Yeah, we'll see how long that lasts when landlords can't call the police over code violations or dope dealers. Or the cops quit running speeding or DUI sweeps; that's just revenue generation after all, right?
Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.
Curmudgeon wrote: Yeah, we'll see how long that lasts when landlords can't call the police over code violations or dope dealers. Or the cops quit running speeding or DUI sweeps; that's just revenue generation after all, right? Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.
Actually. the DWI thing with MADD has reached the same level of extortion as the guys in Ferguson. In Ontario, MADD has managed to get a 0.05 level as the new law. This keeps them in the news and ensures that their donations go up for "doing a good job".
People forget that Candy Lightner (who started MADD) quit in disgust because it was not her intention to re-start prohibition. The runaway terrorist organization that remains is a "non for profit" organization whose main focus is to line the pockets of the non-volunteer management. Just another example of the worst form of evil: That which comes disguised as "good".
Yeah, MADD's gone far past their original purview. I don't advocate drunk driving but they are pushing for outright prohibition of alcohol. Didn't work back then, ain't gonna work now.
Not only that, a former Florida (and you are surprised why?) chapter president got busted for DUI. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-madd-president-arrested-for-dui/
Governing, or even managing people is a simple process if you think of people as Jello: You can hold it and you can mold it, but if you squeeze it it slips through your fingers it gets messy and you wont ever be able to put it back together.
Johnboyjjb wrote: I liken this to the comment from the police in New York during the recent slow down there. Not exact but it was something along the lines of, from now on we are only responding to calls where people are in danger or damaging others.
This lasted about three days before all the slacktivists that were calling for the cops' heads we complaining that the police weren't doing their jobs and the former E36 M3holes they moved into were returning to their former glory.
Broken Windows policing works well. It turned New York from an unmanageable mess to the safest big city in the country. One problem seems to be that once the crime rate is lowered the police continue with the same plan rather than switch to more of a Maintainance plan. There is probably a happy medium that should be reached but noone seems to have any interest in doing so. Everything has to be run as a business where we need more stops and more arrests than the year before to show we are productive. If they don't show improvement they can't get as much money next year. Some places were able to redirect their police towards anti terror so they could ease up on anti crime and still get piles of cash but that doesn't work everywhere. You'd be hard pressed to convince anyone that places like Ferguson were on Al Qaida's hit list.
One small town? The court system is pretty rough in all of St Louis County. If you handle your E36 M3, you won't get a warrant. This is a SUMMONS TO APPEAR in Florissant, one of the many citys bordering Ferguson. Yes. They would seriously put a warrant out on me if I didn't handle it. Luckily this time they had bad info, but times prior to this, I have paid fines. 
Many of the warrants are for failure to appear on things like traffic tickets. Stop signs, traffic lights, speeding, etc. Not long ago, some partners and I arrested a girl for failure to appear/failure to pay her bondsman. A friend offered to bail her out again. He didn't hear from her until she bounced through five different cities in the area for failure to appear on simple traffic violations. This is very common here.
I'm sure many of those warrants were years old that were for things that people legitiamtely need to handle. Some of them may have been for stupid E36 M3 like not obtaining trash pickup.
Ferguson is a nice city. I've got a lot of family that lives there and loves the city. There are some rough areas of all the cities in the area. I live less than a mile from the police station in my city. Police don't aggresively patrol where I am. Usually they just pass on the way to a patrol. I don't have many problems besides the occasional truck hitting my house.
Areas like the Cannfield appartments in Ferguson are a high crime rate area. A lot of drug dealing, stealing, and things like that. The aggressive patroling has lead to a lot of citations that are not handled and turn into warrants. Plenty of good people who would like to take care of their E36 M3 don't have the money to do so and it is easier to let it go and run when the police are called. It's a downward spiral.
There is definately a problem, but I don't think were dealing with the issues at hand properly. The courts are a huge problem, though.
NOHOME wrote: Actually, now that the jails have been privatized, and even for those that are not, it makes a lot of sense. You NEED people in those jails to create the jobs and the profits for the investors. People in jail don't need money,so you might as well bleed the turnip for every cent it has before you toss them in jail. And it is a foolproof business plan because the taxpayer covers the cost to incarcerate. "Bad guys" off the street Win#1. Good solid jobs created in the incarceration industry Win#2. Paid for by Taxpayer Win#3. On the surface it makes the egomaniac running the city look good Win#4. I don't for a second believe that the individual government officials who officiate over all this have any sense of wrongdoing any more than the guards at the death camps in Germany did when they marched people off to the showers; just doing their job dealing with people on the wrong side of "the law". It is funny how that works.
Some privatized jail contracts also have a minimum occupancy clause. If your prison falls below those minimum occupancy levels you will be charged a fee per the contract. Guess how those levels are met? The local police are tasked with helping make sure this doesn't happen by most of those municipalities.
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