6 ms·

What I find more interesting than the device is a quote from the officer, "Their attitude will determine whether I issue a citation. If they take it and just th

• sehugg 11y ago
  Yeah, I don't see how pretending to read a pamphlet in front of the officer demonstrates understanding or future compliance.
• jen729w 11y ago
  Honestly that sounds like excellent policing to me. If we issue everyone with a ticket for the smallest infraction we end up alienating the public. I'm a law-abiding citizen; I want to help the police. If I'm pulled over for something fairly innocent - say, not quite leaving enough room for a cyclist - and I'm given a $150 fine, no questions asked, what that does not do is make me respect cyclists more. It makes me disrespect the police, the law, it angers me, it makes me far less likely to help the police in the (immediate) future. If the officer explains the law to me and I take what he says on board, that's a better outcome for everyone. It's better for me (no ticket), it's better for cyclists (I'll leave more room), and it's better for the police (excellent public relations). I speak as a daily cyclist, as someone who called my local police literally an hour ago to report a weirdly parked car, and as an ex-Englishman, now resident of Melbourne, Australia. We tend to get on with our police here; their street skills tend to be a bit "softer". I think that's fabulous.
  • jessriedel 11y ago
    The grandparents wasn't questioning whether it makes sense to give warnings, he was questioning whether we really want officers on the street making gut-level decision about how sorry they think the driver was.
    • loco5niner 11y ago
      I certainly want the police officers I interact with to be capable of and practiced in the art of correctly making a gut-level decision. I would argue that the problem in the US is in choosing who we give that authority to.
      • jessriedel 11y ago
        I certainly agree that some people are better decision makers than others, and there's plenty to say about who we want to be employed as officers, but frankly I don't think I want any officers deciding whether to give out $100 tickets based on how blase someone puts a pamphlet on their passenger seat. Maybe if it was in a small culturally homogeneous town you could hope to makes a good read there, but otherwise I think there's just too much miscommunication.
        • rubyfan 11y ago
          Yeah that's kind of where I was going with that. It would be most ideal if the law was applied evenly and not arbitrarily. I am all for protecting cyclists and pedestrians, however more laws enabling arrest and arbitrary execution of statue seems less desirable to me. A clear line delineating between a cycling lane and vehicle lane would perhaps be a more effective safety method than employing a person to dispatch donated pamphlets using donated detection equipment. It seems like the line between a lobbying party and the execution of the law is blurred. In this case, its relatively innocuous however this kind of ambiguity of the intent of the law and the blurred line of its application is probably common.
• jonahx 11y ago
  In practice, I'd think you'd see lots of false negatives (people able to feign remorse and concern well enough) but not many false positives (if you can't even be bothered to pretend to care in the face of a ticket, you probably don't).
• steveax 11y ago
  Remorse is often considered in criminal matters. I don't see how this is any different.
  • jessriedel 11y ago
    I think this policing behavior is a mistake, but yours is the strongest argument for it. It actually makes me question the idea of judges trying to assess remorse. Also, I would say there is a big difference between judges in court room and officers on the street. In a court room, the judge is going to have a substantial amount of time to assess the defendant, he's going to give the defendant feedback on the sorts of signals he's sending, and he's going to explicitly give the chance to demonstrate remorse to defendants who might think it's inappropriate, or don't have that sort of personality, or whatever. The officer on the street is just making a gut-level call which I don't trust; I think it would be dominated by things like how attractive the person is (both men and women), how generally agreeable/social they are, etc. Also, remorse is usually used to lessen sentencing, but it's not typically used to decide if the defendant gets punished at all.
  • kjhsadklj1 11y ago
    Because it's asking the enforcers to become the judges. There's good reason those powers remain separate.
    • steveax 11y ago
      Enforcers make those kind of decisions all the time. Ever been "let go with a warning" for some other kind of violation?
      • kjhsadklj1 11y ago
        Sure. Are you suggesting this is optimal or desired? It may be necessary due to realities, but that doesn't mean it should be encouraged.
• s73v3r 11y ago
  No more than anything else. If you're gonna be a dick, then there's a cost to that.