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Comment by kepler1 | Hacker News Reader

I don't know where you get your distorted view of what police and the justice system do. But they barely have enough resources to address the major crimes that happen. Almost everyone who gets called to court has been legitimately ticketed or cited for doing something. Belief that people are being unfairly targeted or cited is putting some serious blinders on to reality.

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While I understand why someone might think like this, the evidence, unfortunately, is that some jurisdictions use court as a revenue source. The most famous example is Ferguson, MO, because of the death there of Michael Brown. There, the city so aggressively enforced BS ordinances that there was an average of 3 warrants per household[1]. But there are other examples as well, and penny-ante enforcement may actually undermine serious crime prevention.[2]

[1] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/08/fe... --- this blog post also gives an example of one of the more troubling barriers to court appearance: judges who close their courtrooms to non-defendants, meaning defendants without child care can't appear.

[2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/107808741879177... --- ungated version: https://www.law.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/upload_documents...

> Almost everyone who gets called to court has been legitimately ticketed or cited for doing something.

Most people do something most days that could be legitimately ticketed or cited, if only a misdemeanor. The more interesting question is (at least statistically speaking) who actually gets them and why.

I'm sorry but this is complete nonsense. I haven't committed any misdemeanors in the past year. What misdemeanors did you commit yesterday?

Maybe you're a one man crime spree, most people are not.

Pretty much every non-criminal civil infraction has a misdemeanor counterpart that the cops can use at their discretion.

Driving traffic speed on a highway is usually a misdemeanor unless you live somewhere with reality-based speed limits.

It's telling the example you give is not actually a misdemeanor. Speeding is not the same thing as reckless driving.

Try giving an actual misdemeanor as an example.

Speeding 15-20 over (the last time traffic where I live didn't do that was the last rush hour before the lockdown) is a civil violation or misdemeanor at the discretion of the officer.

In my jurisdiction smoking within a certain distance of certain government facilities (including the nondescript leased office that the registrar of deeds for my county is in, if the sign is to be beloved) is a misdemeanor (punishable by like a $50 fine or up to one night in jail IIRC).

I know for a fact that not getting certain kinds of municipal permits can be prosecuted as a misdemeanor around here and pretty much nobody gets permits for anything if the property is their primary residence (and the inspectors don't care).

https://www.atlantaduilawyer.com/blog/is-a-speeding-ticket-a...

Presumably we all have access to Google :)

From your source:

> Unlike most states, Georgia has a very unique traffic code. Almost all traffic violations in Georgia are misdemeanors.

Emphasis added.

There are states where all traffic violations are classified as misdemeanors.

There are so very very few people who can legitimately say they haven't committed a speeding offense in the last 12 months.

Moreover - it's been demonstrated repeatedly that no single person can possibly make a claim that they have not run afoul of SOME municipal, state or federal law, regulation, code, rule, etc in any given time period.

I'm known to my family as boring tame law & rule obeying buzz-kill, and I do not have anything remotely approaching the level of confidence and/or arrogance to make such a claim.

Someone also pointed this out in another thread, but generally speeding isn't a misdemeanor; it's an infraction.

This all depends on jurisdiction, of course, but there are tons of examples. Unless you are a very unusual person, you definitely have committed some recently.

Did you ever roll through a stop sign without a complete stop or make a quick highway lane change without signaling? Reckless driving, up to officer discretion. Drove over the speed limit? Same goes many places.

Ever forget your wallet and drive without your license? Drive with slightly over a legal limit of alcohol (hard to judge correctly)? Cross over a signed private property you don't have permission to access?

Maybe you smoke and you are too close to a federal or state building access. Maybe your uncle gave you some hooch he made. Maybe you went to an unofficial nude beach.

Been "drunk/disorderly in public" ? Again officer discretion but could easily be applied to majority of people leaving a club most Friday nights.

Maybe you just live in a place where jaywalking is a misdemeanor.

Honestly the lists are long and convoluted, and in many cases the discretion left to LEO mean that nearly anyone could be written up for it. Which is sort of the point.

Nearly everything you’ve mentioned is an infraction (or even a “fixit”), not a misdemeanor, in every or nearly ever jurisdiction in the US. Whether to charge you with reckless is up to the cop, but without evidence—especially since cop cars have dash cams—it’s not likely to stick; especially for a first offense. (And OP asked what misdemeanor he committed anyway). And it’s very very easy to not drive above the legal limit for alcohol or to not drive recklessly.

I’m not disagreeing with your overall point (although usually it’s expressed as people committing felonies every day) but these examples just aren’t making your point.

Interestingly, violating the public health orders here has been a misdemeanor, and it’s pretty easy to have accidentally violated one for a moment.

I think more of them are at discression than you suggest. Speeding being one of them places I've lived.

Regardless, the point stands I think. The point isn't that cops are handing out misdemeanors left and right, rather that it is fairly easy to dig around and find one that could be applied to nearly everyone.

> Did you ever roll through a stop sign without a complete stop or make a quick highway lane change without signaling? Reckless driving, up to officer discretion. Drove over the speed limit?

No, no and no. All of those are serious misconducts that are rightfully punished. Stop signs exist for a reason. Signalling on a highway is very necessary to inform other drivers where you are intending to steer your heavy machine thats hurling down the street at speeds evolution didn't prepare us for. Every driver caught speeding who is punished for it is a win for society in my book.

> Ever forget your wallet and drive without your license? Drive with slightly over a legal limit of alcohol (hard to judge correctly)? Cross over a signed private property you don't have permission to access?

I don't know where you live, but driving without license results in either a verbal warning by the police or a ten buck fine if you're very unlucky. Anyways, I've never heard of anyone who ever got controlled for his drivers license so far. If you steer your car while drunk, you deserve to be punished. I don't care that you're in danger of an embarassing death by tree, but you're also endangering everyone around you. What do you expect from the police? To let that go unpunished?

Also why wouldn't you be punished for crossing private property without permission? If you had a lawn and some guys would come and walk across it every two hours, wouldn't you be pissed and expect some kind of retaliation for that?

> Maybe you smoke and you are too close to a federal or state building access. Maybe your uncle gave you some hooch he made. Maybe you went to an unofficial nude beach.

Smoking is known to cause cancer and is very unpleasant in general, even if it wouldn't. You may stick to your designated drug consumption spots for that matter, but if you decide its okay to annoy and poison the general public around you it's perfectly reasonable to punish you.

You don't go to an "unofficial" nude beach without knowing it's unofficial. You don't undress yourself in public. Therefore, you know you commited a crime because most others really don't want to see you naked.

> Been "drunk/disorderly in public" ? Again officer discretion but could easily be applied to majority of people leaving a club most Friday nights.

Good. I hate drunk mobs hanging around, yelling and being generally unpleasant for all others around them.

All cases you listed deserve punishment, especially the car related ones. Cars are no joke and should be treated with care and respect, not as reclessly as you seem to prefer it.

Looks like you are either incredibly unusual or a bit deluded. Either way this misses the point.

> I haven't committed any misdemeanors in the past year.

That you know of, or have been cited for.

legitimately ticketed or cited for doing something

It starts with the word "legitimately". There's a good number of towns in North Florida under consent decree for financing themselves via tickets from motorists that are passing through. The towns set up speed limits on major roads that had nothing to do with road safety and everything with fleecing travelers. You'd also think that the local cops would try very hard not to stop anyone who looks as if they might attract the Fed's attention. That leaves the poor and indigent - business as usual.

Also in today's news: the DOJ reached a settlement with Purdue Pharma. Yes, totally legitimate, all within the confines of the law.

NYC summons are mostly for petty nuisance crime[1]. Check the open data and you'll see that the largest category by a whole order of magnitude is for § 10-125 violations, consumption of alcohol on the streets where prohibited[2]. I would argue that public consumption shouldn't be a crime, and enforcing it detracts from enforcing real crime. It also further criminalizes poverty.

[1] https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Public-Safety/NYPD-Criminal-Co...

[2] https://law.justia.com/codes/new-york/2006/new-york-city-adm...

To echo what other people have said, police in the city spend the vast majority of their time doing things totally unrelated to major crimes. In fact many officers never deal with major crimes, or only do so a few times in their career.

To address the point at hand, if we're going to summon people to court it makes sense to communicate the information reliably.

Additionally, I would love for policing to be primarily focused on serious crimes and not minor nuisance crimes, of which the city and state codify a mind boggling number.

This flies in the face of 30 years of "the war on drugs" that put people in jail for infractions like possession of marijuana. Meanwhile, the police don't seem to give a shit about major crimes anymore[1].

[1] https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2018/feb/16/us-murder...

You're contradicting yourself. Tickets and citations (usually issued for lower grade misdemeanors, things like drunk in public, loitering, reckless driving) are hardly "major crimes".

>Almost everyone who gets called to court has been legitimately ticketed or cited for doing something

you have some evidence to support this? It is oddly authoritarian for HN...

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