Another traffic stop, another Black person dead because something unrelated came up and the officer reached for her weapon. The solution is obvious to me: disarm the traffic police.
If you think about the events of the recent past that resulted in unnecessary violence, it seems to me that at least half of them began with traffic stops. This situation is ripe for going wrong. The people in the car are afraid, especially if they are BIPOC, because a person with a gun is approaching them and they have heard of so many situations where this has ended up with driver or passenger dead. They are especially concerned if they have done something wrong, or if they have something illegal in their vehicle. Meanwhile, the officer is equally afraid, having heard of many instances (true or not) where the occupants of the car have become violent and shot at or even killed an officer. Both sides are expecting the worst from the other, and determined to prevent it.
Why is it necessary for armed officers to do this function? There is nothing inherent in traffic enforcement that requires weapons. What if this function were removed from the police, and handed to a new outfit with the sole charge of enforcing traffic laws: speeding, running lights, drunk driving, expired license plates, broken taillights, etc? How would this change the traffic stop dynamic?
The people in the car are no longer afraid of the approaching officer. Since the officer is unarmed, there is no chance of the occupants being harmed. They are also not afraid of illegal substances being found in the car, since searching the car is not a function of traffic enforcement. (I would imagine that if the traffic enforcer were suspicious of the car, they would summon a police officer, or at least report the identifiers of the car and let the police make their own stop.) Meanwhile, the traffic enforcer is not concerned with being harmed, because they are not a threat to the occupants. The officer talks with the occupants about the traffic violation, in some cases simply relaying the information that a light is out or a plate expired, in other cases giving a ticket, and that is all. If traffic officers see a wanted car, they report it but do not intervene.
Offloading traffic enforcement to a new group should save the city/state money, since the people hired to do this do not need to be armed, trained police officers. Obviously some training will be necessary, but not the level required for carrying lethal weapons. Meanwhile, the number of armed officers can decrease, and their functions can be further restricted to those situations where weapons seem necessary, such as active shooters. The budget for the “police,” meaning the armed force, will decrease, in accord with the demands of many protesters, but the actual amount of public service and enforcement will not. Everybody wins, no one loses.
Traffic enforcement is the logical next step in maximally disarming the police force. Once this is done, other examples of situations where armed police seem unnecessary will naturally come to mind, and the process can continue.