When you drive down into what's happening here, it looks pretty clearly like the town is operating a "speed trap" on a section of Interstate that goes through the city limits. It's overwhelmingly likely that a majority of these stops are technically legitimate, even if the article is able to come up with a handful of sensational-sounding cases. Traffic violations are routine. You could sit a cop on just about any stretch of road in the town where I live and pull people over all day every day for totally legitimate violations, if that's what you wanted to do.
Hell, there's a school speed-zone camera right outside my window. I could sit here and watch its flash light-up violators' license plates all day -- on a stretch of road that's clearly marked as a school zone with a speed camera!
The status quo is that a significant percentage of drivers violate the law every time they get behind the wheel and a lot of Americans more or less think it's no big deal, despite overwhelming evidence for the problems it causes.
Alas, as this article demonstrates, if you hold these drivers accountable, then most Americans will perceive them to be innocent victims of out-of-control police.
Aside from the other response to you, showing what is clearly not routine policing:
>The status quo is that a significant percentage of drivers violate the law every time they get behind the wheel and a lot of Americans more or less think it's no big deal...
This is pretty damning evidence of negligent road design. The roads are built for speeds so far above the posted limit that police officers are then required to enforce limits that are, compared to the road's design speed, pernicious and arbitrary.
Traffic engineers like to pretend that speeds can be limited only by enforcement, in glaring contradiction to the fact that all of the design process centers around a (fast) design speed.
There's an engineer in Minnesota who is trying to sue the pants off of egregious offenders to send a message, and it's the most inspiring use of litigation I've ever heard.[0]
Yes, this is right. Enforcement should be third, behind better road design and automation within the vehicle (i.e. speed governors and geofencing).
There’s some skepticism in left-leaning circles about the fairness or utility of automated enforcement, but I hope articles like this one demonstrate why it’s so much better.
(In this particular case we're mostly talking about Interstate traffic, it seems, which, to be frank, I'm far less concerned about. If anything is wrong with their relentless ticketing it's that it's focused in the wrong place.)
There is also automated enforcement outside the vehicles. It seems like this works to great effect in Europe although they seem to have political systems that don't result in, say, quietly changing yellow light timings to get more revenue.
>Sandra Jo Harris, a 52-year-old grandmother, claims in a lawsuit she pulled off I-22 at Cherry Avenue on Jan. 8, 2020, as she often did when she went to visit her daughter. It was nearing dusk, and as she drove into the neighborhood she didn’t think much about the unmarked black SUV with tinted windows on the side of the road. She turned on her lights, according to her lawsuit, because of the approaching darkness.
>But when she did, the unmarked SUV pulled into the street, crossed the center line and sped toward her car, blue lights flashing. She was not speeding, or breaking the law, she argued in the suit. She pulled to the side of the road as the SUV pulled behind her, and a wrecker simultaneously parked nearby. It frightened her, and led to more trouble.
> Officers, dressed completely in dark, unmarked uniforms approached her, and one accused her of flickering her lights to warn others of their presence, her suit alleges. Unsure what was happening, Harris dialed 911. But an officer grabbed the phone and threw it to the ground, breaking it, the lawsuit says. Police put her in a patrol car and searched her vehicle for drugs.
>Harris’ lawyers contend she was taken to the Brookside jail, strip-searched, and told she could be jailed up to two days. She had an asthma attack and a panic attack, but when she knocked on the door to alert a guard, a jailer said if she continued to knock she would be charged with attempting to escape. Eventually she was given an inhaler and treated by paramedics.
>Police charged Harris with flickering her lights – or “nuisance of casting lights from motor vehicle on real property at night,” which she argues did not happen and eventually was dropped. She was also charged with resisting arrest. A report quoted in the suit claimed she “tighten (sic) arm muscles from getting handcuff (sic).”
>In addition, the police charged her with making a false 911 call, obstructing government operations by refusing to give proper papers, and disorderly conduct for yelling for others to come out of their homes. They let her out of jail at midnight, long after her family had made bond.
Let's recap. A group of unmarked men in an unmarked vehicle pulled over a woman for using her lights at night, destroyed her property, denied her medical assistance, strip searched her, accused her of drug possession, threatened to charge her with escaping jail, charged her with resisting arrest for tightening her arms, and released her way past posting bond. AND, this is one of the luckier, wealthier victims who had legal recourses to file lawsuit.
In another instance, an officer was literally inventing law on the fly -- this is more than a speedtrap.
I'm annoyed by this story before the first sentence is even complete. Who cares that she's a grandmother? What an absolutely irrelevant detail designed to preload sympathy for her before we even know any of the details.
But assuming the events unfolded as she describes, this particular case is clearly egregious. There's no evidence that this is the modal case. We're mostly talking about legitimate (if relentless) ticketing of traffic violations.
To the extent that an increase in the number of police interactions is going to result in an increase in the prevalence of bad interactions (which I think is true), the answer is much more automated enforcement.
A town this abusive is certain to have all their technicalities in line. Here, it's that unattended vessels be towed off of public roadways or property. They're unattended because of frivolous detainments.
PSA: when getting pulled over, you should, after appearing controlled and predictable to the police, find private property to pull onto and call a friend or family to be ready to retrieve your car to prevent this particular abuse.
When you drive down into what's happening here, it looks pretty clearly like the town is operating a "speed trap" on a section of Interstate that goes through the city limits. It's overwhelmingly likely that a majority of these stops are technically legitimate, even if the article is able to come up with a handful of sensational-sounding cases. Traffic violations are routine. You could sit a cop on just about any stretch of road in the town where I live and pull people over all day every day for totally legitimate violations, if that's what you wanted to do.
Hell, there's a school speed-zone camera right outside my window. I could sit here and watch its flash light-up violators' license plates all day -- on a stretch of road that's clearly marked as a school zone with a speed camera!
The status quo is that a significant percentage of drivers violate the law every time they get behind the wheel and a lot of Americans more or less think it's no big deal, despite overwhelming evidence for the problems it causes.
Alas, as this article demonstrates, if you hold these drivers accountable, then most Americans will perceive them to be innocent victims of out-of-control police.