Boring video..............

 

I am on the job as well, but no longer work the road. Your statement leads me to believe that YOU were in charge of the plea deal. If that's the case, congratulations. In PA, it's a death sentence.

 

I've been a part of speed details where we will have a guy sitting in a old beat up Cherokee with the hood up and four ways on. Little do people know, he's aiming a radar out the back. A quarter mile down the road, we will have 4-5 cars lined up on an on-ramp.

I'm keeping the rest to myself.

 

It sounds like you are a good police officer and I know officers like you have a tough job.

I think the police officers around here spend more time on radar patrol than they do stopping crime in the area because traffic stops create revenue and stopping crime doesn't.

I've only gotten 1 speeding ticket in my life (5mph over) when I was a lot younger. It was my first and only traffic violation but the officer didn't give me a break. A written warning would have been nice or he could've told me to drive a little slower but he didn't. I was very polite and respectful but it didn't matter. This is the only contact that I've ever had with a police officer in my life and it was a negative experience so now I have a negative attitude toward traffic police officers. They needlessly put not only their lives on the line but also the lives of the person they pull over for a ticket. Most of us have seen the cruiser videos of a traffic stop where a police officer is hit by another car.

 

I was tailgated by some a-hole with his brights on. I gunned the car and moved to the slow lane. Turned out to be some jerk cop who thought my car might be stolen. He was no hero, he was a ZERO.
No brains.
No *****.
No morals.
His name is Jay Cripple. He was a state troopper at Troop B in Jefferson Parish, LA.
This jerk deserves the worst life can bring. If you ever run into this sleaze bag, expect the worst treatment of your life.
I used to treat cops with respect, I now view them all as crooks.

 

Well of course it is and the sneakey little bastaches are NOT simply "glorified tax collectors"...

 

 

 

Thats not fair . Thats like saying all corvette owners are fat and bald !

 

I agree. I should know, I have hair. Seriously, not all cops are out to get you.

 

i have no idea what your point is... is it that they hang speeders in PA?

i use to live in philly and i stand by my point. its about the money that is why they never lower the fines but will easily and readily lower the infraction and points.

in colorado they lowered the speed limits insisting that it was in need of safety from 30 to 25 in residential areas. of course thay had absolutely no evidence to back up it being a safety issue. however, during the next 6 months revenue from speeding tickets increased 600%. its about the money...

 

you could well be right my friend, around here (CT) we have a pretty decent industrial tax base and property taxes are high (hell, all taxes are high in CT!!) So I don't think that the state and local govt. rely as heavily that type of revenue as some more rural locations. Pretty way to raise money if I can put in my 2 cents.

 

For what it's worth, By regarding ALL cops as low life creeps that need to be avoided at all cost, I have not had an accident or ticket in ten years. I'm highly motivated to avoid contact with this group.
There could be good cops out there, I'm just not interested in testing that theory.

BTW - Have any of you read the book Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt? It could change the way you drive.

 

EXACTLY.

For example, a Popular Mechanics article in the March 2006 edition:

Stoplight Traffic Cameras: Why Is Big Brother Ticketing You?

Comics might say that the real purpose of traffic cameras is to let cops spend more time in doughnut shops. Cynics might contend that the devices are mostly intended to boost traffic-fine revenue. But cameras that photograph the license plates of cars running red lights or speeding--resulting in a citation in the car owner's mailbox--are stirring up controversy as they become more common.

First rolled out in the 1960s, stoplight cameras went digital in the 1990s. Now, these cameras are in use in over 100 communities in 20 states and the District of Columbia. Cameras aimed at catching speeders, already common in Britain and other countries, are beginning to be deployed in the United States as well. The technology is pretty simple--just a fixed camera with a sensor and a connection to the traffic signal or a radar gun. But the problems they present are much more complicated.

Some people just don't like the idea of being watched. Being monitored and punished at the behest of a law-enforcement robot sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, and not an especially cheerful science fiction movie.

Others worry about safety. Red-light cameras are supposed to make us safer by discouraging people from running red lights. The trouble is that they work too well. Numerous studies have found that when these cameras are put in place, rear-end collisions increase dramatically. Drivers who once might have stretched the light a bit now slam on their brakes for fear of getting a ticket, with predictable results. A study of red-light cameras in Washington, D.C., by The Washington Post found that despite producing more than 500,000 tickets (and generating over $32 million in revenues), red-light cameras didn't reduce injuries or collisions. In fact, the number of accidents increased at the camera-equipped intersections.

Likewise, red-light cameras in Portland, Ore., produced a 140 percent increase in rear-end collisions at monitored intersections, and a study by the Virginia Transportation Research Council found that although red-light cameras decreased collisions resulting from people running traffic lights, they significantly increased accidents overall.

This problem can be aggravated by jurisdictions that shorten the duration of yellow lights, apparently to generate more ticket revenue. Last year, CBS News reported on an especially egregious case in Maryland: A traffic-camera intersection had a 2.7-second yellow light, while nearby intersections had 4-second times. Shorter yellow lights are more dangerous--but shorter yellow lights plus traffic cameras generate revenue.

These kinds of revelations led UCLA law professor Stephen Bainbridge to write on his blog: "In my book, these instruments of the devil are just a tax on drivers." The American Automobile Association and the National Motorists Association agree, and opposition has led several states to enact laws restricting the use of traffic cameras.



Smile, You're Busted

When a vehicle enters an intersection, it trips induction sensors, which in turn trigger a camera to take both wide-angle and closeup shots of the violation. ILLUSTRATION BY FLYING-CHILLI.COM

Meanwhile, some motorists are taking matters into their own hands. Various devices of dubious legality are sold to drivers to render traffic cameras ineffectual, including reflective sprays and polarized license-plate covers that promise to make the photos illegible. (In Europe, the GPS-based Talex Speed Camera Alert System warns drivers approaching areas known to be camera-equipped.) Some motorists have resorted to vandalism, shooting or spray-painting the cameras.

Defenders of the cameras respond that red-light running is a genuine problem, and that something has to be done about it. But if the emphasis is on safety--rather than on revenue--there are better ways of dealing with the problem. A recent study done by the University of Central Florida for the Florida Department of Transportation found that improving intersection markings in a driving simulator reduced red-light running by 74 percent without increasing the number of rear-end collisions. Likewise, a Texas Transportation Institute study found that lengthening yellow-light times cut down dramatically on red-light running. It also found that most traffic-camera violations occurred within the first second after the light turned red (the average was just one-half second after the light change), while most T-bone collisions occurred 5 or more seconds after the light change. If there's a problem, cameras aren't really addressing it.

Whatever their limitations, law-enforcement cameras can be irresistible for local governments since they're literally money machines. But voters have other ideas. As an editorial on the automotive blog thetruthaboutcars.com notes, "Every time photo radar is put to a direct popular vote, it loses." In 2002 the city council in Lyndhurst, Ohio, dropped a plan to install speed cameras after encountering intense public opposition. ("DOA. Never to be revisited again. Bad idea," one councilman said of the proposal.)

And in Akron, Ohio, the city council voted to refund a portion of fines to more than 2000 drivers who were ticketed by speed cameras during a 19-day period last year. Among other complaints, some drivers claimed that they were issued tickets in school zones during times when low school-zone speed limits were not in effect. If speed cameras catch on, despite such local opposition, expect to hear similar complaints about badly marked speed zones and other moves calculated to catch motorists unawares.

Two groups likely to embrace traffic cameras, however, are lawyers and political consultants. In many states, photos taken by the cameras will be discoverable under state Freedom of Information acts. That means anyone who asks can get copies. A personal-injury lawyer might use the photos as evidence in support of a lawsuit claiming that intersections are unsafe. A political consultant might look for pictures of incumbent politicians speeding and running lights--and then check to see if the pictures show someone sitting in the passenger seat, and do a little more digging to find out just who that person might be. The possibilities are endless.

But there's more to it than politics. Do we as a nation really want to go down this road? To see where we could be heading, look at Britain with its surveillance cameras. Starting in December, the British government began compiling a database of information from thousands of cameras around the country. Using 35 million license-plate "reads" a day, it will be able to pinpoint the location of every vehicle on British roads. Can you say "Big Brother"?

If voters don't make politicians rethink these automated cops, perhaps lawyers and political opponents will. Otherwise, get used to Big Brother watching you. And mailing you a ticket.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a law professor at the University of Tennessee and writes the blog instapundit.com. His book, An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths, will be published this month.

 

then who are you planning on calling when some crackhead is breaking into your house to steal your tv; and who do you think answers the phone when you call 911 because someone in your house just collapsed and needs an ambulance? The police will show up first to ambulance calls because we are in your neighborhood already, which is why we are also all EMT certified. We do more than just write tickets you know, and if you want to write us all off as creeps, than take it all the way and remove the 9 and the 1 from your phone.

 

this is priceless!! Do you have any idea what you are talking about, or just whipping out a line from elementary school civics class that happened to stick? Taxation without representation means that you have a representative in Washington and in your state capitol to represent his contituents for taxation. And what do you think the police departments do with the money they collect in taxes??!! We spend it on protecting our citizens from scumbags! There isn't money 'left over' at the end of the year that we all use to take lush vacations. Cops bust their collective a$$es to protect people who largely hate what we represent, and we still do it anyway. Nobody's getting rich, and many of us aren't even coming home at the end of our shift. I still have to work overtime and stand over holes in the road to make the ends meet, get the bills paid and take care of my family; just like any other guy. Traffic enforcement is a fraction of our duties and if you dont want to run into a cop doing traffic enforcement, then slow the @^#% down and enjoy the ride.
Getting off my soap box now.......

 

You pretend that you are fulfilling our right to police protection. Unfortunately, no such right exists for us hosts (as in the host-parasite relationship), and you have no legal obligation to protect us.


Ruth Brunell called the police on 20 different occasions to plead for protection from her husband. He was arrested only one time. One evening, Mr. Brunell telephoned his wife and told her he was coming over to kill her. When she called the police, they refused her request that they come to protect her. They told her to call back when he got there. Mr. Brunell stabbed his wife to death before she could call the police to tell them that he was there. The court held that the San Jose police were not liable for ignoring Mrs. Brunell's pleas for help (Hartzler v. City of San Jose, 46 Cal. App. 3d 6 (1st Dist. 1975)). Those of you in the Silicon Valley, please note what city this happened in!

Consider the case of Linda Riss, in which a young woman telephoned the police and begged for help because her ex-boyfriend had repeatedly threatened: "If I can't have you no one else will have you, and when I get through with you, no one else will want you." The day after she had pleaded for police protection, the ex-boyfriend threw lye in her face, blinding her in one eye, severely damaging the other, and permanently scarring her features. "What makes the City's position particularly difficult to understand," wrote a dissenting opinion in her tort suit against the City, "is that, in conformity to the dictates of the law, Linda did not carry any weapon for self-defense. Thus, by a rather bitter irony she was required to rely for protection on the City of New York which now denies all responsibility to her" (Riss v. New York, 240 N.E.2d 860 (N.Y.1968)). Note: Linda Riss obeyed the law, yet the law prevented her from arming herself in self defense.

Warren v. District of Columbia is one of the leading cases of this type. Two women were upstairs in a townhouse when they heard their roommate, a third women, being attacked downstairs by intruders. They phoned the police several times and were assured that officers were on the way. After about 30 minutes, when their roommate's screams had stopped, they assumed that the police had finally arrived. When the two women went downstairs, they saw that, in fact, the police never came, but the intruders were still there. As the Warren court graphically states in the opinion: "For the next fourteen hours the women were held captive, raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon each other, and made to submit to the sexual demands of their attackers." The three women sued the District of Columbia for failing to protect them, but D.C.'s highest court exonerated the District and its police, saying that it is a "fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen" (Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. Ct. of Ap., 1981). Just what did happen to "provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" anyways?

The seminal case establishing the general rule that police have no duty under federal law to protect citizens is DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services (109 S.Ct. 998, 1989; 489 U.S. 189 (1989)). Look here to see when and where the United States Supreme Court first introduced that "general rule" that the police have no duty under federal law to protect the citizens. Frequently these cases are based on an alleged "special membership" between the injured party and the police. In DeShaney, the injured party was a boy who was beaten and permanently injured by his father. He claimed a special relationship existed because local officials knew he was being abused. Indeed, they had "specifically proclaimed by word and deed [their] intention to protect him against that danger," but failed to remove him from his father's custody ("Domestic Violence -- When Do Police Have a Constitutional Duty to Protect?" Special Agent Daniel L. Schofield, S.J.D., FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, January, 1991).

The court in DeShaney held that no duty arose as a result of a "special relationship," concluding that Constitutional duties of care and protection only exist as to certain individuals, such as incarcerated prisoners, involuntarily committed mental patients and others restrained against their will and therefore unable to protect themselves. "The affirmative duty to protect arises not from the State's knowledge of the individual's predicament or from its expressions of intent to help him, but from the limitation which it has imposed on his freedom to act on his own behalf" (DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 109 S.Ct. 998 (1989) at 1006). In other words, this court's decision is just so much doublespeak designed to allow the government to turn its back on the people. Consider the absurdities that this court put forth, namely:

A little boy in the legal custody of an abusive father is able to protect himself and is free to act on his own behalf, even though he is a minor and is not of legal age to act on his own behalf.
The word or assurances of a government official, including those of a police officer, mean nothing, because this court has decided that the giving of that word or those assurances in no way obligates a government official to keep his or her word or assurances.

About a year later, the United States Court of Appeals interpreted DeShaney in the California case of Balistreri v. Pacifica Police Department (901 F.2d 696 9th Cir. 1990). Ms. Balistreri, beaten and harassed by her estranged husband, alleged a "special relationship" existed between her and the Pacifica Police Department, to wit, they were duty-bound to protect her because there was a restraining order against her husband. The Court of Appeals, however, concluded that DeShaney limited the circumstances that would give rise to a "special relationship" to instances of custody. Because no such custody existed in Balistreri, the Pacifica Police had no duty to protect her. So, when they failed to do so and she was injured, they were not held to be liable.
Citizens injured because the police failed to protect them can only sue the State or local government in federal court if one of their officials violated a federal statutory or Constitutional right, and can only win such a suit if a "special relationship" can be shown to have existed, which DeShaney and its progeny make it very difficult to do. Moreover, Zinermon v. Burch (110 S.Ct. 975, 984 1990; 494 U.S. 113 (1990)) very likely precludes Section 1983 liability for police agencies in these types of cases if there is a potential remedy via a State tort action. That very deceptive case, because it appears to favor Burch, who was the injured party, in part, states:

"The constitutional violation actionable under 1983 is not complete when the deprivation occurs; it is not complete unless and until the State fails to provide due process. Therefore, to determine whether a constitutional violation has occurred, it is necessary to ask what process the State provided, and whether it was constitutionally adequate."
"We express no view on the ultimate merits of Burch's claim; we hold only that his complaint was sufficient to state a claim under 1983 for violation of his procedural due process rights."

Many states, however, have specifically denied such claims, barring lawsuits against State or local officials for failure to protect, by enacting statutes such as California's Government Code, Sections 821, 845, and 846, which state in part: "Neither a public entity or a public employee [may be sued] for failure to provide adequate police protection or service, failure to prevent the commission of crimes and failure to apprehend criminals." No doubt, Zinermon v. Burch (110 S.Ct. 975, 984 1990; 494 U.S. 113 (1990)) would still assert that those states provide adequate remedies.

Another key point stated in Zinermon v. Burch (110 S.Ct. 975, 984 1990; 494 U.S. 113 (1990)) is that of making "due process" dependent, at least in part, on fiscal issues. To quote that case again:

"Due process, as this Court often has said, is a flexible concept that varies with the particular situation. To determine what procedural protections the Constitution requires in a particular case, we weigh several factors:
'First, the private interest that will be affected by the official action; second, the risk of an erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards; and finally, the Government's interest, including the function involved and the fiscal and administrative burdens that the additional or substitute procedural requirement would entail.' Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 335 (1976)."

Courts have held that governments are not liable for their failures to protect. Specifically, "A State's failure to protect an individual against private violence generally does not constitute a violation of the Due Process Clause, because the Clause imposes no duty on the State to provide members of the general public with adequate protective services.

Reference: Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. App.181)
In this case three rape victims sued the city and its police department under the following facts: Two of the victims were upstairs when they heard the other being attacked by men who had broken in downstairs. Half an hour having passed and their roommate's screams having ceased, they assumed the police must have arrived in response to their repeated phone calls. In fact their calls had somehow been lost in the shuffle while the roommate was being beaten into silent acquiescence. So when the roommates went downstairs to see to her, as the court's opinion graphically describes it, "For the next fourteen hours the women were held captive, raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon each other, and made to submit to the sexual demands" of their attackers.

Having set out these facts, the court promptly exonerated the District of Columbia and its police, as was clearly required by the fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen.



Who should we call? YOU?



As they say, when seconds count, the cops are only minutes away.

Yeah, every time the TV shows some "hostage situation" or shootout, we always see you guys hiding outside, wearing kevlar, while the innocent are shot up inside... AFTER the shooting is over, the bad guy has killed himself (and 32 other people), only AFTER everyone is dead, do you heroes come in, to "secure" the area...

That's why I always carry. The courts say you are under no legal obligation to protect me or my family, so that responsibility falls to me.

 

thanks for your opinion, but it is bs-I do have a legal obligation to protect my citizens, and there is an abandonment law to punish cops for failing to live up to their sworn duties. So everthing after that load was deleted. You dont wanna call the cops, then dont; be a vigilante.

 

The police just installed speed bumps on my street yesterday. Its likely due to the morons in the new subdivision (added onto ours) speeding through and instead of the police cracking down they're rather throw down a couple axle busters. I'm sure thats REAL good on my newly rebuilt suspension.

 

There are a lot of laws that prevent LE from sometimes doing whats really needed at "the time", thank your local lawyer. If you see a cop not doing something theres probably a good reason like saving his job.

Theres bad cops, bad mechanics and bad wives.
Crying about it wont solve a thing.