photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

A Lawrence Police Department patrol vehicle is pictured June 28, 2022.

In the past six months, dozens of Lawrence drivers have been granted some grace instead of a ticket after being pulled over for an equipment violation.

That’s thanks to the Lawrence Police Department’s partnership with the national “Lights On!” program. As the Journal-World has reported, the program teams up with law enforcement agencies nationwide to provide vouchers to people who are stopped for equipment violations, which they can then use to get their vehicles repaired at no cost at participating auto repair shops.

Lawrence is one of 160 law enforcement partners working with the program across the country, according to the Lights On! program website, and one of three in Kansas. The vast majority of partner agencies — well over 100 of them — are located in Minnesota, where the program is based.

In Lawrence, the partnership began in June 2023, and LPD spokesperson Laura McCabe told the Journal-World that the department had issued 75 vouchers since then as of Jan. 4. Those vouchers are valid for two weeks, McCabe said, and can be redeemed at one of three partner shops — Free State Auto Works, Lawrence Automotive Diagnostics Inc. and Westside 66.

McCabe said the program is also free of charge to Lawrence taxpayers because the LPD’s Blue Santa charity pays for the vouchers. Blue Santa was organized by LPD officers in 2011 to assist neighbors with donations like grocery store gift cards and Christmas gifts for kids.

As the Journal-World has reported, implementing this program in Lawrence was one recommendation from researchers who found racial disparities in pedestrian and traffic stops initiated in Lawrence and Douglas County from 2020 through 2022. That coincided with another study completed at the end of 2022, which looked at bookings into the Douglas County Jail over the previous five years and found that the majority were for minor, nonviolent charges — the most predominant of which were for “failure to appear” violations.

Though the second study was at the county level, McCabe provided the Journal-World with information about how many equipment violations were processed through the Lawrence Municipal Court from 2019 to 2022 for comparison’s sake.

In the year prior to the pandemic there were nearly 500 of them, but citation numbers have dropped significantly in the years since, closer to the LPD’s voucher count from the past six months. In 2020, there were 114 equipment violations, in 2021 there were 76 and in 2022 there were 89.

But how does the LPD decide who gets a voucher? McCabe said that’s at an officer’s discretion, with the hope that most vouchers go to those who need them. That doesn’t mean drivers are being profiled once stopped to determine their financial status, though; McCabe said there’s no income check or data gathering taking place.

“Our officers take the entirety of the stop into consideration and determine if the person could use some help with compliance,” McCabe said. “We recognize that when repairs haven’t been made to a vehicle and it’s in violation, most often there’s a reason for that and the vouchers are given out liberally. We don’t want to punish anyone who may already be financially stressed for whatever reason.”

One officer who’s been handing out those vouchers is Daniel Palen, who works with the LPD Accident Investigation Unit. Palen spoke with the Journal-World on Wednesday and explained how that process usually looks for him.

Palen said his primary focus, eight years into his time with the LPD, is curbing DUIs and other severe traffic infractions — “things that harm others,” like excessive speeding, running red lights and texting and driving. He said he’s also been on the lookout for chances to help people take care of infractions that are less likely to harm others.

Sometimes, the decision to issue a voucher is a result of a conversation with a driver, like one recent stop from right before the start of the year when a driver expressed that they’d been saving up money to repair their malfunctioning vehicle lights for a while.

But often, Palen said his process is a simple one: if he sees a violation, he makes a stop and issues a voucher, no questions asked.

“I don’t have any sort of ‘Oh, you drive this, you’re not going to get a voucher,’ or ‘You drive this, you’re definitely going to get a voucher,'” Palen said. “… If I see an equipment violation, in my head it’s something fairly minor (and) I just hand out the vouchers. There’s no point in causing additional financial harm to somebody just for something so minor like that.”

It’s something of a win-win, in that drivers come away from these stops not just with some financial relief but also having had a positive interaction with an officer. Palen said that’s worthwhile given the negative perception of law enforcement some people may have.

“There’s still lots of people that support law enforcement, obviously, and there’s certainly things that law enforcement can do to improve,” Palen said. “I think just like any profession, not everybody’s perfect. There are bad police, bad teachers, whatever the profession is. … I think people do enjoy having that positive contact with law enforcement, and seeing that we’re not just out there to make them go into debt or take them to jail or do something like that to them.”

Palen said he’ll be interested to get a look at the data after a full year of handing out vouchers, especially to see whether all the drivers who received vouchers actually redeemed them or if there are additional barriers — like hours of operation or other factors — that made it hard for them to do so.

As for how long the Lights On! partnership will be supported, it appears to be here to stay for the foreseeable future. McCabe said as long as Blue Santa remains a sponsor, the LPD will continue to provide it to the community — and the charity has expressed strong support for doing so.

“It was a member of Blue Santa who suggested the program to LKPD commanders, so we know they’re committed to sponsoring it through 2024 and have every reason to believe they will continue beyond that,” McCabe said.