There's a long tradition, particularly familiar to travelers in the Southern states, of using traffic law enforcement to collect dollars from the unwary driver. Indeed, the classic example from the 1960s involves tailgating a vehicle with out-of-state plates, after dark, in hopes of prompting even the wary driver to speed up just as he crosses a state or county line so he can be tagged for speeding.
It was this surreptitious practice which probably accounts for the passage of laws which require the agents of law enforcement to announce their presence with flashing lights and sirens.
But, the modern speed trap tends to operate in broad daylight and, in places like Waldo and Lawtey, Florida, relies mainly on quickly changing speed limits to which the inattentive driver fails to adjust. The same seemed to be true in Pendergrass, Georgia.
For the third year in a row, cops in Pendergrass, Georgia earned the state's speed trap record by collecting $1012 in cash for each of the city's 479 residents. The $485,011 prize came from seizures, fees, and speeding tickets in 2005.
And now, in a sense, the whole state is getting into the act with the new Super Speeder Law from which our Republican governor hopes to collect $23 million for the state. Whether the troopers will be instructed to concentrate on out-of-state license plates is unclear. The locals have been assured via news reports that driving 15 miles over the 70 mile limit is not likely to attract the trooper's attention, the objective being to make the same number of stops and just collect more money--$200 over whatever the local take happens to be.
Of course, that wouldn't work the same in New Hampshire, since there is no local take from traffic enforcement fines. All of the money goes into the General Fund and that explains a certain reluctance on the part of local police to engage in an activity that costs but doesn't bring in any money.
But, that's not what prompted this diary anyway. No, what I want to bring forward is, as far as I can determine, a truly innovative strategy for generating income via law enforcement to flow directly into the municipal fund--no effort by and no sharing with the state involved.
The way it's been explained to me is that an out-of-town person, who, as a result of a personal dispute, becomes subject to a restraining order can be banished from the town entirely. But, in the event there's some business he needs to take care of, the Durham Police Department will, at the chief's convenience, provide that banned person with a police escort at a cost of $70 per hour for a minimum of four hours (to make the book-keeping worth while), even if the officer's detail only lasts an hour.
Granted, that's less than the $200 dollars an hour the defense attorney charges to help get the citizen out of this predicament. But, the Police Department's innovative strategy strikes me as a gross violation of a person's rights.
And, it's part of a pattern--the violation of rights, I mean. Take this case from Utah where non-residents are being targeted for abuse.
Non-Utah drivers are targeted, lawyer says
By Linda Thomson
Deseret News
Published: Saturday, Dec. 19, 2009 10:27 p.m. MST
PARK CITY — The Utah Highway Patrol is violating at least three constitutional amendments by profiling drivers with out-of-state license plates on a portion of I-80, an attorney argued Tuesday.
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Among the rights being violated are the Constitution's First Amendment (which permits free travel), the Fourth Amendment (prohibiting illegal searches and seizures) and the 14th Amendment (which provides equal protection under the law), according to D'Elia.
A criminal interdiction exercise was in force Nov. 14-16, 2008, to pinpoint and stop drug trafficking, especially marijuana, that was being hauled from northern California across states such as Utah to places farther east in the United States. This coincided with harvest time for marijuana and established shipping periods.
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...troopers stopped 144 vehicles — and 136 of them had out-of-state plates....each trooper said under oath he had a valid, traffic-related reason for pulling the drivers over.
Testifying under oath presumably re-enforces the presumption of probity, which precludes the suggestion that law enforcement officers might lie. But, that's not what bothers me. What bothers me is the cavalier manner in which the prosecutor dismissed the question of Constitutional violations.
As for the claims of constitutional violations, Christensen said, people with out-of-state plates are not in a protected class.
Now, I will grant that a person operating a potentially lethal machine is properly licensed and should be prepared to demonstrate his/her continuing ability to operate the equipment safely. And, though the reasons for the arrests seem spurious,
Joseph Bravo of California failed to move over for an emergency vehicle, Lance Harrison of Colorado was out of his lane, Alan Chettero of California had crossed over the line, and Robert Bilyue of Virginia engaged in improper lane travel.
the presumption that the Constitution only protects certain people from official abuse (member of the press, members of established religions, people who have been formally arrested) is the same kind of thinking that allows "detainees" (people who haven't been arrested and charged) to be interrogated and tricked in military prisons and immigration detention centers. And, even though Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and Boumediene v. Bush have determined that citizenship is irrelevant to human rights being respected, that the Constitution addresses the behavior of the agents of government and the recognition and respect for human rights is only an indirect consequence, hasn't been fully absorbed.
It almost seems as if our agents of law enforcement, at every level, are being schooled to conform their behavior to their perceptions of the people they interact with, rather than the law. It's this attitude, I think, which leads them to presume that it's their right to lie or stretch the truth in the pursuit of their objective--i.e. doing what the supervisor instructed them to do.
Finally, while I have no quarrel with the position that "ignorance of the law is no excuse," I am gravely concerned by the apparent willful ignorance of the law on the part of our agents of law enforcement. Yes, it's possible for this ignorance to be corrected by the prosecutors and the courts, but there's no mechanism for righting the wrong that's done to inoffensive people, if only to the extent that their respect for law and order is lessened.
How do we the people hold the agents of law enforcement to account? Prosecutors, it seems, have been given immunity and the current Department of Justice was prompted to agree with the argument coming to the Supreme Court out of Iowa that a person does not have a right not to be framed. How prosecutorial misconduct should be punished is now not going to be decided because the Iowa county preferred to pay out the people's money to settle the case after two innocents spent 25 years in prison, rather than have an adverse judgment come down.
All up and down the political landscape people are looking for immunity from being held to account for what, as often as not, are the consequences of laziness and sloppy behavior. And, as of this day, unless there's some demonstrable personal benefit from the malfeasance, as in this story out of Florida, they'll get away with it.