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Seattle thought about doing that but reactionaries framed it as defunding the police department so they elected a more conservative council who moved it back.

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Do you have any sources to this? I've long thought traffic cops should be their own separate entity, and would like to know how this played out

I wasn't even aware Seattle pulled people over for speeding much at all. WSP on the highways yes, but on the city streets there is not really any traffic enforcement by cops (outside of parking).

Seattle went from like 40k/yr moving violation tickets to 3k/yr over the last decade-ish.

I think GP might have been talking about the proposal to split parking enforcement out of the police department: https://mynorthwest.com/3093949/seattle-council-votes-move-p...

Which yes, was undone: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/11/23/council-returns-parki...

But also only tangentially related to speeding enforcement.

Yes, I did mean parking, oops.

> reactionaries framed it as defunding the police department

Couldn't one hit back by increasing funding for the resulting police and traffic enforcement departments?

They're millions of dollars in the hole already, and the problem was that low information voters read "police department budget: 2020, 100 million. 2021, 80 million" and no farther.

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