Still, there is an ethical dilemma here. Even if police only hand out tickets to generate revenue, why should we care? As long as the police aren’t harassing non-speeders, they aren’t violating anyone’s rights, and the police aren’t breaking the law, who cares why law breakers are being caught?
This whole thing seems silly. You’re defending law-breakers. If these people don’t want to be cited for breaking the law, don’t break the law.
When any of us choose to exceed the speed limit, we are doing it because we are willing to risk getting a speeding ticket. Whether the officer who pulls me over is doing it to make the roads safer or to generate revenue, I took the risk of my own free will, and if I didn’t want to take the risk, I didn’t have to. If I was speeding, I did so of my own free will, and making the case that I shouldn’t get a ticket because “they only gave me a ticket for the revenue” makes me sound like a whinny little child who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar five minutes before dinner.
Let’s take credit for the decisions we make when we choose to break the law.
As a town manager…do you want to hand out more tickets or stop speeders?? Handing out more tickets MAY reduce the number of speeders…but it seems to me that towns are expecting to INCREASE the number of tickets…and NOT decrease the number of speeders. In fact there’s a fine line…if the cops give out TOO many tickets then the town will get a bad reputation and people will slow down (which I would think a town wants). But the police and town managers of these small towns know what that threshold is.
I agree you shouldn’t speed…especially in these towns…But it’s NOT always black and white. There’s this one town in NH that has a road that’s 2 lanes in each direction…nice and straight…Back in the 80’s the speed limit was 45…But the town needed more revenue…so they lowered the speed limit to 30…All they did was remove the 45mph speed limit signs. Since the town has a law that says the speed limit is 30 unless otherwise posted. They didn’t lower it because of the high number of accidents or anything like that…they lowered it because they wanted more revenue. And every time I travel that road…there’s always someone pulled over.
Except for one small problem: bogus tickets. I got one once. Tried to fight it and was thoroughly acolded by the judge magistrate. He did lower the fine, and it was 100 miles from home, so I just paid it and left. If you have an out of state plate on route 2 in western Mass (around Irvin) you WILL get a ticket, whether you’re violating or not.
This wasn’t a speed trap, but my brother had to drive through a little townin the adjoining county on his way home from work. The town had one stop sign on the highway through the town and the local constable could park where he wasn’t visible and then arrest motorists who didn’t stop or come to a complete stop. However, he was known for stopping people whose license plate indicated that they weren’t residents of the county. My brother was warned about this constable. At any rate, my brother was coming home late at night in is old GMC pickup that had a worn engine and really smoked profusely. He stopped at the stop sign and knew that he had stopped, because the old GMC was a 3 speed shift and wasn’t synchonized in first gear. At any rate, my brother was pulled over by the constable and accused of making a rolling stop. My brother knew he hadn’t done this, but thought really quickly and left the engine idling while the constable went around to the back of the truck to check the license plate. The constable came back to the door of the truck coughing from the heavy exhaust fumes and made some comment about the smoke coming from the exhaust. My brother said, “I know. The truck has a broken ring and I don’t have the money to fix it. I’ve been laid off from my job. If you give me a ticket, I’ll have to serve the time in jail”. The constable let him go. I asked my brother what he would say if he came through the next week in his Lincoln and the constable pulled him over and recognized him from the stop he made of my brother in the old GMC pickup. My brother said tht he would tell the constable that he still had good credit.
I’ve been stopped 3 times in Kingfisher, OK for doing absolutely nothing wrong and ticketed once.
The speeding ticket I got there was given to me for doing 25 in a 35 and yes I fought it in court. And lost.
Consider this one for a laugh, and possibly sign of a God Complex. Our local volunteer fire chief (who passed away just a couple of years ago) lived 5 miles out across the county line.
He had gotten elected as a county commissioner in the other county. This county is sparsely populated and the county seat is a small town.
This guy was apparently hanging out in the county seat (even at night) with a taxpayer funded radar unit that was mounted in his personal pickup truck. He is not a law enforcement officer and has no legal authority to pull someone over or ticket them but that did not stop him from pulling people over and verbally warning them.
Imagine some 300 pound guy in an unmarked pickup and wearing grubby overalls with rubber boots stopping you and running off at the mouth…
he was lucky someone didn’t either call the cops on him for impersonating them, or get shot for someone thinking he wasn’t a cop and was gonna harm them in some way(self defense excuse).
The NJ. shore towns are infamous for writing tickets to people with out of state plates. I received one at a toll booth getting off the Garden State Parkway in Eatontown NJ. I was on my way to work as a lifeguard at the beach. At the time I was in college and had Pennsylvania plates on my car. I pulled up to the booth, took off my seatbelt to reach into my back pocket to get my money to pay the toll. Paid the toll. Put my seatbelt back on as I was pulling out. heard a rap on my windshield from the officer watching the entire transaction. I got pulled over and ticketed for driving without a seatbelt. Went to fight the ticket. Judge called me a liar after I told my side and held me in contempt of court. Very EXPENSIVE day.
Speed limits for the most part have nothing to do with safety and everything to do with revenue generation.
Most of these podunk towns shouldn’t even exist and be merged into larger entities with neighboring areas with police services being done on a county wide level.
This sounds like a pure revenue generation machine.
