The Long Arm of the Tax Man
By Johnny Roosh
I have had more than my share of speeding tickets over the years. I drive a fair amount, like fast cars, and sometimes lose track of my speed or get caught having a little extra fun.
For me, the occasional speeding ticket is a cost of doing business.
As a taxpayer however, It has always raised my ire to observe speed traps on state or federal freeways staffed by local municipal squads. I have a great respect for our police officers. I consider them to be just as brave and in service to our country as anyone in the armed forces. However, I wonder if the officers themselves are thinking
“Is this what I signed up for? Traffic duty?”
Yesterday I spied a Golden Valley squad on 394 before he spied me with his laser gun.
He was “shooting” at cars in very heavy traffic, all of which were well above the posted speed limit. This caused an annoying and probably dangerous scenario where drivers, having spotted him, were jamming on the brakes before the poor sap just behind them knew what was happening.
One has to wonder what is more dangerous? The extra seven miles per hour or the tax collector police officer with the laser gun.
Two days ago I observed two Minnetonka cops preying on Westbound traffic on the Crosstown, Highway 62 near 494 where the speed limit drops from 55 to 45. One with the laser gun. One primed to pounce.
In the case of Minnetonka, I happen to know that at any given time there are four squads on duty in the city because I have voiced my opinion on the topic with the police chief more than once, having also seen the same thing on 494, an interstate freeway.
In essence, half of our police force was preying on motorists on a state highway that happens to pass through the city. In the mean time, in almost five years living in my neighborhood, where motorists regularly travel at ten to fifteen over the limit on a street where children are regularly seen biking, I have seen a squad patrolling only once.
Within the last ten years or so, a convenience store and a Dairy Queen have been robbed at gun point in the city of Minnetonka. In the case of the convenience store, an employee was shot and died.
That is not to say that either could have been prevented (unless a squad happened to be within view). Rather, it makes the point that speeding isn’t the only crime in these parts.
Shouldn’t our squad cars be conspicuously cruising our neighborhoods and business districts? Isn’t that the highest and best use of a scarce resource? Are speeders from a different community on a state or federal highway that happens to pass through the community a chief concern for the respective police department?
or…
Is it actually a local tax on out of town speeders in response to diminished state and federal funds coming to local police forces?
August 3rd, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Speeding tickets=revenue for all. That’s all it is. Yet another revenue stream in the era of decreasing LGA. Red light and speed cameras are just as egregious, even more so since you are denied the constitutional right to confront your accuser in a court of law. Csaba Csere and Pat Bedard have written much about these and related topics over the last couple decades
I have griped about unmarked squad cars for years. If they REALLY wanted the police to project a conspicuous presence to make people slow down, all the cars would be blaze orange with flags flying to be as visible as possible. THAT would do more to slow people down than randomly picking a person out from the entire pack of speeders (who, for the mot part, don’t even lift off the gas when they see a squad on the side of the road who has nailed someone). When ALL traffic is doing 10-15 over the limit, nothing dangerous is happening.
August 3rd, 2008 at 12:46 pm
I look at it as similar to the hall monitor in high school. Face it, Roosh. There’s a whole lot of knuckle heads who managed to get licensed. Having a visible reminder may actually engage their brains.
August 3rd, 2008 at 12:57 pm
I look at it as similar to the hall monitor in high school.
So should the hall monitor hide behind a corner or walk the halls constantly, conspicuosly?
August 3rd, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Psychologically speaking, random reinforcement is more effective than constant. Unmarked police cars merely add to the reinforcement you receive for socially undesirable behavior.
Yeah, I felt differently a decade or so ago when I owned the Porsche 😉
August 3rd, 2008 at 1:32 pm
There’s a whole lot of knuckle heads who managed to get licensed.
No doubt but is that the chief concern for the police department? If your city only has four officers on duty, should half of them concentrate their effort on motorists who aren’t even citizens of that city (passing through).
One example: police officers are often the first responders to arrive in a medical emergency. Shouldn’t they be dispersed throughout the city? Especially a city as geographically spread out as Minnetonka?
August 3rd, 2008 at 1:39 pm
I’d agree that the highest and best use of police resources is patrolling the neighborhoods. I’ve only gotten jugged once and it was because I did slow down when I saw the unmarked car (this was in St. Croix Falls, WI). The guy behind me must have been laughing as I got the ticket while he blew through there going 65-70, as did the 30-40 other cars that passed while I awaited my punishment for going 56 in a 45 zone. If I had kept going like the others did, the St. Croix Falls cop wouldn’t have caught me, most likely.
I broke the law and deserved the ticket, but it seemed pretty random.
August 3rd, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Cops setting up speed traps is a time honored revenue raiser (tiny southern town with Boss Hogg mayor cliche). And doing it once in awhile makes the day to day enforcement easier since people remember where the speed traps are if they come through an area regular and ever got or saw someone get busted there.
HOWEVER, there is something new with speeding tickets and that is the price tag. The state jacked up the rates a couple of years ago and now a speeding ticket can cost you $200 or more depending on how fast you were going and whether the officer feels sorry for you or not. And the locality gets a cut of this money but not all–a good chunk of it goes directly to the state. Some local governments are protesting the ticket increase because it’s costing them more in court time because more people will fight a $200 ticket than a 60 or 70 dollar one.
August 3rd, 2008 at 3:43 pm
(tiny southern town with Boss Hogg mayor cliche).
Southern nothing. It’s all over the place.
Dazey, North Dakota – a little town which had maybe 130 people in the eighties, and is under 100 now, smack astride ND1, the key shortcut from Jamestown to Grand Forks – for years had a cop sitting on the outskirts of town. The speed limit dropped from 55 to like 20 at the city limits – and they were ferocious about pulling folks over, especially truckers and people from out of state. That town must have run its entire municipal budget on fines.
August 3rd, 2008 at 4:06 pm
If your city only has four officers on duty, should half of them concentrate their effort on motorists who aren’t even citizens of that city (passing through).
I’m surprised that Minnetonka only has four on duty. That seems to be a problem in and of itself. That being said, having people “passing through” doesn’t change much in the analysis, since they may be doing so on a daily basis.
I can see your larger point about the interstate issue and local law enforcement, however making the distinction leads to a pretty grey area. Using traffic regulation as a revenue generator is poor public policy, but obvious police presence is very good public policy. Ultimately it is a jurisdiction (and a local one, at that), and a degree of control is essential. Laws are laws, after all.
August 3rd, 2008 at 8:43 pm
It’s not a tax, Roosh, it’s a user fee. Don’t just look at the total. Look at the various surcharges attached to most tickets these days. Those are a direct consequence of raising taxes being a politically unacceptable way to deal with rising costs.
I don’t see any evidence cited here that speeding tickets are actually motivated by funding cuts to municipalities, though. You give one example of a convenience store clerk being killed in your community. I wonder how many residents have been killed or injured in traffic accidents over the same 10 years?
Hard to know when a Dairy Queen might be robbed, but it’s not hard to predict where people will be driving too fast. And think about whether some of those drivers are not just speeding, but driving impaired. Will they stop being drunk if they see a marked squad?
August 3rd, 2008 at 8:49 pm
There’s a place just up the road from my Mom’s called Bourbon, MO (and yes, the water tower says “Bourbon”) that has Hwy. 44 running through the city limits. For the last few years the city cops have been sitting on the highway ticketing for as little as 72 in a 70. It’s every day, all day, so the locals know enough driving through there. Even so they’ve made enough money to build their own courthouse and hire their own judge, mainly to handle the extra “business”. They’ve had some spectacular accidents along that stretch as well, though I think the city cops working the highway are more likely the cause than a deterrent for these.
August 3rd, 2008 at 9:00 pm
charlieq,
Forget about robberies, let’s confine it to traffic and follow your argument.
Here’s why your arguement doesn’t hold up.
If the police are truly motivated to deter speeding and drunk driving, they will do much more by cruising around the highways conspicuously than sitting hidden behind a bridge or just behind a dip in the road.
They may actually issue less tickets, but will be much more visible to the public, especially as Bill C put it, if they are in well-marked black and white squad cars.
This is evidenced by the fact that whenever a cruiser is found in traffic, cars near and in front and behind the squad keep pretty much to four or less MPH over the limit.
If speeding and drunk driving are crimes, don’t we want to deter the crime before it occurs? Ticketing it after the fact (save getting the drunk off the road) does no good, but does create revenue.
How else can you explain the tactic of hiding their squad cars?
As for the drunk, if he/she knows or hears the cops have been seen everywhere, they are much more likely to think twice. Furthermore, I don’t believe an officer is nearly as likely to spot a drunk driver from a stationary perch versus cruising in traffic and observing the telltale signs relative to other traffic.
Additionally, I believe most drunk driving occurs in the evening and most of the speed traps I see occur during business hours.
August 4th, 2008 at 7:35 am
Speeding tickets are actually a revenue loser for cities – they get about $12 per ticket – nearly all of the money goes to the state, and cities successfully pushed for a law that was passed this year to put the breakdown on the ticket itself, so that people can see where the money goes. So revenue generation is an unlikely reason for city cops to set up a speed trap, at least in Minnesota.
August 4th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Actually Wendy, it’s not that simple. City cops often issue “administrative citations” which bypass the state surcharge altogether. Cities always say that they don’t make money off of tickets (and maybe they don’t with court costs, police time, etc.) but government accounting is bizarre and not really like real world accounting. It’s all about pots of money and revenue generation for each of them. When Minneapolis needs extra money, it doubles down on parking meter enforcement. Not too much public safety benefit to that.
We got caught in a MPD sweep about a year ago–a place where a freeway exit dumped right on to a city street with a 30 mph speed limit. The ticket was an administrative citation for “exhibitionery driving.” Like drag racing or something? The cop made it pretty clear that he was letting us off lightly and he was because the ticket was about half what it could have been if it had been a real speeding ticket. On the other hand, the cha-ching, all 100% of it went to the city of Minneapolis.
August 4th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Almost on the subject, one thing I’ve noticed is that nobody ever seems to give the real reasons for speed limits–to give drivers time to avoid dangers on the road.
August 4th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
First off, a “speed trap” is when a cop sits just beyond a change in speed sign (e.g. 40 mph to 30 mph and nails people who don’t slow down quickly enough. Running laser on a highway is not a “speed trap.”
Second, if there are only 4 cops in Minnetonka, visibility as a deterrent doesn’t do much good. The idea of hiding is so people assume the cops could be anywhere, and drive accordingly.