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Because the united states is designed politically and legally to be decentralized, giving large discretion to localities and states over how they run their rul

Because the united states is designed politically and legally to be decentralized, giving large discretion to localities and states over how they run their rules and business. For example, most people in jail are not in federal jail. Most people are served by local police. Rules on taxes vary county to county as needs vary county to county. This is good and bad

giantg2 5y ago
That's true but largely irrelevant to this story - traffic laws are the same through the state. The main thing in this is law enforcement discretion. There's no way the population would vote these malicious leaders in if the tickets were being given to residents. They are mostly hitting non-residents. This is very common near military bases. The law is the same, but they choose not to apply it to residents (and apparently make up violations too). Hopefully people have dashcams, and record interactions on their phones. It sounds like they will end up losing much more in lawsuits than they are bringing in. Perhaps the FBI and DOJ will get involved due to rights and color of law violations.
01acheru 5y ago
Yeah this is something I know and understand, I also appreciate this line of thought. What I don’t understand is about police in particular, if police is “law enforcement”. I’d expect some laws to be national, then some laws to be state, then going down and down until we reach a single small town where something might be different from the next one but they should share many things… how is it that the enforcement part of those same laws is so subjective? IMHO the law has two sides: the normative one, what it actually is, and the enforcement one, how it is applied to society. If the enforcement part is highly subjective we are distorting the law. It should be desirable to minimize the differences of enforcing the same law. Is it something really appreciated by the population over there that the same law is applied very differently in the next town over simply because it decides to enforce it in a different manner?
- alistairSH 5y ago
  The actual laws are just as decentralized as the law enforcement. Speed limits are a state/local law. While many of them are similar, enforcement varies greatly, and there is a propensity for corruption, as we see in the article. I remember a few decades ago, AAA (large US auto club) recommended against using certain stretches of highway in Florida because the local town loved to ticket out-of-state drivers (heading from the northern border to Disney World in Orlando, IIRC). And because enforcement is decentralized, so is enforcement of police procedures. "Thin Blue Line" is the term used to describe cops backing cops, even when they do illegal things. Like planting evidence in Baltimore (a few news worthy cases over the past several years). Basically, policing in the US is completely broken. And the Supreme Court has decided (not recently) that police have zero obligation to actually help and protect citizens. So, if a crime is occurring, the police aren't obligated to help. They just wait until the beatings and rapes finish, then maybe arrest suspects, if they can be bothered (ie, did the crime make headlines and is a politician pressuring them to do so).
- cardamomo 5y ago
  These discrepancies in law enforcement practices don't just arise out of the subjectivity inherent in enforcing rules. In the US, Black people and Black communities have long been policed differently than White people and White communities. There is a culture of systemic anti-Blackness in many if not most police departments. It is seen by many on the left to be so entrenched in the US system of policing and police culture that reform is not possible, hence the defund the police movement.
- sgjohnson 5y ago
  > I’d expect some laws to be national The reality in the United States is that the only national law in situations where you don't explicitly deal with the federal government is the Consitution, and even then the Constitution is interpreted differently by different states. The states are more or less free to ignore (refuse to enforce) federal law. How do you think certain states legalised weed, illegal immigration and refuse to enforce the NFA in certain situations?
  - 5y ago

giantg2 5y ago

That's true but largely irrelevant to this story - traffic laws are the same through the state. The main thing in this is law enforcement discretion. There's no way the population would vote these malicious leaders in if the tickets were being given to residents. They are mostly hitting non-residents. This is very common near military bases. The law is the same, but they choose not to apply it to residents (and apparently make up violations too). Hopefully people have dashcams, and record interactions on their phones. It sounds like they will end up losing much more in lawsuits than they are bringing in. Perhaps the FBI and DOJ will get involved due to rights and color of law violations.

01acheru 5y ago

Yeah this is something I know and understand, I also appreciate this line of thought. What I don’t understand is about police in particular, if police is “law enforcement”. I’d expect some laws to be national, then some laws to be state, then going down and down until we reach a single small town where something might be different from the next one but they should share many things… how is it that the enforcement part of those same laws is so subjective? IMHO the law has two sides: the normative one, what it actually is, and the enforcement one, how it is applied to society. If the enforcement part is highly subjective we are distorting the law. It should be desirable to minimize the differences of enforcing the same law. Is it something really appreciated by the population over there that the same law is applied very differently in the next town over simply because it decides to enforce it in a different manner?

alistairSH 5y ago
The actual laws are just as decentralized as the law enforcement. Speed limits are a state/local law. While many of them are similar, enforcement varies greatly, and there is a propensity for corruption, as we see in the article. I remember a few decades ago, AAA (large US auto club) recommended against using certain stretches of highway in Florida because the local town loved to ticket out-of-state drivers (heading from the northern border to Disney World in Orlando, IIRC). And because enforcement is decentralized, so is enforcement of police procedures. "Thin Blue Line" is the term used to describe cops backing cops, even when they do illegal things. Like planting evidence in Baltimore (a few news worthy cases over the past several years). Basically, policing in the US is completely broken. And the Supreme Court has decided (not recently) that police have zero obligation to actually help and protect citizens. So, if a crime is occurring, the police aren't obligated to help. They just wait until the beatings and rapes finish, then maybe arrest suspects, if they can be bothered (ie, did the crime make headlines and is a politician pressuring them to do so).
cardamomo 5y ago
These discrepancies in law enforcement practices don't just arise out of the subjectivity inherent in enforcing rules. In the US, Black people and Black communities have long been policed differently than White people and White communities. There is a culture of systemic anti-Blackness in many if not most police departments. It is seen by many on the left to be so entrenched in the US system of policing and police culture that reform is not possible, hence the defund the police movement.
sgjohnson 5y ago
> I’d expect some laws to be national The reality in the United States is that the only national law in situations where you don't explicitly deal with the federal government is the Consitution, and even then the Constitution is interpreted differently by different states. The states are more or less free to ignore (refuse to enforce) federal law. How do you think certain states legalised weed, illegal immigration and refuse to enforce the NFA in certain situations?
- 5y ago