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Comment by StillBored | Hacker News Reader

I've been something like this for days.. Why are the police pulling people over for busted tailights/etc? Isn't having a yearly car inspection regime enough? How frequently do tail lights burn out, and is it that critical to everyone's safety that it gets fixed as soon as cop sees it or can it wait for a few months until the state inspection. Don't most cars have some kind of indicator that a light is blown? Basically the vast majority interactions most people have with the police are when they are acting like thugs/tax collectors and enforcing fee's for minor infractions of laws that weren't even on the books more than a couple dozen years ago and for the most part haven't done anything to improve safety.

Basically, the police culture seems to focus on over-policing useless things like traffic enforcement while under-policing dangerous parts of town with beat cops.

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Most cars don't come with indicators that a light is blown.

It's unsafe to drive around with non-working lights, mostly because it interferes with other drivers' expectations (working brake-lights and working tail-lights, light geometry allows guesstimation of car dimensions), but also because it can impair the driver's own visibility.

But presumably these could be dealt with friendly warnings, and not a cause for fines or arrest. However, once the traffic stop is made, the officer has wide berth on how to respond, making it ultimately very subjective.

If you're alluding to the Philando Castile shooting, he wasn't pulled over because of his tail lights, which were actually working[1]. Rather, the police officer thought that Castile looked like a robbery suspect[2] and the tail light thing was just a pretext.

[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3681591/That-taillig...

[2] http://www.kare11.com/news/police-scanner-audio-1/267042738

It would have been unwise to tell a robbery suspect "please sit tight since I think you look similar to the robber from the recent BOLO alert [1]". If the person is not the actual robber it would bring unnecessary tension; and if he is, then he will know that there is already no way out, since the police is onto him.

[1] BOLO - "Be on the lookout"

Your #2 link says that the relevant police have not confirmed the authenticity of the recording from an unnamed source..and the article was posted three days ago and contains 9 spamvertisements.

The #2 link seems to be the closest we have to the original source. It's a news gathering operation run by the CBS broadcast television affiliate in the MSP region where the events in question transpired. The person making the scanner recording hasn't posted it anywhere that I know of. If you know of a better source, I'll gladly change the link, but this is the source everyone else is ultimately linking to.

As for the police not verifying the recording, that's not unusual. Police don't tend to comment on pending investigations unless they need something from the public. In any case, the shooter's attorney has largely confirmed the information in the recording[1]. It could still be a fake, but if it is, it's a good one based on information not publicly available until days later.

[1] http://www.startribune.com/lawyer-castile-pulled-over-becaus...

I'd think a news gathering operation would have their own recordings to check and verify.

I don't see a quote from the attorney in support of the claim that the stop was called in.

If the call was already broadcast, I don't see why it couldn't be confirmed. Is this source the only one recording?

I linked to that additional article as confirmation that the shooter thought that Castile looked like a robbery suspect. While the article doesn't have any direct quotes to that effect, it paraphrases him saying as much.

The claim that the shooter called in the stop before he made it is unremarkable because that's standard practice. In fact, it'd be more unusual if he hadn't called it in. Doubly so when stopping a suspected armed robber. A big reason why officers call in every stop is so that if the stop goes sideways and they are never heard from again, at least dispatch got the plate so investigators know where to begin.

I'd wager most news operations use Radio Reference these days rather than worry running all that gear and archiving all that audio themselves. Some of the relevant streams were down that night[1], probably explaining why there aren't other copies floating around.

[1] http://forums.radioreference.com/broadcastify-live-audio-lis...

I'd wager you can setup a scanner and more than a year of storage for <$100. The total volume of the setup would be a very small cube that would just need to be attached to an antenna.

There is really no excuse not to be doing it at this point. Especially when third parties are proven unreliable.

That was one time. He was pulled over another 51 times prior to that apparently. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/stopped-52-times-by-...

> Basically, the police culture seems to focus on over-policing useless things like traffic enforcement while under-policing dangerous parts of town with beat cops.

This is a favored way of policing because it has a ton of advantages for the police and town:

1. You raise revenue. The amount raised more than offsets whatever costs you incur in enforcement. In some towns, it's the majority of their budget.

2. It allows you to screen for prior infractions. Warrants, unpaid tickets, etc. You can then take them into custody and impound the vehicle. The vehicle is extremely liquid and frequently worth quite a bit of $$$.

3. It is much safer than walking the beat in a dangerous part of town. The driver is frequently restricted within the vehicle and the officer has clear visibility into the vehicle.

4. The officer is frequently stationary in the vehicle with his laptop, internet, etc. This is much more comfortable than walking on the street or even actively patrolling in the vehicle. Why go to them, when they can come to you?

Just a side note. Living in the states I went to make a left turn. I turned on my signal and waited for oncoming traffic to clear. I was about to make a left and someone behind me passed me on the left! I almost turned right into him as he flew past. I wondered what the heck happened why would he pass on left. I pulled in driveway and tested my blinker and it was out. Not using that to refute your premise, it just made me think of it.

I can't think of a scenario where you were able to do a legal left turn and it was legal to pass you on the left so they were almost certainly doing something illegal or you were not in the correct lane to turn left...

On a one lane road with a broken single yellow line, possibly turning into a driveway. I generally get very cautious about people going way too slow for a road and wouldn't whip past them, but possibly the other driver thought that OP was stalled?

That was the road scenario. I had brake lights and only had been stopped for 30 seconds or so. I am pretty cautious as well and happened to look back a little and saw them just in time. It was a SUV also so that could have been very bad.

There is no annual inspection in my state (Michigan) and many cars here lack features like that.

Small towns need the money.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pqskm

> Are excessive traffic fines and debtors' jails fuelling community tensions in suburban Missouri? Claire Bolderson reports on a network of ninety separate cities in St Louis County, most of which have their own courts and police forces. Critics say that their size makes them financially unviable and allege that some of them boost their incomes by fining their own citizens and locking them up when they can't pay.

One suspects if they got rid of their own expensive courts and police forces they might not need the fine revenue. :/)

>can it wait for a few months until the state inspection

I see cars whose bodies are 75% duct-taped garbage bags on a daily basis. I hear cars with nonworking mufflers on a daily basis. Our culture is that if you don't have the cash on hand or the inclination to repair your car after a devastating crash or serious failure (but it still drives), you simply keep driving it.

I'm pretty sure the extent of "inspection" in the handful of locales where it exists is "is it throwing any emissions-related OBD codes?"

Congratulations on having driven fairly new cars your whole life. b^)

It's so they can find other infractions, like smoking marijuana

A stronger argument for random traffic stops is catching people driving with a suspended license.

Why are you willing to accept that you need to have a license to drive (a car)?

Because a road is a safety intensive commons and establishing basic minimum safety standards works.

As was said ad infinitum when I was learning to drive - it's a privilege and not a right.

For reasons of safety?!

Yeah cause having a little card in their pocket stops people from driving in an unsafe fashion

Also seems to assume license testing is standardized with rigorous instruction regarding safety.

Some states don't require anything more than successfully completing a multiple choice test about signals and signs many folks end up ignoring anyway, and a brief on road exam.

People go in and drive safely for the 20 mins their subjected to a road test and sink into bad habits all the time.

I personally saw a wobbly 75 year old man with shakey hands (he updated his signature wearing coke bottle thick glasses) and a cane get his license renewal rubber stamped

Feeling safer already.

As I understand, you don't need a license to drive a car under most state laws -- you just need a license to drive a car on public roads (or, IIRC, in certain cases, on private property where the property owner has opted in to enforcement of public traffic laws.)

This is the correct answer.

Not the broken taillight. It wasn't.

Not the "robbery suspect." All black men match.

Philando Castile was pulled over 52 times because police target black men with hostile situations that could get escalated to searches and small-time drug busts.

The answer is to end the Drug War and to repeal the "junk" infractions that enable police to initiate contact with minorities for no good reason.

Non-working lights makes a vehicle unsafe to drive in conditions that require it (night, rain, snow, fog, tunnel).

When I used to drive regularly I would often see cars with non-working lights. Most people probably aren't even aware that their light is not working. Anyone who can get the driver's attention and inform them of the problem is performing a service for everyone near roads.

Cops operate with the logic of predators[1]. If something "looks fishy" they figure it is fishy.

Most of the problems with police/citizen interaction have to do with citizens not behaving in a manner that supports the severe information asymmetries of those encounters.

[1] I don't mean they ARE predators, but that the information processing they use looks like what predators use - a detail out of place will trigger interest in further evaluation.

> a detail out of place will trigger interest in further evaluation

Non-predators behave this way as well. I think you meant to say that police operate with the logic of animals that aren't inherently afraid of their surroundings, which makes sense. Police shouldn't be afraid to investigate.

That's kind of open ended. Unfortunately we've seen time again the police can't be trusted to self police. And they'll mace, taze, or shoot anyone that doesn't obey.

But they should have carte Blanche to poke at anything anywhere anytime they please?

Yeah no.

There should be a set of limits which they're trained in. And they should be afraid to investigate outside those limits.

Id rather tie their hands than allow a bunch of GI Joe wannabes do whatever they please.

> they should have carte Blanche to poke at anything anywhere anytime they please

They don't. We have really, really extensive laws (including the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution) preventing them from doing that. If they illegally search you, the evidence is useless (and often the conviction becomes impossible).

What you're describing is something out of 1984, not the reality of the hundreds of millions of police interactions in the US every year.

Perhaps I'm old school ( or perhaps warped :) but I do divide animals into predators and prey ( at least in pairwise relationships ) . The salient difference is exactly what you describe.

There are, of course, animals that are neither but they're fewer in number.

Police are "front-eyed".

I don't know the answer. That said, in other countries lots of the cars which are allowed on the road in the US are not allowed on the roads. Sometimes its vehicle age, sometimes it's not keeping up the vehicle, etc. So, we're not the most demanding --on the other hand, at least as it concerns cities, we don't offer great alternatives in the form of public transit. Rural transit is not typically that much better.

Because driving with a busted taillight is illegal? I've had a similar situation where I had an electrical problem and the taillights were out in my car. (Brake lights still worked). Got pulled over and cited for driving without insurance. The original investigation into a minor traffic violation escalated to a bigger infraction, and a bigger fine.

It's a very common police tactic to start with a minor infraction then investigate to find any further violations. This isn't wrong, and is actually good police work. But it can be easy to abuse if applied with a racial bias, or some other prejudice. (And which is why independent police oversight is a necessity. Not just for high-profile killings, but also for monitoring how law enforcement operates in the community in small ways).

Doesn't really change anything. If you make it so the police won't stop you for a broken tail light, will you keep it so they can stop you for driving with an expired inspection sticker? If so, you have to accept that the consequence may be death for a person who refuses to pull over because their inspection was expired because they had a broken tail light.

The operative words here are "refuses to pull over." If people are allowed to run from law enforcement, there is no law enforcement at all.

If... there is no law enforcement at all.

This is the problem in USA, in a nutshell. We have some amorphous mental picture of how law enforcement works, instilled by an unholy mashup of local TV news and cop movies, and we cannot abide any public innovation or experimentation in that.

Of course, in so doing, we tolerate all manner of unpublicized "innovation" on the part of LEOs: asset forfeiture, stingray surveillance, parallel construction, profiling, qualified immunity, "special-needs" exceptions, etc. So we have a ratchet in this nation, in which occasional gains in freedom on the part of particular groups are more than offset by regular losses from everyone else.

If a nonviolent suspect "runs" from law enforcement, then send her a notice of fine, in the mail. It works for the credit card companies...

Right. So if I've kidnapped someone, and have them stashed in my trunk, and I run from the cops, they're going to send me a notice of a fine in the mail. Sure, that'll work. Right...

Even with edge cases the overall body count would go down a lot. Once the cops have eyes on a plate number figuring out who was in the vehicle at that time and tracking them down is straightforward and much lower risk.

Do you really consider kidnapping "nonviolent"?

No. But if the officers don't know for certain that I've done it, then they can't classify me as violent, even when I run from them when they want to look in my trunk...

Why do they want to look in your trunk? If they have a good reason, then you're violent, and they chase you. That is a vanishingly rare occurrence relative to the number of times when cops are just profiling, and so they stop 500 black dudes to catch one with some pot in his trunk, while studiously failing to stop a corresponding 500 white women. It ain't a perfect world, and cops have no duty to help the public. One would simply like to see them adopt the physicians' philosophy of doing no harm.

No, I'm only possibly violent. "Suspect is a white male driving a blue Ford Escort." "Hey, there's a white male driving a blue Ford Escort." "Is he the kidnapper?" "Don't know, but let's stop him and search his car."

But I've got pot in my trunk, or something I lifted from the local Walmart, or I'm paranoid, or I'm in a hurry, or whatever. Now what? Do they make me stop, or do they not?

Look, I'm not trying to justify profiling. But the world is not as black and white as you think it is...

If we're talking about a local, recent, actual (i.e. not a custody dispute) kidnapping then sure stop all the white dudes driving a blue Escort. It's clearly against the Constitution and common sense, but concerned citizens have feelings, so fuck that shit. For the sake of argument, we've stipulated that driving a blue Escort in particular very rare circumstances constitutes violence.

Now back in actual everyday reality, can we also agree that 99.8% of the cases in which dudes are stopped and their trunks searched do not constitute violence? I mean, other than on the part of the State...

Tell me some more about what I think!

> It's clearly against the Constitution and common sense...

It's against the Constitution to stop people who fit the description of someone who just committed a major crime? I'd like to see you cite a paragraph of the Constitution that supports your position.

It's against common sense? I'd like to see you support that assertion as well.

> Tell me some more about what I think!

In your posts, you gave evidence that you seemed to think that using force to stop suspects was not warranted. I gave reasons why I thought sometimes it was, and therefore that your view was too simplistic - too black and white. You grudgingly acknowledged my counterexample, but got offended that I claimed your view was too black and white. You seem to think I'm ascribing to you views that you don't actually hold. But I'm not trying to read your mind. I'm just reading your words. If I'm misreading them, clarifying might be a more useful approach...

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