Should cops be allowed to issue "warnings" to speeders?

Great Debates
1

First, some historical background:

I am an inveterate speeder, a fact which I cannot deny. I have the tickets to prove it. My former girlfriend, is also an inveterate speeder but she had not one single ticket to her name. Oh, she was pulled over plenty of times, but she always wound up with a “warning”. (She was a pretty woman, and prone to cry at the drop of a hat. I expect both of these factors came into play at traffic-stop time.) My ex is not alone. I have known many women who laugh about how easily they are able to get off with a warning. Meanwhile, I have to pay the penalty for my leadfooted ways.

It seems to me that allowing police to issue “warnings” opens a real can of worms. First, you have the problem of the law not being enforced even-handedly. Most traffic cops (in these parts anyway) are men, prone to displays of “chivalry” towards women they pull over (especially pretty or weepy women). Second, it seems that allowing cops the discretion to issue warnings would invite bribes.

So here’s a modest proposal. Let’s change the rules so that police have no discretion, but must issue a ticket to everyone they pull over. Then if the driver has some mitigating circumstances, let them argue those circumstances to a judge!

“Every time you think, you weaken the nation!” --M. Howard

2

I’ve gotten a warning for speeding, and I’m male. (Yes, from a male policeman too.)

It’s was on a new 4-lane road. The speed limit (now) is 45. But when I got pulled over, it was still 35. (Leftover signs from the road’s days as a 2-lane road.)

I think the fact that it was now designed for the faster speed, I was only going 10 over, and it was an empty road added up to just a warning.

I too have heard tales of women getting out of tickets by either playing dumb, weepy, or flirty. Yes, it’s not really fair. Maybe it’s compensation for men having higher salaries. (ducking)

Even with the disparity, I still like warnings. The courts are already busy enough.

I take it you’ve been to traffic court? Ever hear some of the airheads pleading their cases? The poor judges would go insane. You couldn’t pay someone enough to be a traffic judge anymore. :smiley:

When danger reared its ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled

3

Well, you know, y’all could just try not to drive over the speed limit…

4

Gee, tracer, does this mean that you never exceed the speed limit? :wink:

Hey, I am not complaining about the tickets. If I am speeding (which I often am) I will pay the penalty. What does bother me is the unfairness of a system in which two citizens (theoretically equal under the law) commit the same crime, but only one gets punished.

Actually, I think there is an argument to be made that the current enforcement structure, in practice, is violative of the constitutional right of equal protection under the law. (Any Esquires wanna weigh in on this one?)

“Every time you think, you weaken the nation!” --M. Howard

5

I have actually made the assertion in the thread in GQ (posted by the lady so indignant that the officer ticketed her for rolling through a mandated stop instead of giving her a warning) that warnings should NEVER be issued, as they both cause people to learn the wrong lesson (great, I can break the law and get away with it!) and lead to the possibility of abusive use of discretion (discriminating against one group and/or discriminating in favor of a group).

That having been said, I doubt it is a constitutionally invalid practice. Clearly, it does not violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, except under the most strict scrutiny of such clause, and the USSC has refused to micro-manage government that way (citations way too numerous to bother with here). Now, if you were BLACK and got a ticket, when all the WHITES get warnings, THAT might get the attention of a court. :slight_smile:

6

My wife was pulled over about 10 times one year… no tickets. One of these times the officer cited her for driving 20 miles per hour over the limit, passing at an intersection, and failure to use her signal… “That’s alright, miss. I’m just going to give you a warning this time.”

The same cop gave me a ticket for going just 3 miles over the speed limit about two months later. “Well, I only clocked you at 58mph, but I’m sure you were going faster before I got my radar out.”

I was frustrated as all hell for a year or so… until my wife got three tickets within a two week period. Fortunately for her, she got one of them dismissed with a defensive driving course, but the next few years really settled her down.

Also, in hindsight, I’ve gotten warnings when I should have been ticketed… and there was the time when I was slightly inebriated and had two cases of beer in my trunk. I didn’t make a complete stop at a stop sign… oh and did I mention I was only 16 years old?.. Sometimes warnings are a really, really good thing!

7

DSYoungEsq–

Obviously, I agree with your first point, that warnings should not be issued.

Not sure I agree that there is no valid constitutional issue, though. I thought gender classifications (like racial classifications) were “inherently suspect”, so that a court reviewing a distinction made on that basis would use the “strict scrutiny” standard. (My recollection of constitutional law principles may be a little fuzzy.)

As a practical matter, I know that the police keep records of tickets broken down by gender. (In my state, males get more tickets, by a nearly 2-to-1 ratio.) What I don’t know is whether any records are even kept regarding warnings. So it seems that even if you have a Constitutional argument, it might be difficult to prove the ratio of warnings given to females compared with warnings given to males. Any police officers among the teeming millions out there?

“Every time you think, you weaken the nation!” --M. Howard

8

You shut the hell up, tracer!

My proposal: Cops are required to issue nothing BUT warnings.

That way you’re still cautious about not being pulled over and delayed, but when you are pulled over you can sit back and have a good laugh with the officer. That would reduce everyone’s stress level and we could all get back to hugging each other and smiling.

Hell is Other People.

9

I agree with DSYoung, for two reasons:

(1) Parilament (or Congress, or whatever) makes the law, the police’s job is to enforce it. By deciding not to enforce certain laws on certain occasions, individual police officers (and in some cases, police forces) are arrogating to themselves an element of legislative power.

[Fine if the law explicitly states that it’s at the individual constable’s discretion, but English statutes tend to say things like “a person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable …” (emphasis added).]

(1A) I suppose he’s also arrogating to himself a degree of judicial power.

(2) It’s just too open to discrimination on almost any gounds you care to mention (race, sex, age, social class).

10

I agree with all of the arguments posted for taking away the ability of police to issue warnings rather than citations. They are all valid points.

I do, however, have three problems with the complete removal of discretionary authority from police officers.

  1. It is insulting to the members of a profession who we al rely on for the maintenance of our social order.
  2. It is hardly practical to enforce, since the officers need not report every car that they pull over.
  3. It is yet another step in the removal of human judgment from teh chain of justice. The fact is, circumstances can have mitiiating or ameliorating effects on the severity of an infraction. 10 moh over the limit on an empty highway should not be viewed as identical to 10 mph over the limit through a school zone at recess. Do we advocate that all of these distinctions be determined in traffic court? If AWB thinks traffic court is ansane now, imagine what that would bring.

That said – I feel that police officers should record the circumstances whenever they decide to exercise their discretion and issue a warning instead of a citation. The system as it presently stands is rife with the possibility for discretionary abuse, and we should take steps to minimize the same.

The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*

11

Spritus Mundi wrote

Hmmm, Spiritus…You may have hit upon a workable solution to the problem. Without removing the discretion available to police officers to issue warnings, they should be required, every time they issue a warning, to record the circumstances of the warning and the reasons a warning (instead of a ticket) was issued. Those records should be available to the public.

That way, if it does in fact appear that women (or the majority ethnic group, or influential politicians) are getting “warnings” in numbers disproportionate to those received by the general population, the police agency involved would be vulnerable to a civil rights lawsuit. The ever-present threat of such a lawsuit should be enough to encourage law enforcement agencies to promulgate internal procedures to ensure that “warnings” are not issued in a discriminatory fashion.

Problem solved? :cool:

12

I was a leadfoot, especially when I owned a hotrod. Now, since I own a piece of crap, I’ve slowed down.

Warnings would be nice. I’ve gotten a few, but State Troopers DON’T usually give them. I once got stopped by a trooper around 11:30 at night, rushing from my job to my home where I had a HOT date waiting for me. When he pulled me over, I readily admitted that I was speeding and why and he thought that was funny, then he looked at my license and asked me if I was related to my sister. I said yes and he said that he had been to college with her and he got all friendly. He chatted about her and asked how she was doing, if she was doing well and told me his name and told me to tell her hello for him and the whole friggin’ time he was writing me out a ticket! It was close to Christmas also and he gave me the damn thing, warned me to slow down, wished me Merry Christmas and drove off.

State troopers have no sense of humor.

What? Me worry?’

13

I could have been really fucked recently.

I had let my registration and inspection lax since I left my wife, and by the time I tried to get it taken care of, it was a huge cost ($250), and nobody seemed to know how I should take care of it. Having the inspection go so out of date, the DMV of NC put an emissions block on my car, meaning they would not allow me to rectify the situation unless I got inspected. Whereas, you cannot get an inpection until you have a current, valid registration.

So, between the money issue and the problems with logic, I let it go. Then I got pulled…

The cop could have gone so far as to impound my car, and it would have been a nightmare. Instead, after checking tht my license was clean, he simply warned me - a written warning. Which game me the time I needed to finally cut through the red tape and get it done.

I can’t complain about going through the BS since it was my fault. But still, had I not been warned, I would have been really screwed.

Now, as to whether they should be allowed in general, in NC and NJ (a friend of mine was pulled thre once and also got a written warning), it is WRITTEN. It goes into the system as an official warning.

As such, if you are pulled over within a reasonable time afterwards, it hows up, an the cop can take that into consideration.

In this case, I have no problems with cops issuing warning, since if you are busted again, the next cop can easilly see you got off scott free last time and take that into consideration.

Now, as for verbal warnings, well, face it - cops are people too, prone to prejudices and favoritism like anyone else. No rules put in place will stop thm from being human.

Yer pal,
Satan