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Small towns in much of the country are dependent on punitive fines and fees

166 points by wglb 7y ago

SteveNuts 7y ago
There are a few small towns in Minnesota where you will see an officer posted up right where the highway turns from 65mph to 45mph through town. They will be there almost all day, without fail. I don't think it's a coincidence that their cruisers are all brand new. It's obviously a source of income more than anything.
- ComputerGuru 7y ago
  Yes, but thanks to this report you can now prove it and see how prevalent this practice is.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- drivers99 7y ago
  There aren't any Minnesota towns on the map in the article so it must not be more than 10%, presumably. It is interesting to see some towns that are famous in my local area for it: Morrison, CO (45.3%). 150,000 drivers pass through it daily, with a population of 431. It's hard to argue with as they stop people if they're going 15 MPH over the limit. [1] I think people here just get used to the lack of enforcement of the other cities. Mountain View, CO is only 0.09 sq mi (0.24 km2), population ~528. Sandwiched between Denver and the next suburb over, writes more tickets combined than Denver, Boulder, and Aurora. A lot of the tickets are for things like seatbelts and cracked windshields [2]. [1] https://www.speedtrap.org/colorado/morrison/ https://www.speedtrap.org/colorado/morrison/ Quote: "They got me going 41 in a 25. $135 ticket. They are making a killing by gouging people for no reason so beware!" LOL [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_View,_Colorado#Police_department_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_View,_Colorado#Police...
  - lazerpants 7y ago
    I'm not sure if 285 technically runs through Morrison, but there are lots of tickets issued right there because it is essentially a highway but has a low speed limit. They could raise the speed limit by 10-20mph and it would probably still be safe. There are also several elevation changes that make it easier for a traffic officer to hide. Weird that Mountain View is in the mix. Maybe it's just a statistical anomaly because the "town" is tiny and is actually in a metro area and may include a portion I-70.
    - drivers99 7y ago
      If you search for either town in Google Maps, it draws their boundaries, which will be useful for this thread. Morrison looks like a gerrymander: it runs along roads, and has some other parts that are unused pieces of land, and doesn't include private property that is being used even though it is next to it. It really does look like it was designed to cover roads that have nothing to do with the actual downtown part of Morrison. Mountain View is between W 41st Ave and W 44th Ave (which looks like a fairly busy road). I just noticed they are only at 5.3% in the report though. [1] That's not even 10% (and a lot more than Morrison's 45%.) Since you mentioned I-70, on the other hand there is Lakeside: Mountain View actually borders another tiny "town" (population 8), Lakeside, which consists of a lake, shopping center, and amusement park, and I-70 and related on/off-ramps. According to the map in the report [1], Lakeside is on the map but at 13.5% revenue from tickets. [1] https://www.governing.com/topics/finance/fine-fee-revenues-special-report.html https://www.governing.com/topics/finance/fine-fee-revenues-s...
non-entity 7y ago
I grew up on the outer edge of the metro Atlanta area, and I remember a lot of people joking about this small mill town and how they made all their money off traffic tickets. Eventually, I'd here a ton of notes about these type of towns everywhere I lived.
wil421 7y ago
In Georgia you can see the path I-75 and I-16 take through the southern half of the state. 16 is notorious for speed traps and other shadier stuff. Including road blocks on exit ramps with drug dogs waiting to sniff cars. They bait people into getting off at the exits by leaving fake signs about upcoming road blocks. When College kids were moving or getting out of school they’d be out in full force. Sadly my Dad grew up in one of these towns. The fines were the only way to keep parts of the town alive.
- BubRoss 7y ago
  Why were the fines the only way to keep parts of the town alive?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - wil421 7y ago
    The police lacked funding and the population of the towns were falling. If they raised taxes the very limited business could leave. The state did do something to prevent speed traps[1], not sure if it worked or passed. Sheriff is a political job and even more so in small towns. It’s just as much of a mayor type job as it is a policing one. Their entire school system had less students than my high school in metro Atlanta. [1]https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/speed-trap-bill-passes-house/avKnLqri4i6olLeBZhiFrN/ https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/spee...
    - BurningFrog 7y ago
      I doubt the town would die without the fines. They're surely the most convenient way to collect money thought.
      - wil421 7y ago
        I should rephrase it as “the town was dying and needed money” rather than it would die without the money.
jessaustin 7y ago
Missouri lawmakers responded by lowering, to 20 percent, a cap on the proportion of general operating revenues that could come from minor traffic violations. Previously the limit was 30% and before that it was 35%. That higher limit was imposed to deal with Macks Creek, MO, a village on a US highway in a valley between two steep hills. That village was coated in brake dust, until the legislature decided it doesn't really need police. I'm pleased at the progress we're making in this state.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  That was the town with one cop per 50 residents, wasn't it?
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    I'm not sure if they ever had four cops? They did have two patrol cars, though, so it could have made sense. They didn't want anyone to sneak through at 46 MPH.
btilly 7y ago
Punitive fines and fees are bad. Abuse of civil forfeiture is worse. But worse still are a minority of towns that not only are dependent on punitive fines, but that levy them in a racially biased way. See https://www.npr.org/2014/08/25/343143937/in-ferguson-court-fines-and-fees-fuel-anger https://www.npr.org/2014/08/25/343143937/in-ferguson-court-f... for an explanation of how this helped ignite the racial tension that Ferguson had a few years ago.
- DanBC 7y ago
  Here's a short BBC radio programme about St Louis County, and it covers the same sort of thing. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pqskm https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pqskm > This edition of Crossing Continents goes out and about in St Louis County to meet the people who say they are victims of a system which sees arrest warrants issued for relatively minor misdemeanours. Many of the victims are poor and black. The programme also takes us into the courts, and out onto the freeways with some of the County's police, who say they are upholding the law and promoting road safety. > The US government is not so sure. One of the towns in question is Ferguson where riots erupted after a white police officer shot a young black man dead last summer. In a recent report on the riots, the Department of Justice concluded that the Ferguson police had been stopping people for no good reason. It said they were putting revenue before public safety.
- oconnor663 7y ago
  This seems like a huge problem. At the same time, it's easier to point out that it's a huge problem than to suggest a solution that doesn't have bad side effects. If the courts don't enforce the laws somehow, the worst repeat offenders end up seriously abusing their neighbors with no consequences. Replacing fines with time-consuming punishments like mandatory community service would be problematic, because low income folks often have little flexibility in their working hours, and getting fired from a job is even worse at a low level of income than it is for everyone else. It might be that just lowering the size of fines would help some, but it seems like a fine that couldn't hurt anyone also effectively punishes no one. Maybe there's a middle ground where fines are punishing for repeat offenders, but ordinary folks who show up in court get a few slaps on the wrist before fines kick in? Are some of the laws already structured like this?
starpilot 7y ago
Every time on the 395 between Bishop and Mammoth.
- sizzzzlerz 7y ago
  That's CHP, not town cops or country sheriff except when driving through Bishop or getting off 395 to drive into Mammoth.
motohagiography 7y ago
If they are going to use minor violations of the law as a pretext for revenue collection, they should call it what it is: kleptocracy. If those places are dying out, it's probably best to let them turn into ghost towns because they have succumbed to corruption as a way of life.
- duxup 7y ago
  I think Kleptocracy would only apply if the folks in charge are funneling funds to themselves. If it is just what funds the government, that isn't a kleptocracy. Bad policy maybe, but not kleptocracy.
  - motohagiography 7y ago
    If that municipal or county government is operated by unionized public workers, including police, then the revenue collection is going primarily to pay that union, who in turn fund politicians who continue their revenue collection policies to pay their members. It's capture, so in effect, kleptocracy.
    - duxup 7y ago
      Under your description all government that pays someone(s) would qualify. That's not what kleptocracy means. >is going primarily to pay that union, I don't think that is accurate.
      - mywittyname 7y ago
        The article even specifies that several towns earmark fine revenue specifically and exclusively for use by the police department: > Georgia, for example, levies about a dozen fees, and they’re used to pay for a state police motorcycle unit, a brain and spinal injury trust fund, and a police supplemental retirement fund. And the other cases where the money for fines paid in cash just disappeared: > A Louisiana state audit last year found that some cash payments for citations in Fenton were never deposited in the village’s bank account and alleged improper compensation to city officials. These are just the direct ways in which revenue from fines are funneled into the pocketbooks of those writing the citations. It doesn't even look into the more tradition mechanics of kleptocrats, where government funds are directly funneled to businesses owned by politicians.
crossman 7y ago
I'm genuinely surprised not to see any Rhode Island cities/towns on this. Speed cameras have shown up like a plague in Providence in the past year and are expected to spread throughout the state. https://www.wpri.com/news/providence-speed-cameras-were-a-money-maker-in-2018/ https://www.wpri.com/news/providence-speed-cameras-were-a-mo...
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  This article is talking about fines as a proportion of overall revenue. In the Northeast they can fine the crap out of anything that moves and taxes revenues are still high enough (because there's so much expensive property, high incomes and other taxable stuff combined with decently high tax rates) that the fines are still not a significant percent of revenue.
  - crossman 7y ago
    Valid, and I don't know what the total fines are, but if the speed cameras alone netted 3.2 million last year it seems quite plausible that fines are accounting for 10% or more if I'm reading this report correctly http://www.providenceri.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Accountants-Report-and-Financial-Statements-City-of-Providence-FINAL.pdf http://www.providenceri.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Accou... But you know, I'm not an accountant
deadmetheny 7y ago
There's lots of towns very well-known for being speed traps in my part of the Midwest. My hometown in particular has a police force of approximately 8 full-time officers for a population of 5,000. There's absolutely no good reason to have so many cops for a population of that size, especially when the crime statistics are very low for non-traffic infractions. The only traffic ticket I've gotten in 30+ years was at 12:30 AM coming home from a concert in a larger city, going 5 MPH over the speed limit there. I'm sure he was pissed off that he couldn't also write me up for a DUI.
- Excel_Wizard 7y ago
  The U.S. has 284 police officers per 100,000 people.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_police_officers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...) That would translate to ~14 police officers for a town of your size.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    The police force doesn’t need to be spread evenly, especially in areas with little crime.
  - deadmetheny 7y ago
    Ok, sure, but that's not really a useful metric for a low population density area. Crime in my area is very low, violent crime especially, there's simply no need for that many police - they'd be doing nothing most of the time, if not for running speed traps and harassing bored teenagers.
  - LanceH 7y ago
    A lot of rural towns are at least as dependent on highway patrol and sheriffs.
- Ensorceled 7y ago
  8 officers is barely enough for 24-hour police coverage, so that's a good reason.
- 7y ago
sizzzzlerz 7y ago
When towns can't raise taxes to cover basic services or the revenue they do have dries up as the population shrink, there aren't a lot of options left. Transient taxes on hotel rooms or traffic fines are pretty much it.
not_a_cop75 7y ago
Hell, I'd say that any town that leverages against the economically poor to benefit the economically elite is bad, and just going by the way fines are handed out, that happens everywhere. Only a handful of countries fine you by according to how much you make. While doing this can add an extra incentive for the rich to be dishonest (which happens anyway), by not doing it you are essentially telling the rich that they are above the law - which is something that large swaths of ultrarich both already believe and know to be true.
- madhadron 7y ago
  > Only a handful of countries fine you by according to how much you make. Example: speeding tickets in Switzerland. A guy driving his Lamborghini through a village at 60mph had a ticket for several hundred thousand dollars handed to him while I was living there.
  - xfitm3 7y ago
    Which is bad.
    - metalliqaz 7y ago
      For a billionaire, that's the same amount of bad as when I get a ticket for $60.
    - mikepurvis 7y ago
      Why? Speeding kills. It seems reasonable to me that the ticket be proportional to your means, so you don't have a regressive effect where poor people are highly impacted and rich people laugh it off.
      - xfitm3 7y ago
        Speeding kills your pocketbook.
    - behringer 7y ago
AWildC182 7y ago
This is especially annoying because for every dollar they collect, you can end up paying your insurance company 4+ times as much because they now think you're a terrible driver for getting these minor BS citations.
- porpoisemonkey 7y ago
  If you get caught for speeding in Michigan, the Golden rule is to always appeal the ticket. Unless you've been excessively reckless they'll typically knock it down to "impeding traffic" which carries a slightly higher fine (depending on your speed) but is not a moving violation and doesn't get reported to insurance. [1] > Impeding traffic is a civil infraction punishable by a fine. It is also considered a non-moving violation that does not add any points to the offender's Michigan driving record. Non-moving violations are not reported to the Michigan Secretary of State and are less likely to be detected by automobile insurance companies as a basis to raise rates. Municipal attorneys will frequently offer to reduce speeding tickets to an impeding traffic charge which avoids points on the driver's record but usually results in a bigger fine. It's a pure money making scheme. [1] https://www.monroecountylawyers.com/blog/2018/12/what-is-impeding-traffic-in-michigan.shtml https://www.monroecountylawyers.com/blog/2018/12/what-is-imp...
  - mikeash 7y ago
    “Money making scheme” is putting it mildly. If they're offering to not tell your insurance company in exchange for paying a larger fine, I would describe that as “extortion.”
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      And especially favors the rich as they have the time and money to pay the government upfront, while the poor get to deal with higher insurance premiums.
ChrisArchitect 7y ago
was a good article in NYT Magazine about this, almost the same kind of piece "How Cities Make Money by Fining the Poor" https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/magazine/cities-fine-poor-jail.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/magazine/cities-fine-poor...
Allower 7y ago
This is nothing more than highway robbery, lock the fuckers up.
donatj 7y ago
I've always thought society would be better off if fines and money confiscated by police was redistributed as tax relief rather than going to the government or police department doing the confiscation. As it stands it only encourages abuse.
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  No one involved in levying the fine (or deciding what is fined or how large a fine is) can benefit if you want to remove the conflict of interest. Perhaps the best thing to do is stick it all in a fund for helping victims of crimes when the criminal doesn't have enough funds to cover damages to the person (but even that isn't great).
  - ryandrake 7y ago
    Shred the money that gets collected. This helps everyone by increasing the value of the dollar by an extremely tiny amount.
- adrr 7y ago
  I like the idea of going towards the states general road fund. Fines are used to improve the roads.
- floatrock 7y ago
  Budget shortfalls from various forms of "tax relief" (exemptions, no income tax, etc.) is one of the main factors the article suggests leads municipalities to collect operating income using these alternative fees and fines. It is expensive to operate a bureaucracy or a public school district.
- aswanson 7y ago
  That only incentivizes the sheriff to order his police to shake down more to passers-through to get reelected by touting how much he reduces the tax load.
- mikeash 7y ago
  Fines must be completely decoupled from the people levying them. They should be required to, say, give these funds to a blind trust which donates them to charities which don’t operate anywhere within 500 miles of the dining jurisdiction.
JustSomeNobody 7y ago
Waldo, Fl until the "Waldo Bill".
duxup 7y ago
"Actions taken by the legislature in Louisiana and in other states have likely compounded the issue. According to Census survey data, in states with the most fine-reliant jurisdictions, localities incurred notably steeper state funding cuts than elsewhere nationally over the decade. Many of those same states have also enacted numerous revenue restrictions for cities over the years. In fact, according to research from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, in states that implemented caps or limits on local property taxes starting in the late 1970s, fees and charges substantially increased as a share of all revenues that local governments raised." I think this speaks to the larger issue, a structural problem about how revenues are gathered. State legislators restrict or eliminate funding and cut off any other sources of funding, so they gather funds the only way they can providing a perverse incentive. There's way too much focus on "cut taxes wherever" without much thought as to good governance and the results of such cuts.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  It's not as though cities and towns are using fine dollars to educate children and feed the homeless. They're not. They're using it to pay more police salaries so they can write more tickets. They're simply using the money to further their own existence. God forbid the towns be forced to find an alternate way to pay for, reduce or cut a service in the face of shrinking revenues.
  - duxup 7y ago
    I think the article adequately describes how difficult it is to "find an alternative" particularly when the state legislature is cutting off those paths.
    - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      Alternative for what purpose? These towns and counties already have basically nil for services.
      - duxup 7y ago
shados 7y ago
I always felt like punitive fines and fees, tickets, etc, should be de facto given out to a third party, unaffiliated charity. Got a ticket for not picking up after your dog? Money goes to an animal protection group. Of course, even WITH the economic incentive a lot of these things get little to no attention/enforcement, so without it will be even less. Sigh. At least ridiculously random road rules would go away?
- siavosh 7y ago
  3rd party contributions may then incentivize the formation of special interest charity lobbies pushing for more fines unfortunately.
  - shados 7y ago
    Heh, dealing with the intersection of money and people is hard. Lets just use the death penalty for everything. Less money involved then. Oh damn, the people making injection drugs will lobby too... I just can't win.
peter_retief 7y ago
Same here South Africa, it has been said that for many small towns their main income is from speeding fines. Quite irritating if you go on a road trip and come back to a couple of speeding fines in the post
known 7y ago
It deters Investors
jasonjei 7y ago
If and when autonomous cars become a reality, I wonder what will small towns do to find new punitive fines and fees...
jandrewrogers 7y ago
This is unfortunately and notoriously true. It is how relatively impoverished towns without a real tax base generate enough revenue to provide basic services. These fines are usually selectively applied to people from outside the area, so there is little adverse consequence for the townspeople. It works this way throughout the rural US, though easily avoided if you diligently pay attention to and comply with the signage when in those kinds of areas. Insufficient local tax base for small towns is a problem throughout the world, with many diverse solutions. This is the evolved and ad hoc US flavored version in the absence of a top-down official solution.
jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
Perhaps changing location in title from "the country" to "the U.S." would help international readers; some of whom have told me they feel annoyed because they need some acknowledgement that other countries exist.
testplzignore 7y ago
Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Rome,_Ohio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Rome,_Ohio if you'd like to see how extreme this kind of corruption can get. It could be described as a military occupation of part of the United States by a rogue nation.
- Balgair 7y ago
  Along those lines: Lyons CO, a town along the highway from Denver to Rocky Mountain National Park has a section where the speed limit drops from 55 to 25 within about 1/4th mile. Cops sit there all day long just fining tourists. Kingman AZ is essentially a speed trap with more steps. Just about any village on I-50 in Nevada does the speed step down too, typically from 75 to 35, as the highway goes through the village. The cops are typically not very well hidden either. As is similar to the Rome OH situation, if you are within sight, you are getting a fine. Top Gear ran into this issue in Season 12, episode 2 [0] and Clarkson was quite irrate on screen. Fortunately, I-80 is a much better and faster way across Nevada. [0] https://www.topgear.com/show/series-12/episode-2 https://www.topgear.com/show/series-12/episode-2
balls187 7y ago
Two places to always drive the speedlimit: * On US Military Bases * Near small towns
0xdeadbeefbabe 7y ago
This was a major plot point in Disney's Cars.
bogus_323423 7y ago
Government is "sticky". War taxes stick around long after the end of the war, and city bureaucracies stick around long after a city declines. Nobody wants to accept that maybe a town of 5-20k people don't need 20-100 man police forces, and a far lower level of public services in general. Nobody wants to admit they have to lower their standards of living in the face of adversity; instead we double-down on reproducing (or improving on) the standard of living of our forebears and thereby immiserate ourselves with the debts (or oppression in this case) needed to square that circle. Even the most economically irrelevant areas of rural america have paved roads these days when they could simply have stuck with gravel, etc. In many ways we are trying to exceed the prior standard of living (progress!) all the while forgetting that the economic base of most of these places has either not improved or significantly worsened. We all increase our standards of living at our own peril; one must save and capitalize first (which is actively punished by low interest rate policy). Taking this as a given, should we have expected any other outcome?
temp-dude-87844 7y ago
The financialization of modern life puts extra pressure on areas without much economic activity. Self-government enables local needs to be discussed and addressed while serving as a job program for more than just the few elected positions; it raises its own revenues but also generates new costs. Locally-generated revenue has to supplement scant subsidies from the state. Within this template, a fortunate jurisdiction can collect fines and fees from out-of-towners without significantly making locals' lives miserable. An unfortunate jurisdiction harasses locals too. This is not unlike how corporations take advantage of laws, but with the added abuse potential of being able to make up laws too. The state stepping in and forcing a disincorporation of the local jurisdiction isn't necessarily a good answer. It stops the immediate symptom of near-abuse or actual abuse of power but doesn't provide a framework to substitute economic activity. Far better is limiting the level to which local governments have control over decisions of policing, but such measures are unpopular. The status quo largely continues, with investigations opened into a few high-profile cases of abuse of power, and the rest can keep doing what they do for now.
Spoom 7y ago
immediately looks for Linndale, OH as a former Cleveland resident Yup, there it is. 96.2% of general funds from fines. $24,126 per adult resident. That's what happens when you have a tiny town with a small segment of an Interstate.
larrik 7y ago
NY shouldn't be overlooked here. Driving from CT to Ohio, I'll see 5x as many cops in the short part of the trip in NY than I will on the entire rest of the trip.
kiliantics 7y ago
And this funding is disproportionately paid for by the poor: https://gawker.com/ferguson-and-the-criminalization-of-american-life-1692392051 https://gawker.com/ferguson-and-the-criminalization-of-ameri... The use of bureaucracy to funnel wealth from poor to rich also operates in the same way for private institutions such as banks. Graeber goes into this modern tendency towards bureaucratic rule in detail in his book "Utopia of Rules"
- kiliantics 7y ago
  I really don't understand what was so unpalatable to other users about this comment... The link I shared goes into the same details about Ferguson as the top comment and the notion that it is poorer people that bear the largest burden is also stated in the featured article. Is it the idea that these same issues also arise in the private sector that rubs people the wrong way?
vwcx 7y ago
Another worrying aspect is that many small towns contract with third-party companies to handle ticket processing, often tacking on extra surcharges (above and beyond a cc processing fee) to pay via credit card online.
RickJWagner 7y ago
All government relies on your money in some form or other. Traffic fines just de-select those who don't travel by motor vehicle. And, to some degree, the fees are self-selected. (You choose to speed or not.)
cprayingmantis 7y ago
The town in East Tennessee is Bluff City and it’s notorious for its speed traps, cameras, and lazy law enforcement. It was so bad someone who got a ticket bought their domain when it expired https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/man-buys-police-dept-website-speeding-ticket/story?id=10858731 https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/man-buys-police-dept-websi...
olliej 7y ago
A degree of this could be solved just by saying proceeds from fines, fees, and forfeiture go to the state or federal government. Obviously that might encourage those governments too do such fines, but a. they already do that, and b. people have historically been better at limiting large scale abuse like this that is possible in each separate small town scattered around the state/country. Also it might provide a more cost effective way to sue in response to disparate enforcement (one suit vs many).
aluren 7y ago
Fines should not exist. Anything that gets punished by a fine is basically codeword for 'you can break that law if you're rich'. The most spectacular example being Facebook's stock rising after being fined for a few billions because it was pocket money for them. Alternatively, if you really want to punish minor things, fines could be dependent on your income.
flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago
>Others prop up their budgets using traffic cameras, parking citations or code enforcement violations. I saw my town make over $1,200 within a split second the other night. I was stopped waiting at a red light, as cars were passing in front of me. The light turned yellow, then red, then not even what seemed like a nanosecond after it might have turned red... 3 cars entered the intersection and the light flashed 3 times. $400, $800, $1,200... all within less than a second, for an infraction so minor that even a police cruiser sitting in my exact same position would have probably sloughed off as being "close enough". Not to mention, these cameras probably cost orders of magnitude less than a human police officer and a dedicated cruiser. All I am getting at is, from a business standpoint, it's obvious why these are so popular with poor municipalities. Once again, the rich get richer, and the poor get kicked on their way home from their 3rd job with a $400 fine for being a nanosecond later than an ambiguously timed light decided they should have been. This is not going to change unless federal legislation forces it to.
8bitsrule 7y ago
Hah. The last traffic fine I paid was for a highway speed-limit sign (65 to 30mph) more than a mile from, and around a curve from, a Midwest whistle-stop that a few hundred called home. A lot of these flat-plain potholes probably survived only because their leaders had the connections to get the highway routed through them. ( Akroid's 1991 film 'Nothing But Trouble' sums up my feelings.)
denton-scratch 7y ago
Aren't all fines 'punitive'? Isn't that the point?

166 points by wglb 7y ago

There are a few small towns in Minnesota where you will see an officer posted up right where the highway turns from 65mph to 45mph through town. They will be there almost all day, without fail. I don't think it's a coincidence that their cruisers are all brand new. It's obviously a source of income more than anything.

ComputerGuru 7y ago
Yes, but thanks to this report you can now prove it and see how prevalent this practice is.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
drivers99 7y ago
There aren't any Minnesota towns on the map in the article so it must not be more than 10%, presumably. It is interesting to see some towns that are famous in my local area for it: Morrison, CO (45.3%). 150,000 drivers pass through it daily, with a population of 431. It's hard to argue with as they stop people if they're going 15 MPH over the limit. [1] I think people here just get used to the lack of enforcement of the other cities. Mountain View, CO is only 0.09 sq mi (0.24 km2), population ~528. Sandwiched between Denver and the next suburb over, writes more tickets combined than Denver, Boulder, and Aurora. A lot of the tickets are for things like seatbelts and cracked windshields [2]. [1] https://www.speedtrap.org/colorado/morrison/ https://www.speedtrap.org/colorado/morrison/ Quote: "They got me going 41 in a 25. $135 ticket. They are making a killing by gouging people for no reason so beware!" LOL [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_View,_Colorado#Police_department_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_View,_Colorado#Police...
- lazerpants 7y ago
  I'm not sure if 285 technically runs through Morrison, but there are lots of tickets issued right there because it is essentially a highway but has a low speed limit. They could raise the speed limit by 10-20mph and it would probably still be safe. There are also several elevation changes that make it easier for a traffic officer to hide. Weird that Mountain View is in the mix. Maybe it's just a statistical anomaly because the "town" is tiny and is actually in a metro area and may include a portion I-70.
  - drivers99 7y ago
    If you search for either town in Google Maps, it draws their boundaries, which will be useful for this thread. Morrison looks like a gerrymander: it runs along roads, and has some other parts that are unused pieces of land, and doesn't include private property that is being used even though it is next to it. It really does look like it was designed to cover roads that have nothing to do with the actual downtown part of Morrison. Mountain View is between W 41st Ave and W 44th Ave (which looks like a fairly busy road). I just noticed they are only at 5.3% in the report though. [1] That's not even 10% (and a lot more than Morrison's 45%.) Since you mentioned I-70, on the other hand there is Lakeside: Mountain View actually borders another tiny "town" (population 8), Lakeside, which consists of a lake, shopping center, and amusement park, and I-70 and related on/off-ramps. According to the map in the report [1], Lakeside is on the map but at 13.5% revenue from tickets. [1] https://www.governing.com/topics/finance/fine-fee-revenues-special-report.html https://www.governing.com/topics/finance/fine-fee-revenues-s...

non-entity 7y ago

I grew up on the outer edge of the metro Atlanta area, and I remember a lot of people joking about this small mill town and how they made all their money off traffic tickets. Eventually, I'd here a ton of notes about these type of towns everywhere I lived.

wil421 7y ago

In Georgia you can see the path I-75 and I-16 take through the southern half of the state. 16 is notorious for speed traps and other shadier stuff. Including road blocks on exit ramps with drug dogs waiting to sniff cars. They bait people into getting off at the exits by leaving fake signs about upcoming road blocks. When College kids were moving or getting out of school they’d be out in full force. Sadly my Dad grew up in one of these towns. The fines were the only way to keep parts of the town alive.

BubRoss 7y ago
Why were the fines the only way to keep parts of the town alive?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- wil421 7y ago
  The police lacked funding and the population of the towns were falling. If they raised taxes the very limited business could leave. The state did do something to prevent speed traps[1], not sure if it worked or passed. Sheriff is a political job and even more so in small towns. It’s just as much of a mayor type job as it is a policing one. Their entire school system had less students than my high school in metro Atlanta. [1]https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/speed-trap-bill-passes-house/avKnLqri4i6olLeBZhiFrN/ https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/spee...
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    I doubt the town would die without the fines. They're surely the most convenient way to collect money thought.
    - wil421 7y ago
      I should rephrase it as “the town was dying and needed money” rather than it would die without the money.

jessaustin 7y ago

Missouri lawmakers responded by lowering, to 20 percent, a cap on the proportion of general operating revenues that could come from minor traffic violations. Previously the limit was 30% and before that it was 35%. That higher limit was imposed to deal with Macks Creek, MO, a village on a US highway in a valley between two steep hills. That village was coated in brake dust, until the legislature decided it doesn't really need police. I'm pleased at the progress we're making in this state.

ceejayoz 7y ago
That was the town with one cop per 50 residents, wasn't it?
- jessaustin 7y ago
  I'm not sure if they ever had four cops? They did have two patrol cars, though, so it could have made sense. They didn't want anyone to sneak through at 46 MPH.

btilly 7y ago

Punitive fines and fees are bad. Abuse of civil forfeiture is worse. But worse still are a minority of towns that not only are dependent on punitive fines, but that levy them in a racially biased way. See https://www.npr.org/2014/08/25/343143937/in-ferguson-court-fines-and-fees-fuel-anger https://www.npr.org/2014/08/25/343143937/in-ferguson-court-f... for an explanation of how this helped ignite the racial tension that Ferguson had a few years ago.

DanBC 7y ago
Here's a short BBC radio programme about St Louis County, and it covers the same sort of thing. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pqskm https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pqskm > This edition of Crossing Continents goes out and about in St Louis County to meet the people who say they are victims of a system which sees arrest warrants issued for relatively minor misdemeanours. Many of the victims are poor and black. The programme also takes us into the courts, and out onto the freeways with some of the County's police, who say they are upholding the law and promoting road safety. > The US government is not so sure. One of the towns in question is Ferguson where riots erupted after a white police officer shot a young black man dead last summer. In a recent report on the riots, the Department of Justice concluded that the Ferguson police had been stopping people for no good reason. It said they were putting revenue before public safety.
oconnor663 7y ago
This seems like a huge problem. At the same time, it's easier to point out that it's a huge problem than to suggest a solution that doesn't have bad side effects. If the courts don't enforce the laws somehow, the worst repeat offenders end up seriously abusing their neighbors with no consequences. Replacing fines with time-consuming punishments like mandatory community service would be problematic, because low income folks often have little flexibility in their working hours, and getting fired from a job is even worse at a low level of income than it is for everyone else. It might be that just lowering the size of fines would help some, but it seems like a fine that couldn't hurt anyone also effectively punishes no one. Maybe there's a middle ground where fines are punishing for repeat offenders, but ordinary folks who show up in court get a few slaps on the wrist before fines kick in? Are some of the laws already structured like this?

starpilot 7y ago

Every time on the 395 between Bishop and Mammoth.

sizzzzlerz 7y ago
That's CHP, not town cops or country sheriff except when driving through Bishop or getting off 395 to drive into Mammoth.

motohagiography 7y ago

If they are going to use minor violations of the law as a pretext for revenue collection, they should call it what it is: kleptocracy. If those places are dying out, it's probably best to let them turn into ghost towns because they have succumbed to corruption as a way of life.

duxup 7y ago
I think Kleptocracy would only apply if the folks in charge are funneling funds to themselves. If it is just what funds the government, that isn't a kleptocracy. Bad policy maybe, but not kleptocracy.
- motohagiography 7y ago
  If that municipal or county government is operated by unionized public workers, including police, then the revenue collection is going primarily to pay that union, who in turn fund politicians who continue their revenue collection policies to pay their members. It's capture, so in effect, kleptocracy.
  - duxup 7y ago
    Under your description all government that pays someone(s) would qualify. That's not what kleptocracy means. >is going primarily to pay that union, I don't think that is accurate.
    - mywittyname 7y ago
      The article even specifies that several towns earmark fine revenue specifically and exclusively for use by the police department: > Georgia, for example, levies about a dozen fees, and they’re used to pay for a state police motorcycle unit, a brain and spinal injury trust fund, and a police supplemental retirement fund. And the other cases where the money for fines paid in cash just disappeared: > A Louisiana state audit last year found that some cash payments for citations in Fenton were never deposited in the village’s bank account and alleged improper compensation to city officials. These are just the direct ways in which revenue from fines are funneled into the pocketbooks of those writing the citations. It doesn't even look into the more tradition mechanics of kleptocrats, where government funds are directly funneled to businesses owned by politicians.

crossman 7y ago

I'm genuinely surprised not to see any Rhode Island cities/towns on this. Speed cameras have shown up like a plague in Providence in the past year and are expected to spread throughout the state. https://www.wpri.com/news/providence-speed-cameras-were-a-money-maker-in-2018/ https://www.wpri.com/news/providence-speed-cameras-were-a-mo...

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
This article is talking about fines as a proportion of overall revenue. In the Northeast they can fine the crap out of anything that moves and taxes revenues are still high enough (because there's so much expensive property, high incomes and other taxable stuff combined with decently high tax rates) that the fines are still not a significant percent of revenue.
- crossman 7y ago
  Valid, and I don't know what the total fines are, but if the speed cameras alone netted 3.2 million last year it seems quite plausible that fines are accounting for 10% or more if I'm reading this report correctly http://www.providenceri.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Accountants-Report-and-Financial-Statements-City-of-Providence-FINAL.pdf http://www.providenceri.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Accou... But you know, I'm not an accountant

deadmetheny 7y ago

There's lots of towns very well-known for being speed traps in my part of the Midwest. My hometown in particular has a police force of approximately 8 full-time officers for a population of 5,000. There's absolutely no good reason to have so many cops for a population of that size, especially when the crime statistics are very low for non-traffic infractions. The only traffic ticket I've gotten in 30+ years was at 12:30 AM coming home from a concert in a larger city, going 5 MPH over the speed limit there. I'm sure he was pissed off that he couldn't also write me up for a DUI.

Excel_Wizard 7y ago
The U.S. has 284 police officers per 100,000 people.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_police_officers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...) That would translate to ~14 police officers for a town of your size.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  The police force doesn’t need to be spread evenly, especially in areas with little crime.
- deadmetheny 7y ago
  Ok, sure, but that's not really a useful metric for a low population density area. Crime in my area is very low, violent crime especially, there's simply no need for that many police - they'd be doing nothing most of the time, if not for running speed traps and harassing bored teenagers.
- LanceH 7y ago
  A lot of rural towns are at least as dependent on highway patrol and sheriffs.
Ensorceled 7y ago
8 officers is barely enough for 24-hour police coverage, so that's a good reason.
7y ago

sizzzzlerz 7y ago

When towns can't raise taxes to cover basic services or the revenue they do have dries up as the population shrink, there aren't a lot of options left. Transient taxes on hotel rooms or traffic fines are pretty much it.

not_a_cop75 7y ago

Hell, I'd say that any town that leverages against the economically poor to benefit the economically elite is bad, and just going by the way fines are handed out, that happens everywhere. Only a handful of countries fine you by according to how much you make. While doing this can add an extra incentive for the rich to be dishonest (which happens anyway), by not doing it you are essentially telling the rich that they are above the law - which is something that large swaths of ultrarich both already believe and know to be true.

madhadron 7y ago
> Only a handful of countries fine you by according to how much you make. Example: speeding tickets in Switzerland. A guy driving his Lamborghini through a village at 60mph had a ticket for several hundred thousand dollars handed to him while I was living there.
- xfitm3 7y ago
  Which is bad.
  - metalliqaz 7y ago
    For a billionaire, that's the same amount of bad as when I get a ticket for $60.
  - mikepurvis 7y ago
    Why? Speeding kills. It seems reasonable to me that the ticket be proportional to your means, so you don't have a regressive effect where poor people are highly impacted and rich people laugh it off.
    - xfitm3 7y ago
      Speeding kills your pocketbook.
  - behringer 7y ago

AWildC182 7y ago

This is especially annoying because for every dollar they collect, you can end up paying your insurance company 4+ times as much because they now think you're a terrible driver for getting these minor BS citations.

porpoisemonkey 7y ago
If you get caught for speeding in Michigan, the Golden rule is to always appeal the ticket. Unless you've been excessively reckless they'll typically knock it down to "impeding traffic" which carries a slightly higher fine (depending on your speed) but is not a moving violation and doesn't get reported to insurance. [1] > Impeding traffic is a civil infraction punishable by a fine. It is also considered a non-moving violation that does not add any points to the offender's Michigan driving record. Non-moving violations are not reported to the Michigan Secretary of State and are less likely to be detected by automobile insurance companies as a basis to raise rates. Municipal attorneys will frequently offer to reduce speeding tickets to an impeding traffic charge which avoids points on the driver's record but usually results in a bigger fine. It's a pure money making scheme. [1] https://www.monroecountylawyers.com/blog/2018/12/what-is-impeding-traffic-in-michigan.shtml https://www.monroecountylawyers.com/blog/2018/12/what-is-imp...
- mikeash 7y ago
  “Money making scheme” is putting it mildly. If they're offering to not tell your insurance company in exchange for paying a larger fine, I would describe that as “extortion.”
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    And especially favors the rich as they have the time and money to pay the government upfront, while the poor get to deal with higher insurance premiums.

ChrisArchitect 7y ago

was a good article in NYT Magazine about this, almost the same kind of piece "How Cities Make Money by Fining the Poor" https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/magazine/cities-fine-poor-jail.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/magazine/cities-fine-poor...

Allower 7y ago

This is nothing more than highway robbery, lock the fuckers up.

donatj 7y ago

I've always thought society would be better off if fines and money confiscated by police was redistributed as tax relief rather than going to the government or police department doing the confiscation. As it stands it only encourages abuse.

SkyBelow 7y ago
No one involved in levying the fine (or deciding what is fined or how large a fine is) can benefit if you want to remove the conflict of interest. Perhaps the best thing to do is stick it all in a fund for helping victims of crimes when the criminal doesn't have enough funds to cover damages to the person (but even that isn't great).
- ryandrake 7y ago
  Shred the money that gets collected. This helps everyone by increasing the value of the dollar by an extremely tiny amount.
adrr 7y ago
I like the idea of going towards the states general road fund. Fines are used to improve the roads.
floatrock 7y ago
Budget shortfalls from various forms of "tax relief" (exemptions, no income tax, etc.) is one of the main factors the article suggests leads municipalities to collect operating income using these alternative fees and fines. It is expensive to operate a bureaucracy or a public school district.
aswanson 7y ago
That only incentivizes the sheriff to order his police to shake down more to passers-through to get reelected by touting how much he reduces the tax load.
mikeash 7y ago
Fines must be completely decoupled from the people levying them. They should be required to, say, give these funds to a blind trust which donates them to charities which don’t operate anywhere within 500 miles of the dining jurisdiction.

JustSomeNobody 7y ago

Waldo, Fl until the "Waldo Bill".

duxup 7y ago

"Actions taken by the legislature in Louisiana and in other states have likely compounded the issue. According to Census survey data, in states with the most fine-reliant jurisdictions, localities incurred notably steeper state funding cuts than elsewhere nationally over the decade. Many of those same states have also enacted numerous revenue restrictions for cities over the years. In fact, according to research from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, in states that implemented caps or limits on local property taxes starting in the late 1970s, fees and charges substantially increased as a share of all revenues that local governments raised." I think this speaks to the larger issue, a structural problem about how revenues are gathered. State legislators restrict or eliminate funding and cut off any other sources of funding, so they gather funds the only way they can providing a perverse incentive. There's way too much focus on "cut taxes wherever" without much thought as to good governance and the results of such cuts.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
It's not as though cities and towns are using fine dollars to educate children and feed the homeless. They're not. They're using it to pay more police salaries so they can write more tickets. They're simply using the money to further their own existence. God forbid the towns be forced to find an alternate way to pay for, reduce or cut a service in the face of shrinking revenues.
- duxup 7y ago
  I think the article adequately describes how difficult it is to "find an alternative" particularly when the state legislature is cutting off those paths.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    Alternative for what purpose? These towns and counties already have basically nil for services.
    - duxup 7y ago

shados 7y ago

I always felt like punitive fines and fees, tickets, etc, should be de facto given out to a third party, unaffiliated charity. Got a ticket for not picking up after your dog? Money goes to an animal protection group. Of course, even WITH the economic incentive a lot of these things get little to no attention/enforcement, so without it will be even less. Sigh. At least ridiculously random road rules would go away?

siavosh 7y ago
3rd party contributions may then incentivize the formation of special interest charity lobbies pushing for more fines unfortunately.
- shados 7y ago
  Heh, dealing with the intersection of money and people is hard. Lets just use the death penalty for everything. Less money involved then. Oh damn, the people making injection drugs will lobby too... I just can't win.

peter_retief 7y ago

Same here South Africa, it has been said that for many small towns their main income is from speeding fines. Quite irritating if you go on a road trip and come back to a couple of speeding fines in the post

known 7y ago

It deters Investors

jasonjei 7y ago

If and when autonomous cars become a reality, I wonder what will small towns do to find new punitive fines and fees...

jandrewrogers 7y ago

This is unfortunately and notoriously true. It is how relatively impoverished towns without a real tax base generate enough revenue to provide basic services. These fines are usually selectively applied to people from outside the area, so there is little adverse consequence for the townspeople. It works this way throughout the rural US, though easily avoided if you diligently pay attention to and comply with the signage when in those kinds of areas. Insufficient local tax base for small towns is a problem throughout the world, with many diverse solutions. This is the evolved and ad hoc US flavored version in the absence of a top-down official solution.

jacobwilliamroy 7y ago

Perhaps changing location in title from "the country" to "the U.S." would help international readers; some of whom have told me they feel annoyed because they need some acknowledgement that other countries exist.

testplzignore 7y ago

Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Rome,_Ohio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Rome,_Ohio if you'd like to see how extreme this kind of corruption can get. It could be described as a military occupation of part of the United States by a rogue nation.

Balgair 7y ago
Along those lines: Lyons CO, a town along the highway from Denver to Rocky Mountain National Park has a section where the speed limit drops from 55 to 25 within about 1/4th mile. Cops sit there all day long just fining tourists. Kingman AZ is essentially a speed trap with more steps. Just about any village on I-50 in Nevada does the speed step down too, typically from 75 to 35, as the highway goes through the village. The cops are typically not very well hidden either. As is similar to the Rome OH situation, if you are within sight, you are getting a fine. Top Gear ran into this issue in Season 12, episode 2 [0] and Clarkson was quite irrate on screen. Fortunately, I-80 is a much better and faster way across Nevada. [0] https://www.topgear.com/show/series-12/episode-2 https://www.topgear.com/show/series-12/episode-2

balls187 7y ago

Two places to always drive the speedlimit: * On US Military Bases * Near small towns

0xdeadbeefbabe 7y ago

This was a major plot point in Disney's Cars.

bogus_323423 7y ago

Government is "sticky". War taxes stick around long after the end of the war, and city bureaucracies stick around long after a city declines. Nobody wants to accept that maybe a town of 5-20k people don't need 20-100 man police forces, and a far lower level of public services in general. Nobody wants to admit they have to lower their standards of living in the face of adversity; instead we double-down on reproducing (or improving on) the standard of living of our forebears and thereby immiserate ourselves with the debts (or oppression in this case) needed to square that circle. Even the most economically irrelevant areas of rural america have paved roads these days when they could simply have stuck with gravel, etc. In many ways we are trying to exceed the prior standard of living (progress!) all the while forgetting that the economic base of most of these places has either not improved or significantly worsened. We all increase our standards of living at our own peril; one must save and capitalize first (which is actively punished by low interest rate policy). Taking this as a given, should we have expected any other outcome?

temp-dude-87844 7y ago

The financialization of modern life puts extra pressure on areas without much economic activity. Self-government enables local needs to be discussed and addressed while serving as a job program for more than just the few elected positions; it raises its own revenues but also generates new costs. Locally-generated revenue has to supplement scant subsidies from the state. Within this template, a fortunate jurisdiction can collect fines and fees from out-of-towners without significantly making locals' lives miserable. An unfortunate jurisdiction harasses locals too. This is not unlike how corporations take advantage of laws, but with the added abuse potential of being able to make up laws too. The state stepping in and forcing a disincorporation of the local jurisdiction isn't necessarily a good answer. It stops the immediate symptom of near-abuse or actual abuse of power but doesn't provide a framework to substitute economic activity. Far better is limiting the level to which local governments have control over decisions of policing, but such measures are unpopular. The status quo largely continues, with investigations opened into a few high-profile cases of abuse of power, and the rest can keep doing what they do for now.

Spoom 7y ago

immediately looks for Linndale, OH as a former Cleveland resident Yup, there it is. 96.2% of general funds from fines. $24,126 per adult resident. That's what happens when you have a tiny town with a small segment of an Interstate.

larrik 7y ago

NY shouldn't be overlooked here. Driving from CT to Ohio, I'll see 5x as many cops in the short part of the trip in NY than I will on the entire rest of the trip.

kiliantics 7y ago

And this funding is disproportionately paid for by the poor: https://gawker.com/ferguson-and-the-criminalization-of-american-life-1692392051 https://gawker.com/ferguson-and-the-criminalization-of-ameri... The use of bureaucracy to funnel wealth from poor to rich also operates in the same way for private institutions such as banks. Graeber goes into this modern tendency towards bureaucratic rule in detail in his book "Utopia of Rules"

kiliantics 7y ago
I really don't understand what was so unpalatable to other users about this comment... The link I shared goes into the same details about Ferguson as the top comment and the notion that it is poorer people that bear the largest burden is also stated in the featured article. Is it the idea that these same issues also arise in the private sector that rubs people the wrong way?

vwcx 7y ago

Another worrying aspect is that many small towns contract with third-party companies to handle ticket processing, often tacking on extra surcharges (above and beyond a cc processing fee) to pay via credit card online.

RickJWagner 7y ago

All government relies on your money in some form or other. Traffic fines just de-select those who don't travel by motor vehicle. And, to some degree, the fees are self-selected. (You choose to speed or not.)

cprayingmantis 7y ago

The town in East Tennessee is Bluff City and it’s notorious for its speed traps, cameras, and lazy law enforcement. It was so bad someone who got a ticket bought their domain when it expired https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/man-buys-police-dept-website-speeding-ticket/story?id=10858731 https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/man-buys-police-dept-websi...

olliej 7y ago

A degree of this could be solved just by saying proceeds from fines, fees, and forfeiture go to the state or federal government. Obviously that might encourage those governments too do such fines, but a. they already do that, and b. people have historically been better at limiting large scale abuse like this that is possible in each separate small town scattered around the state/country. Also it might provide a more cost effective way to sue in response to disparate enforcement (one suit vs many).

aluren 7y ago

Fines should not exist. Anything that gets punished by a fine is basically codeword for 'you can break that law if you're rich'. The most spectacular example being Facebook's stock rising after being fined for a few billions because it was pocket money for them. Alternatively, if you really want to punish minor things, fines could be dependent on your income.

flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago

>Others prop up their budgets using traffic cameras, parking citations or code enforcement violations. I saw my town make over $1,200 within a split second the other night. I was stopped waiting at a red light, as cars were passing in front of me. The light turned yellow, then red, then not even what seemed like a nanosecond after it might have turned red... 3 cars entered the intersection and the light flashed 3 times. $400, $800, $1,200... all within less than a second, for an infraction so minor that even a police cruiser sitting in my exact same position would have probably sloughed off as being "close enough". Not to mention, these cameras probably cost orders of magnitude less than a human police officer and a dedicated cruiser. All I am getting at is, from a business standpoint, it's obvious why these are so popular with poor municipalities. Once again, the rich get richer, and the poor get kicked on their way home from their 3rd job with a $400 fine for being a nanosecond later than an ambiguously timed light decided they should have been. This is not going to change unless federal legislation forces it to.

8bitsrule 7y ago

Hah. The last traffic fine I paid was for a highway speed-limit sign (65 to 30mph) more than a mile from, and around a curve from, a Midwest whistle-stop that a few hundred called home. A lot of these flat-plain potholes probably survived only because their leaders had the connections to get the highway routed through them. ( Akroid's 1991 film 'Nothing But Trouble' sums up my feelings.)

denton-scratch 7y ago

Aren't all fines 'punitive'? Isn't that the point?