California father arrested after installing stop signs

Joseph Brandlin, a 44-year-old single father in El Segundo, California, was arrested after installing his own stop signs and painting “STOP” on the pavement at the intersection of Loma Vista Street and Acacia Avenue. According to The Independent, Brandlin says he spent about $1,000 on commercial-grade materials after his 12-year-old son narrowly avoided a collision cycling through the junction.

Brandlin’s case sits at the seam between public infrastructure and private risk. He told the Los Angeles Times he had pressed the city for months to convert a two-way stop into a four-way stop, and that neighbors had been asking for years. Residents circulated a petition with roughly 50 signatures, but the city said the intersection did not meet traffic-volume thresholds for additional stop control. Brandlin also claimed the neighborhood never saw evidence of the traffic study the city said it relied on; the only visible change, he said, was painted crosswalks.

That gap—between a family’s perceived danger and a municipality’s criteria—creates a predictable pattern: the people who bear the immediate cost of a crash will try to buy their own safety, while the entity that owns the road optimizes for standards, liability, and budget lines. In a private road association or an HOA-style arrangement, the same neighbors who want the stop signs would also be the ones paying for them and deciding what “enough traffic” means, with the bill and the consequences landing in the same place. In a city system, the decision is dispersed across departments, formulas, and meeting agendas, and the easiest outcome is often the one that changes the least.

Police arrested Brandlin while he was installing the signs early on March 14 and, he said, booked him on felony allegations including grand theft for taking traffic cones from a nearby construction site and vandalism of city property. He told CBS Los Angeles he would do it again rather than “wait for somebody to die.” After the arrest, Brandlin delivered more than 70 letters from neighbors to the El Segundo City Council, asking either for stop signs or for a transparent evaluation process with the community.

City crews removed the unauthorized signs and covered the “STOP” markings. Brandlin is due in court in June, after a dispute over a residential intersection produced new road paint, a stack of letters, and multiple felony counts.