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I grew up in Queens and these are definitely a thing. My sister's father in law is (retired) NYPD and gave her one. She used it to get out of a ticket for biking on the sidewalk, of all things.

> you just let the card be visible when reaching for your license

I was always told to hand them to the cop underneath your license, but never explicitly mention it.

Edit: I've also heard stories that well monied institutions (hedge funds, etc) will hire security guards from retired NYPD in part to gain access to cards for important employees.

Ummm.... They hire retired NYPD (and off-duty NYPD) for a lot worse things than getting cards.

Go on...

Here’s a start.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bizjournals.com/newyork/new...

You know it, but I still find it amusing that higher up employees (purportedly) receive get-out-of-jail-free cards and the personal numbers of ex-cops who can call in favors at the local precincts after they fill out their i9s or whatever.

It's amazing that they can get away with this. It's a bribe by any other name. And it's a terrible sign of the police that they go apesh*t about losing the ability to sell/give get out of jail cards.

I guess it's simpler than handing the ticket to a cop friend and asking them to fix it (happened in our lifetime) but still kills the rule of law.

And when you see this, is it hard to believe there are 2 tiers of justice in the inner city?

Worse than a bribe, it should be akin to a Brady violation.

Not that much surprising since America is very much corrupt isn't it... At least it's really much of a jungle where only power and money talk. So many things are going on in this country that you can easily call bribery or at least quid-pro-quo, but they just carry on blatantly forever.

My dad used to get out of speeding tickets by bribing officers all the time using the same principle - when he handed over his licence there would be a banknote folded inside it(licences were in forms of booklets back then). If the policeman was on it, they would just take the money and not say anything - if they weren't, my dad would just say he forgot he had some emergency money in there. Worked about 90% of the time? That's not in US though, central/eastern Europe in the 90s was a very corrupt place.

Yes, I lived in NJ around 15 years ago, and PBA cards were well known (but not much talked about), and that's precisely the way they worked. Subtly flash the card to a cop, and they might ignore it, they might take the card and skip the speeding ticket, or they might just skip the speeding ticket.

Yes, corruption, but not exactly a get out of jail free card either. Or that's how it seemed to be, mostly, in NJ, over a decade ago. :)

It's very possible that things are worse today (such things tend to devolve over time), or worse in NYC, or worse than what I saw at the time.

In New York these cards are basically sold by the PBA to anyone willing to shell out the proper "donation". Prominently displayed on the card is the year the "donation" is given to ensure that it becomes an annual ritual (if you want your card to be honored). They also give out stickers that are usually applied next to the registration/inspection stickers (even though it is illegal to apply other stickers there).

I've always thought there was something a little shady about these license plates in Washington State, but they're probably worth it if they get you out of a ticket every once in a while: http://www.dol.wa.gov/vehicleregistration/splem.html

Basically $28 of the registration fee goes to a foundation for injured police, and you get to prominently tell everyone that on the license plate.

WA uses slave labor in its prisons to make those license plates, so a little $28 bribe on top is nothing.

Also from New Jersey.

I never had one myself but I thought if they did take the card they were supposed to send it to the cop that gave it to you and then they would decide if they should give it back to you.

Worse than the PBA stories is hearing about the diplomatic immunity shenanigans all sorts of members of a diplomatic family would get away with.

Not sure how much was true and how much was exaggerated, but some were eye opening.

You might find this inderesting, Cultures of Corruption: Evidence From Diplomatic Parking Tickets[1]. Apparently, there's a fairly good correlation (if I remember correctly, but the article, or at least a summary, is there to check) between cultures with a lot of corruption and unpaid parking tickets from their diplomats in NY.

1: http://www.nber.org/papers/w12312

Interestingly Transport for London claims that the US embassy owes them ~£12 million in unpaid congestion charge fees, which exist as a disincentive to drive in central London. The embassy claim it's a form of taxation and as such they are exempt -- unsurprisingly TfL disagree. For context the next highest amounts supposedly owed are by Japan, Nigeria, Russia and India.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/us-embassy-congestion_...

Well if we successfully get a Congestion Charged passed in NYC the UK consulate here can just offset charges with the US embassy in London.

Parking fines:

http://time.com/3421587/diplomats-parking-tickets-new-york/

Parking tickets are some of the least malignant things diplomatic immunity allows diplomats and attaches to get away with. Some of the more egregious examples are things like sexual violence[1], slavery, assault, etc.

There is little the local jurisdiction can do other than ask the diplomat's home country to waive immunity --which almost never happens.

[1]https://nypost.com/2017/10/11/why-dirty-diplomats-can-litera...

Actually, they don't need to ask, they can make such a person persona non grata (which is where the term originates from [1]).

Of course this almost never happens.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_non_grata

While this is true (that diplomatic immunity poses problems with some diplomats heavily abusing it, while there doesn't seem to be a good way to punish them for it), it at least is a phenomenon that can be seen as a cost to bear for a greater good: protecting representatives of other countries from becoming targets of a sort of "state-organized bullying" by the officials in power, which often makes it possible for these representatives to enter foreign states in the first place and which thus can be seen as a mutual agreement that fosters peaceful diplomatic exchange between countries.

For these weird PBA cards, I can't see any positive effect for society as a whole that could be brought up in their defense. This is clearly a form of institutionalized corruption, pressed into a handy credit-card format, and it is unworthy of a country like the United States.

What country _is_ it worthy of? Think carefully about the implications of your answer.

"What country _is_ it worthy of? "

For any country that is weak and unpopular currently.

I was thinking along the lines of "a country that makes no secret of the fact that the ones who happen to have power due to their status in society (whether based on their wealth, social influence or whatever else) are free to use this power for their personal benefit without regard for any ethical concerns and especially without regard for the well-being of others". Such a hypothetical country would be worthy of corruption, as corruption would be a perfectly reasonable and expected part of their inner workings.

But...I don't find any real existing country that fully matches this description. There are countries in which this unbounded "rule of the powerful" practically exists, but they all try to sugar-coat it, which effectively makes them unworthy of corruption.

I had a car accident a few month ago. I was the victim as the other driver did not give priority to the right. After the police arrived, they came to this conclusion, too. Turned out, that the other driver was a diplomat, who drove a brand new rented BMW, and did not understand why I was the victim. The driver was also an unwanted person in the country due to corruption scandals, and he was heading to the airport to leave the country for good. The police did not charge him due to the diplomatic immunity and patiently endured his crazy ideas that I was causing the accident on purpose, I was diving too fast, I am too young to know how to drive, and I was on my phone while driving etc. Of course, none of these was real, and ironically I could prove it thanks to the cameras there. I think this behaviour is not supposed to belong to a diplomat who represents his country on foreign soil.

> this behaviour is not supposed to belong to a diplomat

Hardline bargaining, sometimes works, very high ROI. Probably underreported, not entertaining/uplifting.

A friend was a teenager in NYC with diplomatic immunity. His older brother was driving when they were caught speeding. The policeman showed him some photos of a wrecked car, a youth's dead body, and said he didn't want to meet my friend's father.

The infraction gets reported to the embassy. Some countries don't care, but a European country for example will not be pleased if their staff are breaking American law.

I've never heard of these before today, but I spent some time in Philadelphia and I swear every third person there has a Fraternal Order of Police licence plate and/or sticker on their car. I actually have a couple pictures somewhere of various people who put FOP stickers OVER digits on their licence plate (and under one of those tinted plate covers, of course). Never understood the whole thing anyway since nobody ever seemed to get pulled over for speeding or running red lights there. 60mph on Kelley Drive (35mph limit) was average even though the local tow companies found it profitable to station multiple tow-trucks at every intersection whenever there was any rain or fresh snow.