Whether or not a specific person is being targeted is not the point. They're basically being told "Write as many tickets as you can. We'll give you a bonus if you write the most!"

That's not the intent of cops, or certainly not the main intent.

I know that tickets are tracked for each cop. The idea that a good cop is one that writes a lot of tickets is another piece of baloney, but the system is flawed to start with so whatever...

I have only met one nice cop so far, in that he didn't make trouble where there wasn't any, or push an issue that wasn't worth pushing. I had one guy stop me at 12:15am coming home from a friend's house with my wife and 3 year old daughter in the car with me, my daughter screaming because he'd woken her up with lights and siren, to give me a warning about a headlight being out (despite the fact that my high beams worked just fine, and there was no traffic around). And to make matters worse, he tried to run my Canadian license and registration in the middle of East Texas (knowing he couldn't get it through, regardless). That's a stupid cop (though he was at least polite). Wonder if he met his quota that month?

 

I really hate to pick this one apart, but here goes.

Police officers issue speeding tickets because it is EASY. Just park somewhere out of the way, eventually a speeder comes along, and now you get to write a ticket. Simple, you let them come to you. Hell, my sales job would be absolutely CAKE if I just sat at my desk all day and sales leads just came to me.

And as far as the vandalism thing goes, my Impreza was 2 months old, sitting in the parking lot of my apartment building. Some kids with nothing better to do at the time decided to take a screwdriver and gouge the paint of multiple cars in the parking lot and puncture some tires. I called the police and was flat-out told that unless there was a body next to the car they simply did not care. There were handprints on the car where you could see where the vandals had leaned against the car to puncture the tires. Some simple police work would have been to check those fingerprints, but I could not even get that. That would have been WORK for someone.

Now, lets add up the costs in insurance and deductibles that had to be paid by all these people to have their cars repaired. Most likely, you are now sharing in the costs of these repairs in your insurance premiums because vandals simply know that they will not get caught. If police spent time doing REAL work, actually "Serving and protecting" the public instead of generating revenue, you might begin to see the benefit in your own wallet.

And don't give me the 'not enforcing speeding will raise accidents'. If you are driving stupidly, you deserve a ticket. How many of you have moved with the flow of traffic and come upon someone doing the speed limit? Really makes for a dangerous situation doesn't it? How many of you have been below the speed limit because traffic necessitates it, and yet someone is trying to weave through traffic to get up to the speed limit? It isn't an issue of an absolute number being given that should dictate whether or not you are suddenly breaking the law. Conditions dictate the speed you should travel and tickets shouls not be based upon some arbitraty number.

/soapbox

 

Most people I know don't have any positive run-ins with the police. Most have never needed saving from the police(thank god), but most/all have been ticketed. Hence the dim view of them some people have.
I won't even go into the experience my wife had with a retarded cop a few weekends ago.

 

Cops don't prevent crime, they just respond to it after the fact.

Paying cops to collect revenue on the highways is just flat-out wrong. I used to respect cops until I came to this country. Now I consider them lying scum until proven otherwise. How can a person who spends their day stalking people for money possibly feel good about themselves?

 

umm....maybe because they are making the roads safer? Or by enforcing laws? i know it sounds crazy...

have you ever seen a high speed accident? you do know that by having a police force on our roads keeping people from driving as fast or as wreckless as they care to DOES have a positive impact, right?

 

That is indeed the point however. There is a certain point where driving too fast IS wreckless and you should be ticketed for it. However, there are many stretches of road I can point out where the speed limit is set far too low for the area, and others where I can say that I find the speed limit too high.

The speed limit should become a reccommendation. Based upon the conditions present and one's driving style should necessitate how tickets should be issued. I agree that completely unchecked you will have people driving far too fast. However, the burden should be on the police (again - actual WORK) to point out exactly how and why a driver's actions are unsafe.

Again, the speed limit is an arbitrary number. Enforcing speed limits is nothing more than revenue generation except in cases where a dangerous driver is actually taken off the road. Encouraging this revenue generation through bribery of a gift card (and yes, that is bribery - enticing a desired action through the promise of a reward) is nothing more than taking money from the taxpayers.

Ever wonder why most speeding tickets get reduced to non-moving violations? You think the judge is doing you a favor. The judge is doing their township a favor in reality. Moving violations have the fines split 50/50 between the township and the state. Non-moving violations have the fine go 100% directly to the township. Explain to me exactly how that is nothing more than revenue generation?

 

I've always wondered why cops always insist that they don't have a quota to meet.

Even if there is no quota, the fact that people get BS tickets all the time gives a painfully apparent appearance that there really is some sort of requirement to meet.

Quota or not, I'm sure they aren't writing tickets for their health (or anyone else's)

 

Go to Mexico and get stopped by a cop and have them clean everything out of your wallet, then come back to this board and say something about a ticket.

 

To all my Mexican board members no offense but I've seen it.

 

Moral of the story if you live in NC, have a $20 gift certificate to Dicks in your car at all times.