Tuesday, January 20, 2015

"The NYPD is Actually Proving that they Exist Mainly for Revenue Generation"

"Unnecessary laws are not good laws, but traps for money." - Thomas Hobbes

I've never seen any evidence that traffic tickets "save lives." Unfortunately, some police and citizens delude themselves they do. When police are running speed traps that means they can't do anything else, like investigate real crimes.

Some years ago there was a "town" in Southwest Illinois called National City. It had about 100 people living in trailers. The "police department" did nothing except run a speed trap and made hundreds of thousands a year.

One day the state of Illinois decertified the city and bulldozed the place. It's an empty field now.

The amount of resources diverted to the police state is enormous. It impoverishes everyone except the police state.

This article is from The Free Thought Project.


“It definitely is a revenue driver for the city, this mass regime of handing out tickets. It does strike the ear a little bit funny when you hear police union leaders talking about how we are only to going to arrest people when we ‘have to.’ It seems like that should be the real function of police generally.”

Arrests and ticket violations in New York City are dropping over the New York Police Department’s purported political protest against the mayor, but investigative journalist Matt Taibbi says the slowdown is exposing weaknesses in normal police policy.

The number of arrests across the city last week plunged to just over 2,000 – compared to over 5,000 during the same time one year ago – with parking- and driving-related tickets down more than 90 percent, according to NYPD data. There has also been a drop in new inmates, with only 618 entering the system compared to over 1,000 a year ago.

Speaking with RT, Taibbi said the so-called “work stoppage” – portrayed as a political police protest against Mayor Bill de Blasio over his sympathetic comments towards police brutality protesters – seems to be about trying to hit the mayor in the budget without endangering the public.

“The police, in this slowdown, they are halting handing out parking tickets, which are enormously lucrative for the city, and they are also not doing these ‘quality of life’ summonses, which are a huge hardship on the people who get them but make significantly less money for the city. So there are two different things going on here,” he said.

“It definitely is a revenue driver for the city, this mass regime of handing out tickets. It does strike the ear a little bit funny when you hear police union ,pleaders talking about how we are only to going to arrest people when we ‘have to.’ It seems like that should be the real function of police generally. If they are ticketing and arresting people when they don’t have to, then something’s up, and that’s not right.”

Taibbi said the slowdown demonstrates how police officers are used to make up for tax shortfalls with ticket and citation revenue. Cutting down summonses for “quality of life” issues also exposes the downfalls of “broken windows” policing.

“This new tactic, ‘broken windows,’ is kind of like commercial fishing. Basically what you do is throw a net over a whole neighborhood; you pull in everybody for every tiny, small thing; and then the idea is to get people who have guns or warrants, and then you throw everybody else back,” he said. “It is an effective strategy to a degree, but it creates a lot of hostility in the target neighborhoods.”

Taibbi added that police officers have told him that they wished they could go back to the days when they responded to calls, fought and investigated crime, and developed sources and informants – rather than issue summonses to meet quotas every month.

Earlier this week during a presentation at police headquarters – when the city revealed the latest crime data, showing the lowest murder, robbery, and burglary rates for the city in the past 10 years – the mayor and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton responded to a question by stating that the lower crime figures were a result of police policies like broken windows, not because of the ineffectiveness of the programs.

“Broken windows is here to stay. Stop, question and frisk is here to stay,” Bratton said. “But it will be done in appropriate amounts. So, even the broken windows policing – we are very selective in terms of looking at areas where we can reduce the need for that. Marijuana arrests is clearly one of those. We took a close look at marijuana arrests and felt it was not an appropriate use of our resources. It was costing us a fortune, in terms of manpower, over time.”

At this point, Mayor de Blasio interrupted Bratton to take the podium.

“A lot of us were here in the 1980s, 1990s, and could never have imagined these kind of numbers. They are the result of a proactive strategy. They’re the result of a number of strategies, one of which is the broken windows approach,” he said.

“That’s why I believe in it, because it continues to drive down crime. And think of what that means for everyday people’s lives – an ever-safer city, where people know that they’re safe, their children are safe, their seniors are safe, their property’s safe. It has immense ramifications for the economic well-being of this city. It’s a strategy that’s worked.”

5 comments:

Glen Filthie said...

That is not the only point they're proving. NYFC (Noo Yawk Fucken City) is going to prove that the cops you have a light years better than the cops you are going to get.

Thanks to turd brained liberals and meat headed libertarians (the difference between these idiots is merely conversational) - you will soon have cops like the British Bobbies. They are comprised of unarmed petite women, third world monkeys, wimps and shrimps - and they will watch you get beaten to death by feral liberal social experiments and stand idly by waiting for an ambulance as you bleed out.

The only thing you have going for you - as you go forward - is the Second Amendment...and the liberals fully intend to do away with that too.

So...keep picking on the cops, girls. The police state you have now is going to look great compared to the one you are going to get.

Mindstorm said...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_enforcement_camera

See? Automation.

Clayton Bigsby said...

“Some years ago there was a "town" in Southwest Illinois called National City. It had about 100 people living in trailers. The "police department" did nothing except run a speed trap and made hundreds of thousands a year. One day the state of Illinois decertified the city and bulldozed the place. It's an empty field now.”

Unky Bob, you certainly spin a good yarn. Try to get your facts straight. National City, which had been a booming stockyard for decades, was dissolved in 1997 after nearly thirty years of precipitous decline. The company that owned the residential property there—the St. Louis National Stockyads Company—ordered its 50 remaining residents to leave, most of whom lived in single family homes. The town still consists of several businesses there today, including a new river grain terminal. So it is NOT empty.



The incident you are referring to was a police force employed by that same company that in one single year (1989) collected over $100,000 in speeding tickets for a one-mile stretch of a state highway that led into and out of town. The company had ordered the cops to address a revenue shortage by being aggressive with speeders. I do comprehend your sentiment, but the way you began the story, you make yourself look like a fool.

Unknown said...

I went through that area almost every day. The State of Illinois closed off both ends of Route 3 so no one could go through National City, then closed the "town" down. One end of Route 3 is stockyards and the other whorehouses and strip clubs. National City itself is bulldozed and deserted. It doesn't exist anymore - and it was closed down because of the so-called police force of National City ticketing innocent people.

Anonymous said...

"Taibbi added that police officers have told him that they wished they could go back to the days when they responded to calls, fought and investigated crime, and developed sources and informants – rather than issue summonses to meet quotas every month."

Right. Most of the cops I know are decent guys who joined the force because they sincerely wanted to "protect and serve", just like it says on the cars. Unfortunately, stopping actual crime is a very low priority for most levels of government these days, and if you're a cop, the government is your boss. They naively believed they were going to be arresting muggers who menace little old ladies in back alleys, but instead, they're handing out tickets to people who don't wear seat belts.