I can't get my parents to pull the handicapped placard off their rear view mirror while they are driving, this is just a count down to that boondocks situation where cops shoot at someone who has a wallet that is made out of safety orange hunter vests.
Worth pointing out that was based on a real thing that happened. Only the guy didn't survive I think. It's been a long time.
I really hate this stupid PR fixes because they don't do anything. Safety wallets stopped being a thing because people still got shot reaching for their safety wallet. As long as the cops are treating it like a life or death situation then bad shit will happen. Adrenaline makes it really hard to figure out what's going on. It is a small step to a panic decision that ends somebody at that point. Right now it is a count down till the Minnesota State Police issue a warning about people carrying guns in their new safety pouch.
Abner Louima (sp?) In NYC was hit by a hail of police bullets because he tried to take out his wallet when police stopped him walking into his building.
For his trouble he got a Bruce Springsteen song and his murderers all walked free.
Probably have the name incorrect. It’s not your fault though. It’s hard to keep track of all the people the NYPD have murdered or brutalized over the years. The on you were looking for was Amadou Diallo
Separate traffic enforcement from the rest of the PDs and forbid them from having guns. They don't need to be armed to write traffic tickets. Hell, while we're at it, codify things so that shitty localities can't run significant parts of their budgets off of tickets. Not only would this prevent them from shooting people, but would cut down on their level of interaction with people, which would further reduce problems; especially, since they'd no longer be playing state sanction highway robber.
The natural cop response is always "but what about when people shoot at us when we pull them over!", and they're going to get a lot of mileage from that fuckawful deception that highway enforcers need that protection.
Make traffic enforcement a completely non-criminal-related matter. Traffic officers can never arrest you, never impound you, they can only ever give you citations. For drivers that are an immediate hazard for whatever reason, they can call in a regular police unit.
If nobody is ever worried the unarmed person walking up to them will, justly or unjustly, arrest, attack, or murder them, absolutely fucking nobody with any capability for rational thought is going to risk a life sentence for getting handed a non-criminal citation. And maybe even the average citizen will stop feeling intensely uncertain and nervous around neo-mafia cops who have proven they absolutely will fucking murder you for reaching for a wallet, immensely de-escalating traffic stops in general before they even happen.
Oh, and citations tied to income. So no more of this shit with low-income folks having to risk eviction or something to pay a minor traffic fine and the rich just paying the shit off without even thinking about it.
Take it a step further, allow Traffic citations to be done with a photo radar and mail the ticket in the post, no need to even interact or pull citizens over at all.
I'm dubious of this, but more because I'm dubious about the automated systems than anything else. Also, I'm dubious about citing a car owner for all infractions committed in their car, regardless of who is driving. We already have something similar for good 2 go or whatever it is in WA, and when my siblings borrowed my car I'd get random payments owed for them crossing one of the bridges. They'd pay it of course, but it was always a surprise, which is bad. (ESPECIALLY if the goal is to correct behavior).
Please note, dubious, not inherently opposed.
Is there no signage on those routes to alert them of the fees, so that your siblings would know to pay you ahead of time when they returned the vehicle? Sounds like a cash grab from whoever is running it.
There is signage before and after alerting you to the fees.(which change for rush out and not every hour iirc) It’s possible there are some places where the fee isn’t clearly explained but I haven’t seen them.
Yeah I could have told you about both incidents, but my brain flip flopped the names. They were the NYPDs signature "What the fucks" of the 1990s.
RedTide#1907 on Battle.net
Come Overwatch with meeeee
Separate traffic enforcement from the rest of the PDs and forbid them from having guns. They don't need to be armed to write traffic tickets. Hell, while we're at it, codify things so that shitty localities can't run significant parts of their budgets off of tickets. Not only would this prevent them from shooting people, but would cut down on their level of interaction with people, which would further reduce problems; especially, since they'd no longer be playing state sanction highway robber.
The natural cop response is always "but what about when people shoot at us when we pull them over!", and they're going to get a lot of mileage from that fuckawful deception that highway enforcers need that protection.
Make traffic enforcement a completely non-criminal-related matter. Traffic officers can never arrest you, never impound you, they can only ever give you citations. For drivers that are an immediate hazard for whatever reason, they can call in a regular police unit.
If nobody is ever worried the unarmed person walking up to them will, justly or unjustly, arrest, attack, or murder them, absolutely fucking nobody with any capability for rational thought is going to risk a life sentence for getting handed a non-criminal citation. And maybe even the average citizen will stop feeling intensely uncertain and nervous around neo-mafia cops who have proven they absolutely will fucking murder you for reaching for a wallet, immensely de-escalating traffic stops in general before they even happen.
Oh, and citations tied to income. So no more of this shit with low-income folks having to risk eviction or something to pay a minor traffic fine and the rich just paying the shit off without even thinking about it.
Take it a step further, allow Traffic citations to be done with a photo radar and mail the ticket in the post, no need to even interact or pull citizens over at all.
I'm dubious of this, but more because I'm dubious about the automated systems than anything else. Also, I'm dubious about citing a car owner for all infractions committed in their car, regardless of who is driving. We already have something similar for good 2 go or whatever it is in WA, and when my siblings borrowed my car I'd get random payments owed for them crossing one of the bridges. They'd pay it of course, but it was always a surprise, which is bad. (ESPECIALLY if the goal is to correct behavior).
Please note, dubious, not inherently opposed.
Is there no signage on those routes to alert them of the fees, so that your siblings would know to pay you ahead of time when they returned the vehicle? Sounds like a cash grab from whoever is running it.
Surprise was for me, not for them. Like I said, they paid it promptly when I let them know I had the bill, so I've never worried about it. Just a silly system.
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
Local police departments are promoting "not reaching" pouches that clip to a car's air vents and carry license, insurance card and registration, to help keep cops from shooting you. This hurts my brain.
1. Shifting responsibility to the driver to not make movement that will set off a kill happy cop's itchy trigger finger.
2. If reaching for a glovebox or wallet gets you shot, I don't see how reaching for this thing doesn't get you shot too.
3. Who the fuck wants their license and registration dangling from an air vent?
Separate traffic enforcement from the rest of the PDs and forbid them from having guns. They don't need to be armed to write traffic tickets. Hell, while we're at it, codify things so that shitty localities can't run significant parts of their budgets off of tickets. Not only would this prevent them from shooting people, but would cut down on their level of interaction with people, which would further reduce problems; especially, since they'd no longer be playing state sanction highway robber.
The natural cop response is always "but what about when people shoot at us when we pull them over!", and they're going to get a lot of mileage from that fuckawful deception that highway enforcers need that protection.
Make traffic enforcement a completely non-criminal-related matter. Traffic officers can never arrest you, never impound you, they can only ever give you citations. For drivers that are an immediate hazard for whatever reason, they can call in a regular police unit.
If nobody is ever worried the unarmed person walking up to them will, justly or unjustly, arrest, attack, or murder them, absolutely fucking nobody with any capability for rational thought is going to risk a life sentence for getting handed a non-criminal citation. And maybe even the average citizen will stop feeling intensely uncertain and nervous around neo-mafia cops who have proven they absolutely will fucking murder you for reaching for a wallet, immensely de-escalating traffic stops in general before they even happen.
Oh, and citations tied to income. So no more of this shit with low-income folks having to risk eviction or something to pay a minor traffic fine and the rich just paying the shit off without even thinking about it.
Take it a step further, allow Traffic citations to be done with a photo radar and mail the ticket in the post, no need to even interact or pull citizens over at all.
That comes at the cost of the violator not realizing that they've committed a violation until they check their mail, which could take a while given how useless mail has become. In the meantime, they could be repeating the violation over and over without realizing they've done anything wrong.
If someone is repeatedly getting caught speeding or running lights, they really should know better, or not be on the roads if they dont, because the number of times they will be caught is guaranteed to be less than the number of times they are doing it.
If its less severe than that, there shouldnt be a fine attached, as it isnt important to road safety, if its more severe, than the police should probably be intervening at that point because they are an active danger to other drivers.
I'm going to push back on that a bit. When it comes to automated enforcement, the existing speed limits and punishments are built around a certain amount of leeway towards violations; a cop isn't going to pull someone over for going 5 MPH over (unless they want an excuse), but a speed camera will snap pictures all day, while not giving the city any reason to fix the actual issue. This is a problem because America keeps building streets that are designed to be zoomed down at 50 MPH, then sticking a 35 MPH speed limit sign on them and relying on police to keep traffic speed down. The speed of traffic is set by the design, not the signs; enough speeding that enforcement is required means the street's design is bad. Ideally, speeding should not only be psychologically discouraged by the street design, but should be difficult on a technical level, at which point it doesn't matter who enforces the limit.
As for red light cameras, they really should be called "right turn on red without coming to a complete stop" cameras. (Whether or not right turn on red should be allowed is a subject for a different thread.)
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RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
Separate traffic enforcement from the rest of the PDs and forbid them from having guns. They don't need to be armed to write traffic tickets. Hell, while we're at it, codify things so that shitty localities can't run significant parts of their budgets off of tickets. Not only would this prevent them from shooting people, but would cut down on their level of interaction with people, which would further reduce problems; especially, since they'd no longer be playing state sanction highway robber.
The natural cop response is always "but what about when people shoot at us when we pull them over!", and they're going to get a lot of mileage from that fuckawful deception that highway enforcers need that protection.
Make traffic enforcement a completely non-criminal-related matter. Traffic officers can never arrest you, never impound you, they can only ever give you citations. For drivers that are an immediate hazard for whatever reason, they can call in a regular police unit.
If nobody is ever worried the unarmed person walking up to them will, justly or unjustly, arrest, attack, or murder them, absolutely fucking nobody with any capability for rational thought is going to risk a life sentence for getting handed a non-criminal citation. And maybe even the average citizen will stop feeling intensely uncertain and nervous around neo-mafia cops who have proven they absolutely will fucking murder you for reaching for a wallet, immensely de-escalating traffic stops in general before they even happen.
Oh, and citations tied to income. So no more of this shit with low-income folks having to risk eviction or something to pay a minor traffic fine and the rich just paying the shit off without even thinking about it.
Take it a step further, allow Traffic citations to be done with a photo radar and mail the ticket in the post, no need to even interact or pull citizens over at all.
That comes at the cost of the violator not realizing that they've committed a violation until they check their mail, which could take a while given how useless mail has become. In the meantime, they could be repeating the violation over and over without realizing they've done anything wrong.
If someone is repeatedly getting caught speeding or running lights, they really should know better, or not be on the roads if they dont, because the number of times they will be caught is guaranteed to be less than the number of times they are doing it.
If its less severe than that, there shouldnt be a fine attached, as it isnt important to road safety, if its more severe, than the police should probably be intervening at that point because they are an active danger to other drivers.
I'm going to push back on that a bit. When it comes to automated enforcement, the existing speed limits and punishments are built around a certain amount of leeway towards violations; a cop isn't going to pull someone over for going 5 MPH over (unless they want an excuse), but a speed camera will snap pictures all day, while not giving the city any reason to fix the actual issue. This is a problem because America keeps building streets that are designed to be zoomed down at 50 MPH, then sticking a 35 MPH speed limit sign on them and relying on police to keep traffic speed down. The speed of traffic is set by the design, not the signs; enough speeding that enforcement is required means the street's design is bad. Ideally, speeding should not only be psychologically discouraged by the street design, but should be difficult on a technical level, at which point it doesn't matter who enforces the limit.
As for red light cameras, they really should be called "right turn on red without coming to a complete stop" cameras. (Whether or not right turn on red should be allowed is a subject for a different thread.)
Point of order: Secret speed limits, where it says 35, but it's actually 40, are stupid. Pay attention to your speed and you don't speed. It isn't that hard. I have been doing it for well over 15 years for now, even as traffic around me has decided 35 now means 50. If you can't maintain your speed under the limit, use cruise control. If people knew they'd get a 100% guaranteed ticket for going 1 over you would see a lot less speeding, and as a result less traffic deaths due to that speed.
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RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
People don't get speeding tickets unless they're going quite a few miles over the apeed limit because there is a margin of error to consider between the equipment of the vehicle being driven as well as the speed monitoring devices.
Trying to hand out speeding tickets for one mile over the speed limit is only going to work as a pretense to harass and intimidate people, which just isn't accomplished the same way if you are mailing letters instead of doing it face to face with flashing lights in the rearview.
People don't get speeding tickets unless they're going quite a few miles over the apeed limit because there is a margin of error to consider between the equipment of the vehicle being driven as well as the speed monitoring devices.
Trying to hand out speeding tickets for one mile over the speed limit is only going to work as a pretense to harass and intimidate people, which just isn't accomplished the same way if you are mailing letters instead of doing it face to face with flashing lights in the rearview.
Yes, but that's why if the speed limit sign says 35, most everyone now mentally says the limit is actually 40, so they drive specifically with the speedometer at 38 or 39, not 35. I understand the American zeitgeist has adopted the idea that all rules (and laws) are meant to be broken, and there is no way to put that genie back. I just can't wait for the driverless revolution where the car itself refuses to cruise at a speed faster than the speed limit.
People don't get speeding tickets unless they're going quite a few miles over the apeed limit because there is a margin of error to consider between the equipment of the vehicle being driven as well as the speed monitoring devices.
Trying to hand out speeding tickets for one mile over the speed limit is only going to work as a pretense to harass and intimidate people, which just isn't accomplished the same way if you are mailing letters instead of doing it face to face with flashing lights in the rearview.
Yes, but that's why if the speed limit sign says 35, most everyone now mentally says the limit is actually 40, so they drive specifically with the speedometer at 38 or 39, not 35. I understand the American zeitgeist has adopted the idea that all rules (and laws) are meant to be broken, and there is no way to put that genie back. I just can't wait for the driverless revolution where the car itself refuses to cruise at a speed faster than the speed limit.
None of which is really the point. At least for this thread. Needing armed cops for traffic stops is madness. Ticketting for 1, 5, or a million over is entirely unrelated EXCEPT that we have armed cops doing this job.
The problems with "self-driving" cars are many and more egregious than speeding ticketing cameras, and are even more suited for a separate thread of discussion.
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Also, the reason people go faster on those roads is because, as discussed, they are designed to be driven faster. It's a civil engineering problem as much as a "but the signs!" problem
Separate traffic enforcement from the rest of the PDs and forbid them from having guns. They don't need to be armed to write traffic tickets. Hell, while we're at it, codify things so that shitty localities can't run significant parts of their budgets off of tickets. Not only would this prevent them from shooting people, but would cut down on their level of interaction with people, which would further reduce problems; especially, since they'd no longer be playing state sanction highway robber.
The natural cop response is always "but what about when people shoot at us when we pull them over!", and they're going to get a lot of mileage from that fuckawful deception that highway enforcers need that protection.
Make traffic enforcement a completely non-criminal-related matter. Traffic officers can never arrest you, never impound you, they can only ever give you citations. For drivers that are an immediate hazard for whatever reason, they can call in a regular police unit.
If nobody is ever worried the unarmed person walking up to them will, justly or unjustly, arrest, attack, or murder them, absolutely fucking nobody with any capability for rational thought is going to risk a life sentence for getting handed a non-criminal citation. And maybe even the average citizen will stop feeling intensely uncertain and nervous around neo-mafia cops who have proven they absolutely will fucking murder you for reaching for a wallet, immensely de-escalating traffic stops in general before they even happen.
Oh, and citations tied to income. So no more of this shit with low-income folks having to risk eviction or something to pay a minor traffic fine and the rich just paying the shit off without even thinking about it.
Take it a step further, allow Traffic citations to be done with a photo radar and mail the ticket in the post, no need to even interact or pull citizens over at all.
That comes at the cost of the violator not realizing that they've committed a violation until they check their mail, which could take a while given how useless mail has become. In the meantime, they could be repeating the violation over and over without realizing they've done anything wrong.
If someone is repeatedly getting caught speeding or running lights, they really should know better, or not be on the roads if they dont, because the number of times they will be caught is guaranteed to be less than the number of times they are doing it.
If its less severe than that, there shouldnt be a fine attached, as it isnt important to road safety, if its more severe, than the police should probably be intervening at that point because they are an active danger to other drivers.
I'm going to push back on that a bit. When it comes to automated enforcement, the existing speed limits and punishments are built around a certain amount of leeway towards violations; a cop isn't going to pull someone over for going 5 MPH over (unless they want an excuse), but a speed camera will snap pictures all day, while not giving the city any reason to fix the actual issue. This is a problem because America keeps building streets that are designed to be zoomed down at 50 MPH, then sticking a 35 MPH speed limit sign on them and relying on police to keep traffic speed down. The speed of traffic is set by the design, not the signs; enough speeding that enforcement is required means the street's design is bad. Ideally, speeding should not only be psychologically discouraged by the street design, but should be difficult on a technical level, at which point it doesn't matter who enforces the limit.
As for red light cameras, they really should be called "right turn on red without coming to a complete stop" cameras. (Whether or not right turn on red should be allowed is a subject for a different thread.)
Point of order: Secret speed limits, where it says 35, but it's actually 40, are stupid. Pay attention to your speed and you don't speed. It isn't that hard. I have been doing it for well over 15 years for now, even as traffic around me has decided 35 now means 50. If you can't maintain your speed under the limit, use cruise control. If people knew they'd get a 100% guaranteed ticket for going 1 over you would see a lot less speeding, and as a result less traffic deaths due to that speed.
No, it's not. It's literally how people actually behave. Because the various systems around driving, from road design and planning to traffic enforcement, tell them that's how they should behave.
When you make a long straight street that people are mostly just going to be using to get from one place to another and then you put up a sign saying "Go X" but actually don't give people tickets unless they go X+10, you are telling drivers that this street is for driving at X+10 on just to get through this area.
And this kind of shit has always been part of policing. It's the brown paper bag from The Wire. The acknowledgement of the actual rules as opposed to those as written.
And this is also of course where police exercise their discretion to be more or less strict on different people.
I'm curious, how did we end up with cops policing traffic? Most other countries I have been in (anecdata) it is indeed a separate branch or department that has no actual policing power other than to get you to pull over, basically long enough to check your info and give you an infraction.
I'm curious, how did we end up with cops policing traffic? Most other countries I have been in (anecdata) it is indeed a separate branch or department that has no actual policing power other than to get you to pull over, basically long enough to check your info and give you an infraction.
America is big with lots of rural areas where you literally may have one or two cops for a couple hundred square miles and can't reasonably have two people doing the job.
Also america adopted private vehicles early on in modern policing compared to most first world nations and has a lot more vehicles / driving so our modern policing policy coalesced around a vehicular society.
I'm guessing it's a state law, but in Massachusetts I always see cops managing traffic around construction sites. Seems like a racket.
"Paid jobs" as they're called around here typically work like this (with some local variation).
- Law states that certain projects (Like those that effect traffic patterns) require police on scene to manage traffic.
- The company/utility pays the municipality/department a set rate times whatever hours
- The department then assigns an officer (based off a call list/seniority) and they are on site outside of normal work hours
- That officer is then paid a rate most likely less then what the local government receives and is also typically deducted a rental fee for use of the police vehicle they have on site.
RedTide#1907 on Battle.net
Come Overwatch with meeeee
I'm curious, how did we end up with cops policing traffic? Most other countries I have been in (anecdata) it is indeed a separate branch or department that has no actual policing power other than to get you to pull over, basically long enough to check your info and give you an infraction.
America is big with lots of rural areas where you literally may have one or two cops for a couple hundred square miles and can't reasonably have two people doing the job.
Also america adopted private vehicles early on in modern policing compared to most first world nations and has a lot more vehicles / driving so our modern policing policy coalesced around a vehicular society.
there are rural areas and small towns everywhere around the world, its definitely not a uniquely north american thing.
Yes, with a quick verbal "boom." You take a man's peko, you deny him his dab, all that is left is to rise up and tear down the walls of Jericho with a ".....not!" -TexiKen
It would just be nice if enough of us in the US admitted that having armed cops for traffic enforcement is a stupid fucking idea that just results in tons of innocent people either being killed or maimed by shitty cops. It's a task that can be done by an unarmed entity. It's also something would be made safer for everyone, both cop and non-cop, if they were unarmed and had no ability to arrest people.
As for driverless cars. I've mentioned that the moment those become common, you're going to see some really shitty localities notorious for using tickets as a revenue source being crushed by a major auto manufacturer. The thing is no car maker is going to take the PR hit of "our vehicle will get you tickets because it doesn't know the rules of the road," and they'll be all too happy to go up against the police on that one as well. Sure PDs can place big orders if they upgrade their fleet all at once, but I'm willing to bet PDs make up less than a percent of most auto sales and big fleet buys are probably seldom. Also I'd wager public support for the police will have waned further by the time such a suit happens. So a big auto maker could also get a PR win for telling the ticket writing pigs to fuck off, on top of protecting their reputation, while also getting the PR win for shitting on a locality that is known statewide, or even regionally, for manufacturing BS traffic tickets in order to rob people.
Not to mention, I get the hunch that a number of places have increasingly turned to traffic fines to fund their PDs, which is a really bad idea. One of the things, out of many, that made civil forfeiture so obscene was that it had a perverse incentive setup. When your funding is fully dependent on seizing funds as a result of someone doing something that is illegal, it creates an incentive to charge people that didn't break the law with a crime and sadly this often works in the US because too many people cannot afford the time to go to court or get a lawyer and judges defer to a cop's judgment as being infallible. Hell, traffic offenses in the US might as well be treated as a racket.
It would just be nice if enough of us in the US admitted that having armed cops for traffic enforcement is a stupid fucking idea that just results in tons of innocent people either being killed or maimed by shitty cops. It's a task that can be done by an unarmed entity. It's also something would be made safer for everyone, both cop and non-cop, if they were unarmed and had no ability to arrest people.
As for driverless cars. I've mentioned that the moment those become common, you're going to see some really shitty localities notorious for using tickets as a revenue source being crushed by a major auto manufacturer. The thing is no car maker is going to take the PR hit of "our vehicle will get you tickets because it doesn't know the rules of the road," and they'll be all too happy to go up against the police on that one as well. Sure PDs can place big orders if they upgrade their fleet all at once, but I'm willing to bet PDs make up less than a percent of most auto sales and big fleet buys are probably seldom. Also I'd wager public support for the police will have waned further by the time such a suit happens. So a big auto maker could also get a PR win for telling the ticket writing pigs to fuck off, on top of protecting their reputation, while also getting the PR win for shitting on a locality that is known statewide, or even regionally, for manufacturing BS traffic tickets in order to rob people.
Not to mention, I get the hunch that a number of places have increasingly turned to traffic fines to fund their PDs, which is a really bad idea. One of the things, out of many, that made civil forfeiture so obscene was that it had a perverse incentive setup. When your funding is fully dependent on seizing funds as a result of someone doing something that is illegal, it creates an incentive to charge people that didn't break the law with a crime and sadly this often works in the US because too many people cannot afford the time to go to court or get a lawyer and judges defer to a cop's judgment as being infallible. Hell, traffic offenses in the US might as well be treated as a racket.
PD cars are done through a secondary market like the armored cars used by governments. To be sure, automakers are cognizant that this is a fleet market and may keep a model around for an extra year or two a gesture of good will (*cough*CrownVic*cough*) but the customization most police departments have aren't available through stock options.
All opinions are my own and in no way reflect that of my employer.
I can't get my parents to pull the handicapped placard off their rear view mirror while they are driving, this is just a count down to that boondocks situation where cops shoot at someone who has a wallet that is made out of safety orange hunter vests.
Worth pointing out that was based on a real thing that happened. Only the guy didn't survive I think. It's been a long time.
I really hate this stupid PR fixes because they don't do anything. Safety wallets stopped being a thing because people still got shot reaching for their safety wallet. As long as the cops are treating it like a life or death situation then bad shit will happen. Adrenaline makes it really hard to figure out what's going on. It is a small step to a panic decision that ends somebody at that point. Right now it is a count down till the Minnesota State Police issue a warning about people carrying guns in their new safety pouch.
Abner Louima (sp?) In NYC was hit by a hail of police bullets because he tried to take out his wallet when police stopped him walking into his building.
For his trouble he got a Bruce Springsteen song and his murderers all walked free.
Probably have the name incorrect. It’s not your fault though. It’s hard to keep track of all the people the NYPD have murdered or brutalized over the years. The on you were looking for was Amadou Diallo
Separate traffic enforcement from the rest of the PDs and forbid them from having guns. They don't need to be armed to write traffic tickets. Hell, while we're at it, codify things so that shitty localities can't run significant parts of their budgets off of tickets. Not only would this prevent them from shooting people, but would cut down on their level of interaction with people, which would further reduce problems; especially, since they'd no longer be playing state sanction highway robber.
The natural cop response is always "but what about when people shoot at us when we pull them over!", and they're going to get a lot of mileage from that fuckawful deception that highway enforcers need that protection.
Make traffic enforcement a completely non-criminal-related matter. Traffic officers can never arrest you, never impound you, they can only ever give you citations. For drivers that are an immediate hazard for whatever reason, they can call in a regular police unit.
If nobody is ever worried the unarmed person walking up to them will, justly or unjustly, arrest, attack, or murder them, absolutely fucking nobody with any capability for rational thought is going to risk a life sentence for getting handed a non-criminal citation. And maybe even the average citizen will stop feeling intensely uncertain and nervous around neo-mafia cops who have proven they absolutely will fucking murder you for reaching for a wallet, immensely de-escalating traffic stops in general before they even happen.
Oh, and citations tied to income. So no more of this shit with low-income folks having to risk eviction or something to pay a minor traffic fine and the rich just paying the shit off without even thinking about it.
Take it a step further, allow Traffic citations to be done with a photo radar and mail the ticket in the post, no need to even interact or pull citizens over at all.
I'm dubious of this, but more because I'm dubious about the automated systems than anything else. Also, I'm dubious about citing a car owner for all infractions committed in their car, regardless of who is driving. We already have something similar for good 2 go or whatever it is in WA, and when my siblings borrowed my car I'd get random payments owed for them crossing one of the bridges. They'd pay it of course, but it was always a surprise, which is bad. (ESPECIALLY if the goal is to correct behavior).
Please note, dubious, not inherently opposed.
Is there no signage on those routes to alert them of the fees, so that your siblings would know to pay you ahead of time when they returned the vehicle? Sounds like a cash grab from whoever is running it.
There is signage before and after alerting you to the fees.(which change for rush out and not every hour iirc) It’s possible there are some places where the fee isn’t clearly explained but I haven’t seen them.
Louima was the guy the NYPD sexually tortured and nearly killed after a routine arrest.
The victim having one of those pouches isn't going to put any killer cops in prison
They could have had a gun in that pouch, the cop was in fear for his life!
This is exactly what I thought. If you're the kind of person who's going to shoot a police officer at a traffic stop now you have a space specifically designated as ,"not threatening" by the police officer.
Isn't that worse?
MegaMan001 on
I am in the business of saving lives.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
The victim having one of those pouches isn't going to put any killer cops in prison
They could have had a gun in that pouch, the cop was in fear for his life!
This is exactly what I thought. If you're the kind of person who's going to shoot a police officer at a traffic stop now you have a space specifically designated as ,"not threatening" by the police officer.
Isn't that worse?
The Police Officer is not actually going to treat that as less threatening.
The victim having one of those pouches isn't going to put any killer cops in prison
They could have had a gun in that pouch, the cop was in fear for his life!
This is exactly what I thought. If you're the kind of person who's going to shoot a police officer at a traffic stop now you have a space specifically designated as ,"not threatening" by the police officer.
Isn't that worse?
The Police Officer is not actually going to treat that as less threatening.
Yeah, no shit, but that's part of why this makes no sense.
First, the burden of not being murdered by a police officer shouldn't rest on the civilian.
Second, introducing a special bag into the vehicle that is labeled as being "more safe" as in to prevent a civilian from reaching into the glove box would mean it would be a nonthreatening place for a civilian to hide their firearm and reach for it without suspicion.
Third, the base of the entire problem is police officers assume everyone is armed and plan to kill them. That's the starting point of their fear and anxiety. You can't fix this with a bag.
I've told this story before, but ever since the BLM protests and the what, hundred or so stories over the years of predominantly white cops killing predominantly people of colored I've been pulled over precisely once. I stopped, rolled down my windows, turned off my car and put the keys on the dashboard and then placed my hands outside the window in full view. The cop asked me what I was doing and I told him honestly I did not want to be murdered by him so I was going to stay right there until told otherwise.
Alec Karakatsanis, the founder and executive director of Civil Rights Corps, a "non-profit organization dedicated to challenging systemic injustice in the United States’ legal system" (view their full mission statement here has put up a Twitter thread about a Biden nomination for US attorney.
Due to the length of the tweets I will be putting the majority of them inside spoiler tags.
THREAD: Biden is reportedly nominating a former judge, Keva Landrum, to be U.S. Atty in New Orleans. The history of this judge’s illegal behavior and violent crimes will shock you to the core.
A few years ago, we uncovered that Judge Landrum was running a modern day debtors' prison. The things I saw during this investigation have haunted me ever since. The story of corruption is hard to believe.
Judge Landrum and other judges were jailing very poor people in New Orleans if they couldn't pay debts. They created a "Collections Department" inside the court to illegally collect debt. When our clients couldn't pay, they were caged in unbearable conditions. It gets worse.
Judge Landrum and other judges took a cut of the profits to run their courts, creating an unconstitutional financial conflict of interest that destroyed whatever "neutrality" they were supposed to have as judges. It gets worse.
The judges even used some of these profits they extorted from the poorest people in New Orleans (disproportionately Black) on benefits for themselves and their spouses. Even the District Attorney wrote a letter asking the State Attorney General to prosecute the judges.
This scheme violated many laws, but among the most basic principles: the U.S. Constitution forbids a judge from putting a human being in a cage solely because the person cannot make a cash payment. And yet it happened every day for years. It's how Landrum and others did business.
What did this mean? Mothers and fathers separated from their families. People forced to sell blood plasma to pay their debts. Debtors brutalized in filthy jail cells without sunlight, fresh air, exercise, and medical care.
The violations of constitutional rights were so egregious that the federal court in New Orleans issued a judgment against Judge Landrum and other judges declaring that they were violating the basic 14th Amendment rights of some of the poorest people in New Orleans.
After she lost, Judge Landrum chose to appeal to try to preserve her financial conflict of interest. But a unanimous federal appeals court held that her financial conflict of interest violated the Fourteenth Amendment and the simple due process right to a neutral judge.
Although Landrum lost this civil case, both federal and state prosecutors ultimately decided that they would let the criminal offenses of the judges go. I’ve written a lot about how our legal system only chooses to prosecute *some* crimes by *some* people. https://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/the-punishment-bureaucracy
That's just one example. The Supreme Court reversed a conviction because Landrum helped DAs discriminate against Black jurors. Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan took an unusual step of writing separately to call out Landrum’s behavior. https://theappeal.org/landrum-new-orleans-da/
And there’s much more: few people have amassed as long and as monstrous a record of fighting to keep innocent people in prison as Judge Landrum. This post by a longtime official with the Innocent Project describes many examples from Judge Landrum’s career. https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10102605673695831&id=1002458
In one of the most heartbreaking stories, Landrum fought to keep an innocent teenager, Kia Stewart, in prison in horrific conditions for 10 years before he was exonerated. She ignored evidence of innocence to keep Robert Jones away from his family for an additional 8 years.
And there’s more. Landrum was a key prosecutor in the DA Office at a time when we now know from internal docs, court rulings, and prison data that the office used fake subpoenas, illegally jailed crime victims to coerce testimony, routinely hid evidence of innocence.
Over a period of years as a DA and a judge, Landrum presided over the greatest expansion of caging Black people in modern history, as New Orleans became the world leader in human caging of Black people and poor people. She made a lot of money for the bail industry and others.
Stories like this are important. They show how powerful people reward people willing to do monstrous things for them. And if we don’t make noise, the cycle of corruption will continue. To my knowledge, Biden has never publicly been asked about this corrupt nomination.
It isn’t too late to do something. For some reason (perhaps you can guess by now), it appears that Landrum's background check hasn’t been completed. And key members of the Senate who confirm nominees can be educated about her horrific history of criminality and injustice.
To my knowledge, Landrum would be the first U.S. Atty ever to serve after a court judgment that they violated federal constitutional rights. And *this* is the person that elite politicians advising Biden want to appoint to "enforce the law." People must know about it. (end)
This is the first I've heard about this, despite Landrum's nomination being announced in late April - and back then it only made the local papers, where they just have a passing mention of "resigning from her previous post due to a series of controversies."
Local police departments are promoting "not reaching" pouches that clip to a car's air vents and carry license, insurance card and registration, to help keep cops from shooting you. This hurts my brain.
1. Shifting responsibility to the driver to not make movement that will set off a kill happy cop's itchy trigger finger.
2. If reaching for a glovebox or wallet gets you shot, I don't see how reaching for this thing doesn't get you shot too.
3. Who the fuck wants their license and registration dangling from an air vent?
This reminds me of the "stop at the next available safe place" rule that many areas have now for cops pulling you over, for your own safety. And a woman, this past year or so, had her car fucking flipped while driving slow with her hazard lights in an area she could not pull over in. And instead of waiting, the cop rammed her car.
It doesn't matter what the rules are if the cops don't follow them.
I didn't believe this summary was correct, but in fact yes. The prosecutor moonlighted as a judicial clerk for the very judge who sentenced the man to death - even worse, he WROTE THE ORDER DENYING THE HABEAS RELIEF HE OPPOSED AS THE PROSECUTOR.
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IlpalaJust this guy, y'knowTexasRegistered Userregular
The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act negotiations have dissolved after Republicans turned down Democrats' final offer. Tim Scott, unsurprisingly, blames Democrats. Qualified Immunity was a sticking point.
Granted, it's a tiny fraction of the whole, and since joy is dead along with irony, there will probably be some special carveout that allows cops to continue to be plague rats and then it'll turn out the police can just unresign themselves somehow, or they'll just go to New Hampshire for all that living free and dying.
But you know what's funny? Vaccine mandates in other fields haven't led to mass firings/quittings. Half of unvaccinated nurses were claiming they would refuse to get vaccinated, and then less than 1% actually followed through with getting fired when forced. So I hope to get to see what happens if politicians will actually follow through instead of caving to the fascists.
It's absolutely no loss and completely gain if they are forced out.
Only one officer has explicitly said in their resignation that it was over the vaccine mandate, but the fact that the police unions are against the vaccine mandate despite COVID being the 1 cop killer two years running really makes it clear - it's not about safety of the police, it's HOW DARE YOU TELL THE POLICE WHAT TO DO
You can't reform an institution utterly dedicated to defying oversight and restrictions even when it would be in their best interest to do so.
Only one officer has explicitly said in their resignation that it was over the vaccine mandate, but the fact that the police unions are against the vaccine mandate despite COVID being the 1 cop killer two years running really makes it clear - it's not about safety of the police, it's HOW DARE YOU TELL THE POLICE WHAT TO DO
You can't reform an institution utterly dedicated to defying oversight and restrictions even when it would be in their best interest to do so.
Yup you end up with civilian oversight like NYC has which the police just ignore. No one wants to stick out their neck to hold the cops accountable.
Just saw the ruling in the Sarah Everard case, and it's good to see some justice happen.
This was the case of the UK police officer who arrested a woman for "breaching covid rules", then brutally raped and murdered her, and then covered it up using his position as a law enforcement officer.
In the UK, prisoners rarely serve full term life sentences except for an exception to the rule — a “whole life order”.
The sentence, described a “rare” by experts, means Couzens will never be released from prison. There will be no chance for parole.
Doesn't bring Sarah back, but there are some people who simply do not deserve to ever be free.
Ivan Harrison Hunter, 24, of Boerne, Texas, pleaded guilty to a single count of rioting. The charge carries a maximum prison term of five years.
...
Hunter admitted that he fired 13 rounds from an AK-47-style rifle into the 3rd precinct police station on May 28, 2020, as other rioters looted and set fire to the building after police evacuated. No one was struck by the gunfire.
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Yeah I could have told you about both incidents, but my brain flip flopped the names. They were the NYPDs signature "What the fucks" of the 1990s.
Come Overwatch with meeeee
Surprise was for me, not for them. Like I said, they paid it promptly when I let them know I had the bill, so I've never worried about it. Just a silly system.
Local police departments are promoting "not reaching" pouches that clip to a car's air vents and carry license, insurance card and registration, to help keep cops from shooting you. This hurts my brain.
1. Shifting responsibility to the driver to not make movement that will set off a kill happy cop's itchy trigger finger.
2. If reaching for a glovebox or wallet gets you shot, I don't see how reaching for this thing doesn't get you shot too.
3. Who the fuck wants their license and registration dangling from an air vent?
that's real nice
I'm going to push back on that a bit. When it comes to automated enforcement, the existing speed limits and punishments are built around a certain amount of leeway towards violations; a cop isn't going to pull someone over for going 5 MPH over (unless they want an excuse), but a speed camera will snap pictures all day, while not giving the city any reason to fix the actual issue. This is a problem because America keeps building streets that are designed to be zoomed down at 50 MPH, then sticking a 35 MPH speed limit sign on them and relying on police to keep traffic speed down. The speed of traffic is set by the design, not the signs; enough speeding that enforcement is required means the street's design is bad. Ideally, speeding should not only be psychologically discouraged by the street design, but should be difficult on a technical level, at which point it doesn't matter who enforces the limit.
As for red light cameras, they really should be called "right turn on red without coming to a complete stop" cameras. (Whether or not right turn on red should be allowed is a subject for a different thread.)
Sounds like a good #DefundThePolice ad to me
It's the same logic that says women are at fault for being raped.
It's propaganda to get people more accepting of the police murdering citizens.
Point of order: Secret speed limits, where it says 35, but it's actually 40, are stupid. Pay attention to your speed and you don't speed. It isn't that hard. I have been doing it for well over 15 years for now, even as traffic around me has decided 35 now means 50. If you can't maintain your speed under the limit, use cruise control. If people knew they'd get a 100% guaranteed ticket for going 1 over you would see a lot less speeding, and as a result less traffic deaths due to that speed.
Trying to hand out speeding tickets for one mile over the speed limit is only going to work as a pretense to harass and intimidate people, which just isn't accomplished the same way if you are mailing letters instead of doing it face to face with flashing lights in the rearview.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Yes, but that's why if the speed limit sign says 35, most everyone now mentally says the limit is actually 40, so they drive specifically with the speedometer at 38 or 39, not 35. I understand the American zeitgeist has adopted the idea that all rules (and laws) are meant to be broken, and there is no way to put that genie back. I just can't wait for the driverless revolution where the car itself refuses to cruise at a speed faster than the speed limit.
None of which is really the point. At least for this thread. Needing armed cops for traffic stops is madness. Ticketting for 1, 5, or a million over is entirely unrelated EXCEPT that we have armed cops doing this job.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
No, it's not. It's literally how people actually behave. Because the various systems around driving, from road design and planning to traffic enforcement, tell them that's how they should behave.
When you make a long straight street that people are mostly just going to be using to get from one place to another and then you put up a sign saying "Go X" but actually don't give people tickets unless they go X+10, you are telling drivers that this street is for driving at X+10 on just to get through this area.
And this kind of shit has always been part of policing. It's the brown paper bag from The Wire. The acknowledgement of the actual rules as opposed to those as written.
And this is also of course where police exercise their discretion to be more or less strict on different people.
I'm curious, how did we end up with cops policing traffic? Most other countries I have been in (anecdata) it is indeed a separate branch or department that has no actual policing power other than to get you to pull over, basically long enough to check your info and give you an infraction.
America is big with lots of rural areas where you literally may have one or two cops for a couple hundred square miles and can't reasonably have two people doing the job.
Also america adopted private vehicles early on in modern policing compared to most first world nations and has a lot more vehicles / driving so our modern policing policy coalesced around a vehicular society.
"Paid jobs" as they're called around here typically work like this (with some local variation).
- Law states that certain projects (Like those that effect traffic patterns) require police on scene to manage traffic.
- The company/utility pays the municipality/department a set rate times whatever hours
- The department then assigns an officer (based off a call list/seniority) and they are on site outside of normal work hours
- That officer is then paid a rate most likely less then what the local government receives and is also typically deducted a rental fee for use of the police vehicle they have on site.
Come Overwatch with meeeee
there are rural areas and small towns everywhere around the world, its definitely not a uniquely north american thing.
As for driverless cars. I've mentioned that the moment those become common, you're going to see some really shitty localities notorious for using tickets as a revenue source being crushed by a major auto manufacturer. The thing is no car maker is going to take the PR hit of "our vehicle will get you tickets because it doesn't know the rules of the road," and they'll be all too happy to go up against the police on that one as well. Sure PDs can place big orders if they upgrade their fleet all at once, but I'm willing to bet PDs make up less than a percent of most auto sales and big fleet buys are probably seldom. Also I'd wager public support for the police will have waned further by the time such a suit happens. So a big auto maker could also get a PR win for telling the ticket writing pigs to fuck off, on top of protecting their reputation, while also getting the PR win for shitting on a locality that is known statewide, or even regionally, for manufacturing BS traffic tickets in order to rob people.
Not to mention, I get the hunch that a number of places have increasingly turned to traffic fines to fund their PDs, which is a really bad idea. One of the things, out of many, that made civil forfeiture so obscene was that it had a perverse incentive setup. When your funding is fully dependent on seizing funds as a result of someone doing something that is illegal, it creates an incentive to charge people that didn't break the law with a crime and sadly this often works in the US because too many people cannot afford the time to go to court or get a lawyer and judges defer to a cop's judgment as being infallible. Hell, traffic offenses in the US might as well be treated as a racket.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
PD cars are done through a secondary market like the armored cars used by governments. To be sure, automakers are cognizant that this is a fleet market and may keep a model around for an extra year or two a gesture of good will (*cough*CrownVic*cough*) but the customization most police departments have aren't available through stock options.
Louima was the guy the NYPD sexually tortured and nearly killed after a routine arrest.
This is exactly what I thought. If you're the kind of person who's going to shoot a police officer at a traffic stop now you have a space specifically designated as ,"not threatening" by the police officer.
Isn't that worse?
The Police Officer is not actually going to treat that as less threatening.
Yeah, no shit, but that's part of why this makes no sense.
First, the burden of not being murdered by a police officer shouldn't rest on the civilian.
Second, introducing a special bag into the vehicle that is labeled as being "more safe" as in to prevent a civilian from reaching into the glove box would mean it would be a nonthreatening place for a civilian to hide their firearm and reach for it without suspicion.
Third, the base of the entire problem is police officers assume everyone is armed and plan to kill them. That's the starting point of their fear and anxiety. You can't fix this with a bag.
I've told this story before, but ever since the BLM protests and the what, hundred or so stories over the years of predominantly white cops killing predominantly people of colored I've been pulled over precisely once. I stopped, rolled down my windows, turned off my car and put the keys on the dashboard and then placed my hands outside the window in full view. The cop asked me what I was doing and I told him honestly I did not want to be murdered by him so I was going to stay right there until told otherwise.
Due to the length of the tweets I will be putting the majority of them inside spoiler tags.
This is the first I've heard about this, despite Landrum's nomination being announced in late April - and back then it only made the local papers, where they just have a passing mention of "resigning from her previous post due to a series of controversies."
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
This reminds me of the "stop at the next available safe place" rule that many areas have now for cops pulling you over, for your own safety. And a woman, this past year or so, had her car fucking flipped while driving slow with her hazard lights in an area she could not pull over in. And instead of waiting, the cop rammed her car.
It doesn't matter what the rules are if the cops don't follow them.
https://mobile.twitter.com/RMFifthCircuit/status/1440742120856252425
https://www.yahoo.com/news/bipartisan-police-reform-legislation-talks-184100209.html
Switch - SW-7373-3669-3011
Fuck Joe Manchin
Tim Scott was there to waste time by dragging Democrats along.
Granted, it's a tiny fraction of the whole, and since joy is dead along with irony, there will probably be some special carveout that allows cops to continue to be plague rats and then it'll turn out the police can just unresign themselves somehow, or they'll just go to New Hampshire for all that living free and dying.
But you know what's funny? Vaccine mandates in other fields haven't led to mass firings/quittings. Half of unvaccinated nurses were claiming they would refuse to get vaccinated, and then less than 1% actually followed through with getting fired when forced. So I hope to get to see what happens if politicians will actually follow through instead of caving to the fascists.
It's absolutely no loss and completely gain if they are forced out.
You can't reform an institution utterly dedicated to defying oversight and restrictions even when it would be in their best interest to do so.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Yup you end up with civilian oversight like NYC has which the police just ignore. No one wants to stick out their neck to hold the cops accountable.
This was the case of the UK police officer who arrested a woman for "breaching covid rules", then brutally raped and murdered her, and then covered it up using his position as a law enforcement officer.
Doesn't bring Sarah back, but there are some people who simply do not deserve to ever be free.
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/09/30/texas-man-24-admits-shooting-at-minneapolis-police-station-during-riot