The Demand for Money Behind Many Police Traffic Stops | Hacker News Reader

The Demand for Money Behind Many Police Traffic Stops

nytimes.com

34 points_lz4k14 comments

If you've ever been to a municipal court for a traffic ticket (I've noticed this even in smaller town of the US) you'll find a courtroom packed full of people (more than not lower income folks) and a judge who rattles off fines like an auctioneer ($50... $130 for you... $90... $250...). It's clearly a huge money maker for the local government.

One obvious fix might be require all revenue from traffic fines etc. to be paid into the state general fund rather than to the agencies that write the tickets.

That would lead to the income stream becoming a permanent fixture in budgets and thus an implicit state-sanctioned traffic stop robbery quota would be enacted.

How about the money gets paid back to taxpayers as a seperate line item as a dividend.

E.g. everyone get $10 dollars from fine profits

Great idea, except it will incentivize enforcement for only out of state vehicles.

I suggest making it a donation to a basket of charities of various conflicting persuasions so that few persons would feel good about subsidizing them (all), like both pro choice and pro life groups, or evolution and intelligent design groups.

I think the solution is to require that the agencies have to take proper care of the money, and invest it wisely in something that is guaranteed to make an APY that will keep up with inflation. They also can’t spend it or put it into their coffers until after they have filed charges or the statute of limitations runs out on the crime that the person was suspected of. And if the statute runs out, then they have to return the money —with interest.

And even if they do file charges, they still have to be proper custodians of the money, until such time as all appeals have been exhausted.

Make ‘Em wait long enough to get the goods, and make ‘‘em work hard enough to keep them, and then they won’t want to be doing any civil forfeiture unless it’s a really large sum in a slam-dunk case.

It’s all a matter of making sure that their interests are aligned with the citizens that they are supposed to be serving.

Would education unfortunately qualify as one of the much hated organizations?

Yeah there would have to be some kind of firewall to prevent the collected funds from making their way back to the police departments, as opposed to sending annual grants based on population etc. that were completely independent of collected fines.

The better obvious fix is to burn the money, this helps fight inflation, removes unintended incentives to collect fines while preserving the intended incentive to avoid getting fined.

This is the tip of the iceberg. How about we talk about outright authoritarian theft like civil forfeiture where they seize your assets and threaten you with fake charges if you plan to appeal it.

We would call this a fascist dictatorial authoritarian practice if it was in another country caught in the crosshairs of the empire:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2015/03/19/...

While I agree that civil forfeiture needs addressed, police theft is way worse in some places. I am currently staying in mexico city and last night I was eating dinner at a restaurant with the group I am traveling with and stepped away from my table to smoke a cigarette to avoid bothering the people around me. I had a beer my hand and was like 4ft outside of the dining area where my group was sitted eating and drinking. A cop approached me and demanded to take me to the police station for open container, unless of course I paid a him 2,000 peso. Never even bothered to ask for my id.

what’s your id got to do with breaking open container laws? having a steep fine for breaking the rules is not on the same level of theft as confiscating cash on the mere suspicion of breaking the rules

It's not a fine, it's a bribe. I don't think I've ever heard of a jurisdiction where you pay the officer who is ticketing you.

It's funny because a bribe seems more efficient. The incentives are more aligned: the cop wants to be paid, and the cop wants you to not break law (open container). Rather than giving you a ticket, triggering a long process, the cop simply gets paid for stopping the crime at the source, being paid by the criminal directly!

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