traffic tickets.

[suncloud]

has anyone else noticed an annoying trend with your city.

since properties are being given back to the banks and the cities can't collect taxes on them, and they can't get the same money in property taxes from existing homes (because home prices have collapsed), cities have now turned to their police force to crank up the amount of traffic tickets as a way to keep their budget intact.

does this bother anyone besides me? the greatest thing of concern to me would be alienating a society you signed up to protect. when an officer is in distress, you would hope that someone would help, but good will towards peace officers are being eroded by cities and their greed in troubled times.

someone tell me that things aren't this bad.

[RedwolfWV]

I don't know if they are giving out any more tickets than normal here, but, now you have to pay court costs on each charge.... so if you had 3 infractions on the ticket, thats $125 court cost on EACH one, plus the price of the infractions themselves.

[suncloud]

I don't know if they are giving out any more tickets than normal here, but, now you have to pay court costs on each charge.... so if you had 3 infractions on the ticket, thats $125 court cost on EACH one, plus the price of the infractions themselves.

so you're seeing a spike in courts taking money, which could translate to cops being maybe persuaded by their chief into finding more infractions on a given traffic stop.

i got a ticket that isn't enforceable under california law, but i have to post the money to get a court date - 3000 bucks. needless to say i'm sure my license has now been suspended. like i've got 3k to spare. also i see people getting pulled over when i drop my son off at school, and when i go to pick him up. now considering i'm only on the road for 30 minutes a day, i notice that i see a cop writing a ticket almost every time i get into my car.

it bothers me because i think cops are getting shafted here. number one, they're now glorified meter maids, not the "to serve and protect" that they signed up for. number two, there's a huge movement in the community to change the job description to "peace officer" instead of "police officer". its very hard to be a peace officer when the public is inclined to be upset at you.

before i partially tore my miniscus (july) i was in the criminal justice training program, and i'm really concerned about how the public perception of the police may be changing.

[aquanutz]

I live in MA so you can pretty much drive someone off the road here and not get pulled over... The few people that do get tickets (from what I've experienced) are the ones that run a red light about 4 seconds after the light turns green for the OTHER direction. That happened in front of me the other day, cop was right there, was hilarious.

That being said, I never go a few miles above the speed limit if I am the only one on the road or I usually stay a little slower the flow if everyone on the road is speeding, that way I don't stick out and am less likely to get pulled over.