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Hennepin County law enforcement leaders say they’re concerned about a new policy to limit prosecuting charges arising from low-level traffic stops. 

 earlier this week. It targets stops for vehicle violations like dead brake lights and expired tabs, which officers can use to start a search of someone’s vehicle — also known as “pretext stops.” Starting next month, Moriarty’s office will not prosecute most cases that come out of those stops.

Moriarty cited data that these stops disproportionately target Black drivers, and said the practice decreases trust in police.

But Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt said in a press conference Friday that those traffic stops are a strategy to seize illegal guns and drugs.

“With that amount of violence our area has endured over the last few months, now is not the time to lower the standards for public safety,” Witt said. “A blanket refusal to prosecute felonies uncovered during these stops is a reckless overreach.” 

Citing data from the last year, Witt said her deputies have seized 175 guns during traffic stops — though that data does not specify why each traffic stop was initiated. She said stops for minor infractions like obstructed license plates led deputies to find a gun connected to a recent shooting, and to encounter passengers who had been assaulted.

Moriarty noted in her announcement of the policy that the 2023 U.S. Department of Justice investigation found that Black drivers in Minneapolis were stopped but not cited or arrested at more than five times the rate of white drivers. Witt said this is the wrong strategy to address racial profiling.

“Those things do exist, but you need to deal with the problem — the people who are not doing their jobs appropriately —  instead of making these blanket rules or policies that limit law enforcement from using the tools that we have to keep our community safe,” Witt said. 

Minnetonka’s Chief of Police Scott Boerboom said he wanted police to have a bigger say in the policy’s creation.

“We were all caught off guard,” Boerboom said. “I was notified two minutes prior to it being public. So we’re all answering questions from our officers about, what’s next, what can we do, what can’t we do.” 

He said he expects his officers to keep making those traffic stops. 

In a statement Friday, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office said the policy is based on research from other counties with similar policies that have seen fewer stops, but similar levels of seized firearms. That includes Ramsey County.

“There has been baseless fearmongering in an attempt to heighten people’s understandable anxieties about crime, going so far as to say the policy puts every family in greater danger,” the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office said in the statement. 

The policy is scheduled to take effect Oct. 15. 

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Hennepin County law enforcement leaders say they’re concerned about a new policy to limit prosecuting charges arising from low-level traffic stops, saying the move lowers standards for public safety. 

Sheriff Dawanna Witt speaking at a press conference

Law enforcement says new traffic stop policy ‘lowers standards’ for public safety

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