these incredibly high numbers of deaths. And by the way, like the people who die in traffic accidents or crashes, the people who are killed, whether in car or as pedestrians, are disproportionately Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous people too. So clearly the old system was not working, and these reforms are needed to create a more equitable system. But what we really need at this point, as traffic fatalities are soaring, is a new system that truly prioritizes safety. And I don't think many cities are doing a good job with that right now.

What would a system that truly prioritizes safety actually look like? What would need to happen? There are so many different things we could be doing better than we are right now. using the data from traffic cameras better, right? So the D.C. government had all of this information that this driver, Nikita Walker of the black Lexus, was a danger to those around her, right? They had repeated infractions caught on camera in the months before the crash. And the data is pretty clear that if you get these infractions, if you're speeding and driving recklessly repeatedly, you are very likely to get into a fatal accident at some point in the near future. Government should be able to find those people and boot their vehicles before they kill someone. Another thing is traffic cameras. They're super controversial in the U.S.

They are often accused of being put in majority black neighborhoods to trap people and to ticket them more and to use that to fund city governments. In many cities and countries in Europe, you can't drive super recklessly because there are so many traffic cameras everywhere, no matter the neighborhood, that you will just get caught doing it. So I think in the U.S. we could put up more traffic cameras, distribute them more equally across neighborhoods. And then this is a really, really big one. And this is something D.C. isn't doing, but should be doing and many other cities should be doing. Rather than funding city governments with that money, use the funds raised by those cameras to directly invest in safe infrastructure in those communities. No one loves getting a traffic ticket, right?

Like, this is never going to be a fun thing. It's always going to be a little bit like going to the dentist. But the public should at least know that the money that they are paying because they drove a little too fast or ran a red light is going to fund a crosswalk in that neighborhood, right? It's going to go to make those communities safer. Another thing I think we could do, you could use fees that are tied to someone's income. So in many Scandinavian countries, they have a day's wage fees. So it's based on your income and it's a day of your wages, right? So that's a little bit more proportionate and it, you know, really speaks to where someone is at financially rather than just giving everyone the same fee. In short, there are like a million things we could do. But the priority should just be get the most dangerous drivers off the road and don't unfairly punish everyone else.

Maren, everything you've just said makes a lot of sense. As usual, the Scandinavians are doing it right. But these things are not likely to translate to the United States. They often just don't. And I wonder, as you're doing this research and looking for solutions, do you begin to get the sense that there is no solution to what's going wrong in the United States with our focus on freedom and our inherent racism and all of the other stuff that plays in here? Is it unreasonable maybe to even ask for solutions? No. I so adamantly think the answer to that is no. I think such a part of the problem is that we are so inured in this country. We think that this level of death is normal. And this is why I'm on such a soapbox

about this. Like, it is not normal. And, you know, people want to say, oh, well, it's the U.S. It's different from Western Europe. Okay, but the deaths are way lower in Canada. They're way lower in Australia. Like, those are both big, wide-open places with big, wide-open roads. They do not have the levels of fatalities that we do. A big, big problem with this issue, Noelle, is that people just take it for granted, like it's normal because we're so used to it, but it's really not normal. I think if there's any takeaway I want people to have from my coverage of this stuff, it's just we don't have to live this way and we don't have to die this way. But we do have to care about it for it to change.

That was Vox's Maren Kogan. Today's show was produced by Miles Bryan and edited by Miranda Kennedy. It was fact-checked by Amanda Llewellyn and engineered by Patrick Boyd. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Thank you.