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Comment by karmelapple | Hacker News Reader

I've always found it interesting that when I'm pulled over for a traffic violation, a police officer can use their discretion on whether to punish me.

I've been pulled over a few times for speeding, and a couple times I simply got a warning, and other times I got a ticket and had to pay a fine.

If I committed a crime, why should an officer have that leeway? They caught me, I should have to pay the consequences... right?

I've wondered if part of the reason for that discretion is a tacit admission that the fines / consequences for these tickets are simply too high.

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Mandating that cops enforce unpopular laws was critical to Teddy Roosevelt's reform of the NYPD to help reduce corruption. That leeway was used to solicit bribes, particularly to let bars open on Sundays.

I think that if we removed a lot of the leeway about enforcement we would find ourselves forces to ask, "What laws do we really care about enforcing in the first place?"

Something to consider.

I once decided to see if a type of document existed—this being the internet, it was once amazing to me the things I thought might exist actually existing, maybe I should still be amazed—and the document I wanted to find was a “list of crimes” in my State. California does not (or did not) have such a list. I basically just wanted a number, and to see if there were any interesting ones I never thought of.

Massachusetts actually does have such a document, and while it isn’t my State and at this point I forgot the number, there were some interesting ones at the top that basically had to do with archaeology.

The US Department of Justice also doesn’t have such a list, just an FBI estimate at the time of >4,000 which means they don’t know either.

I wouldn’t call it a political position because that would require further research and more time than I’m willing to commit, but I would say I have a disposition towards reducing the total number of crimes on the books, which would mean compiling a list of what they are and consolidating and repealing many of them. If we can’t be bothered to know what they are in their totality, then we probably don’t need most of them.

Here you go, the master crime list of Massachusetts: https://www.mass.gov/doc/master-crime-list/download

Here's one that seems similar for North Dakota: https://attorneygeneral.nd.gov/sites/ag/files/documents/Offe...

And I think that is a good conversation to have. If the law is not worth enforcing, it is not worth having. Laws are meant to remove one's freedoms. Sometimes that loss is meant to protect others, but it is still the government telling its citizens they are not allowed to do something. People should have as few goverment imposed restrictions as necessary to have a functioning society.

Thanks for sharing this, I hadn't heard of this.

Here's Teddy Roosevelt in his own words [1] describing it:

> To break up the system of blackmail and corruption was less easy. ... the criminal who is blackmailed has a direct interest in paying the blackmailer, and it is not easy to get information about it. Nevertheless, we put a complete stop to most of the blackmail by the simple process of rigorously enforcing the laws, not only against crime, but against vice.

...

> The multiplication of laws by the legislature and their partial enforcement by the executive authorities go hand in hand, and offer one of the many serious problems with which we are confronted in striving to better civic conditions. New York State felt that liquor should not be sold on Sunday. The larger part of New York city wished to drink liquor on Sunday.

> ...

> The law was not in the least a dead-letter; it was enforced, but it was corruptly and partially enforced.

> ...

> The paper again and again called upon the police commissioners to either uniformly enforce the law or uniformly disregard it.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1897/09/municip...

Here in Oregon it's the policy of the DMV, Department of Transportation, and police departments to educate drivers. After enough warnings or you're acting like you don't care you will get a ticket.

Interestingly enough, I've been pulled over several times but always by a different department it seems like. They obviously don't talk to each other or I would have gotten more tickets by now.

Because the purpose of the fine isn’t the money, it’s getting you to be more safe. If they can achieve that with a friendly chat then isn’t that better for everyone?

Do we achieve that in the status quo, though? Where I live, driving 10 miles over the speed limit at all times is the price of entry and if you do less than that, you'll sooner or later run into a motorist who gets aggressive with you.

Speeding is a constant issue and people are constantly crashing cars into buildings and people.

I have never seen police enforcement make a meaningful difference in safe driving. I've never seen police proactively enforce pedestrian/cyclist safety or remove cars from the bike lanes. Safety is a matter of correctly engineering streets and roads so that dangerous driving feels viscerally unnatural and uncomfortable.

The only thing that it seems to accomplish is A) giving police a way to arbitrarily bring down the hammer on people they don't like while shielding their friends and relatives, and B) fleecing motorists by setting up speed traps at places engineered to encourage speeding rather than re-engineering the roads for calming.

No. If he always chats with a Chris, but always tickets a Rene, that isn't better for everyone.

We have discretion build into our society for a reason. Judges, juries, police, all exercise discretion.

I think perhaps we're finding that the efficiencies we build into a system are vulnerabilities abused by unfriendly actors.

If I'm going to be treated as second class, you had better be, too.

It's not about efficiency - it's about justice. If you're against discretion then you're against basics of our society like trial by jury.

And if you can't trust these people to use discretion sensibly and fairly then you shouldn't be trusting them to do anything.

I think I can be against a single person's discretion and judgment and still be in favor of things like trial by jury.

A trial by jury is multiple people collectively judging on something after taking some time to consider the whole story.

A single officer in the field deciding, within a few minutes, whether you should pay a $200 fine seems very different to me. Although a speeding ticket, and what typically goes in front of a jury, is also usually magnitudes different.

The purpose of a traffic stop is seldom due to traffic infractions. Traffic stops are an access vector, or as police call it, a point of contact.

Are there any numbers to back that up? I'm sure there are some bad apples out there that make up excuses because they think someone looks suspicious tho. But it also seems like there are a huge number of bad drivers out there that do dangerous things and having traffic laws that are sometimes enforced seems like it has to curtail some of that behavior.

Just talk to any cop. If they are honest, they'll tell you this very thing. In fewer degrees than it takes to get to Kevin Bacon, I was witness to an investigation where one individual was thrown the book to convince them to work off the charges being filed by rolling up. A traffic stop is precisely how they made first contact with people up the chain. It's like criminal investigation 101. So much so, it is part of every cop drama

That seems a little disingenuous to just throw all cops under the bus and say they all do that bad behavior. One anecdotal case and law and order episodes probably shouldn't be enough to come to that conclusion.

If you think that all I have is one anecdotal story because that's all I've shared in a single post on an interweb forum, then you're making gross assumptions on your part.

If a patrol officer is tasked to pull over someone by an investigating detective, their sergeant, or anyone else out ranking them, that's what they are going to do. They all have ranks and respond to higher authority. It's part of their job.

There are times where a law may have technically been broken, but it was done so to prevent something worse from happening.

For a silly example... If I were to run across an empty street (not in a crosswalk) to help steady a ladder someone was about to fall from, then I technically jaywalked. However, it was done with very little risk or downside to prevent someone from getting seriously hurt.

The officer could see that and write a ticket, then let the judge/courts sort it out. But that would clog up the courts with a bunch of trivial cases, while also having citizens upset with unjust laws. It can also lead to people refusing to help others in the name of obeying laws that are well intentioned, but can't be applied universally for society to continue to function.

I'd argue it's time to redefine what jaywalking is then :)

Empty street? Cross it all you want, help that person from falling, it's not a criminal offense. And then the officer wouldn't have to forgive you or look away, but instead there was no law being broken.

If I committed a crime

The difference is that citeable infractions like plain speeding are not crimes.

It's too late for me to edit it, but my intent was to say I broke the law.

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