Last year, I received the first speeding ticket of my life. I was cited for doing 57 in a 45, roughly 200 yards past the sign the ran the limit down from 55. Patrol car was parked behind some trees, and clearly I got caught up in some sort of crackdown.
Okay, fine, got me, I’ll pay, no problem.
When I went to court, It was nearly surreal. NOBOBY wanted to pay their ticket. By the time I went before the judge, he was clearly fed up. I pled guilty, and he waved all fines except the court costs, which weren’t much.
It was a trip, sitting there listening to all these poor dipshit folks and why they had to speed-- and why they should be exempt from the law. Every single one of them came across as jerks, and everyone had to pay their fine. Suck it up, dude.
The problem with this philosophy is that if the police are always pursuing the “real criminals”, then law and order will break down on the minor level as well. A headlight out is a driving hazard. Having both brake lights out could potentially kill both you and the person that hits you from behind on a foggy, rainy night. A single graffiti artist may not seem like much but experiments in New York City suggest that cracking down hard on minor infractions can prevent a collapse into lawless anarchy in a given neighborhood or even salvage one that has.
Your argument doesn’t make sense at all even from a logical or statistical perspective. Violent crime and drug trafficking is never going to drop to zero. By your argument, all resources would be dedicated only to the most high-profile crimes and everything else would just be ignored. The high-profile crimes don’t impact that many people directly but the lesser ones impact most people.
England has tried a strategy like you suggest with disastrous results. Murders and rapes are low but all the others like burglaries, low level terrorism on the streets, and rampant petty theft just aren’t dealt with effectively like they are in the U.S. My SIL couldn’t take it when she got her masters there and our new neighbors and best friends are English professionals that moved here in large part to get away from the crime and they say that they are never going back.
A successful police department has to manage crimes at all levels all of them time. Even a deterioration of traffic standards can have life or death consequences.
Well now, danceswithcats, this is an absolute statement:
Not ‘most tickets don’t raise revenue’. A blanket assertion based on faulty math with made up numbers pulled from right out of his ass that is, at face value, untrue.
Knowing that it’s untrue and stating it anyway, well, that’s dishonest.
…can you please provide a cite to say that England has tried a strategy like this, that rampant petty theft isn’t dealt with as effectively as in the US, and that there is low level “terrorism” on the streets. Can you also provide citations that burglaries, low level terrorism and rampant petty theft are handled effectively in all parts of the US. Your claims are extraordinary: you should provide some proof for your assertions.
No, I’m pretty sure I didn’t do any of the above, even after driving all day. I always obey the speed limit, and I always come to a complete stop at stop lights. I put on my seatbelt before I touch the gear shift, and I habitually use the turn signal even if I’m just moving out of the parking spot, even when there’s nobody around. Headlights get turned on at the slightest hint of dusk, or when the sun is low, or
But do you do all of these things from time to time? Do you think these are all minor infractions that don’t deserve a ticket?
No! Kill! Kill! The suburban dealers have much higher overhead costs and are inflating the prices to maintain their suburban lifestyles. The ghetto dealers just have to keep up with big hats and fur coats…
Oh wait a minute, I’m thinking of pimps. :smack:
Same principle really. Who’s gonna live cheaper, Huggy Bear of Heidi Fleiss?
The phrase “tickets don’t raise revenue, tickets are incentive” can easily be read, as it it was by me, to mean that tickets issued, in the agregate, that is all tickets written everywhere, do not enhance revenue, in the aggregte, for the districts that issue them. That does no mean that no district anywhere is able to enhance reveue this way, but that overall they do not do so. This is such an obvious fact that there would seem to be no need of a citation. For you to attach your own meaning to this statement is inappropriate and dishonest if not done in good faith. I am sure that is not the case here though. My guess is you just did not interpret the original statement correctly becaue you simply jumped the gun.
The easiest way to not get us atheists worked up is to first not use this expression in this manner. Doing so will turn it into another one about religion, if it doesn’t turn it into one about Bush and his belief in a calling by his god to kill Iraqis.
OK, perhaps this is a better expression of my idea…
Tickets written by sworn police officers are not DESIGNED to raise revenue.
Now, just because some the cops in some podunk little 60 resident shithole in the middle of nowhereistan uses the law like a lube-less dildo, doesn’t mean that’s how the system was designed, nor does it mean that’s how it should function.
And yes, the numbers were completely pulled out of my ass, because i didn’t feel like trying to get the numbers off of my work spreadsheet, but believe me sister, when correctly applied, tickets written by sworn police officers are not designed to be a sufficient revenue stream.
Tickets absolutely raise revenue - in that revenue in an accounting sense is money coming in. What tickets are unlikely to do is create a profit center. The cost of processing the ticket is simply too high. Perhaps one individual fine will occasionally cover itself. However, that gets into cost accounting, cost accounting doesn’t look at each fine individually, and how the PD allocates the cost of the ticket can go a long way in determining profitability. Hospital type costing with $50 bedpans? Government cost account with $120 hammers? Movie industry cost account where movies don’t turn profits? Cities put the expected revenue from tickets into their budgets. But tickets are a near perfect way to raise revenue. Cities get revenue functionally four ways - they get grants from the state, they levy taxes, they charge use fees and license fees (dog tags, permits) and they get fines. For citizens, there is an easy way to not have to pay the fine - obey the code and you won’t get the fine. Citizens generally like this much better than increases to property taxes or exorbitant dog license fees.
There wasn’t any interpretation. A very simple statement was made using purely invented numbers to support it. That simple statement is not true.
Even larger police orginzations seemingly treat tickets as a revenue stream that they don’t want to lose - which is why after years of denying it, some whistleblower cops in the PA State Police admitted that there was pressure to meet a certain quota of tickets every month. If it’s not about the money, why would they be pressured to write a certain minimum number of tickets every month?
Designed by whom? The actual fine for a moving violation in the commonwealth of PA isn’t the total cost of the ticket. They tack on a bunch of extra fees attached to the ticket, some of which (court cost of $28) are intended to pay for the time of the person who processes the payment for the ticket, between $30 and $50 for the ‘Catastrophic Loss Trust Fund’ (which was repealed in 1989 but is still collecting money because the state owes 750 people), a fee of $10 to fund EMTs and a fee of $1.50 to improve the state court computer system.
Then there’s New Jersey, where the state tacks on fees to tickets issued by their police departments in order to fund things like kevlar vests.
Of course, the state of West Virginia is by far the most egregious example I found of using tickets as a revenue stream when you look at the list of fees they add to a ticket: $40 for regional jails construction, $43.25 to running jails, $10 for crime victim aid, $5 court costs, and $2 goes to the state police academy. The total fees for a WV ticket, $100.25. That doesn’t include the fine. In Massachusetts, there’s an additional fee of $50 on every speeding ticket for spinal cord injury research.
The fine itself might not be designed as a revenue stream, but all the other fees added to the ticket by the states above clearly are. In some states, the fine is dwarfed by the fees added to it.
These numbers were not pulled out of my ass. They came from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette and from dmv.org.
That’s a great read, and I would encourage others to read it. I’m not saying all towns and all police officers are like this, but listen to their main argument: If you aren’t breaking the law, you won’t get a ticket.
It seems to me that the posters here who are criticizing me should stand up in FAVOR of what New Rome, OH did. There is no evidence that they fabricated crimes against these drivers. They ticketed people for going 42 in a 35; that’s against the law, so why were people bitching?
Seat belt violations, tail light cracks, and dim license plate bulbs: All against the law and should be subject to the fines, right?
What New Rome did was tantamount to entrapment. There is a difference.
Sure, those tickets were actual traffic infringements, but they might have well hired cops to enforce jaywalking after taking all the cross walks out. It is possible to make ordinances that are damn near impossible not to break. That’s what New Rome did.
You, however, are whining about getting a ticket because you’re vehicle isn’t road worthy. Brake lights are necessary, asshole. Suck it up and quit yer bitchin’.
Got a cite? It can be done. Read the complete history of a few bills where they raised ticket costs by a lot. Find out if any memeber of the Legislature ever used any term like “increasing revenue”.
I read the article again. What part of what New Rome did was “tantamount to entrapment”?
What ordinances were made that were “damn near impossible not to break”?
They cited speeding, and a host of equipment violations, all of which can be issued a fine in my town (especially a headlight out).
Instead of calling me an asshole, explain the difference between what New Rome did and what my local PD did to me. The only difference I see is the number of cops per percentage of drivers assigned to enforce traffic laws…
Instead of complaining, all of you all who have railed against me should be PROUD of the job that New Rome, OH did in enforcing the traffic laws and keeping unsafe vehicles like mine off of the road…
Don’t know about your jurisdiction , but in Ontario we can either pay up , plead for a lesser fine from the justice of the peace or contest the charge in traffic court. From your post , it sounds to me like a group of people listened to their brother in law and basically expected to show up in court and not have the officer that ticketed them to be there ,that way charges get dropped and no fine payed, it sounds like they came off looking like idiots in front of the judge when they actually had to justify not paying.
But for the most part speaking as a professional scofflaw , I will not pay one red dime if I don’t have to , using what ever means to achieve that.
If the OPP or one of the lesser jurisdictions nails me fair and square , I am not gonna waste a day in court if the offense is less than what I make in a day.
I happen to think that most people in most homes are not wanted persons, and don’t have quantities of illegal drugs or guns in their home. So entering homes at random would be a wasteful and unsuccessful use of police time.
I think you misunderstand my point, as indicated by your use of the phrase “at random”.
Police stopping cars for improper equipment is not a random group of people; it’s a group of obvious law-breakers (even if only minor laws related to vehicle equipment). And that group is known to contain more ‘real criminals’ than a “random” group of cars. That’s why cops do NOT just stop cars at random; they know that is not a worthwhile way to spend their time. But they do stop cars with equipment violations, because they know from experience that it is likely to be a worthwhile use of their time.
P.S. This does mean that at times a non-‘real criminal’ driver will be pulled over when their taillight burns out. But most cops will quickly recognize this driver as a non-‘real criminal’ (valid license, insurance, etc.), and then they will want to finish the stop as soon as possible and get back on the road. So they will write a 10-day fix-it ‘ticket’ and leave. I’ve had this happen at least 2 or 3 times over the years, nothing much to it.
