The government, in its infinite greed, keeps poor people poor. A young black man working for me at $8/hr was given a lawnmower. He borrowed a trailer to go two miles on a country road to pick it up. He got stopped because one of the trailer brake lights was out. While stopped they wrote him up for a bald tire. Total bill was $112. He can present a receipt for a new tire, $75 and a mechanic’s affidavit for a light repair ($119/hr plus parts) and they will reduce the fine to $91. Since he doesn’t own the trailer he opted to pay the fine. That is 14 hours of his labor. I can’t tell you how annoyed this makes me. He leaves work once a week to sell his plasma, which is major income to him.
In Florida, they are very strict about speed violations. They changed the limits on several major roads to reduce them for short distances to 10 below the rest of the limits. They then hide out and nail people. They don’t issue warnings.
A friend listened to the story and concluded, it looks like they have a goal of making $100 per stop. I agree. It’s policing for profit.
Locally, we have a self funded city and county EPA. The have a bunch of rules that count as criminal arrests. The typical fine is $250 but they have an offender intervention program you can pay $1500 for that erases the criminal arrest.
The local building department staffed for the bubble and hasn’t laid anybody off. The manager of the self funded office told them go write fines or they’d be fired. A developer said it costs him about $3000 for every $50,000 of materials he uses. He just builds the fines into the price.
This is the result of townships on up becoming corporations, whose goal is profits, instead of policemen working to keep the community safe. Come on people, wake up and take back YOUR responsibility!