It’s a good article, because it reminds us that it’s important to realize that “crooked cops” aren’t the heart of the problem, the “crooked system” is. The cops are crooked in order to satisfy the demands of their precinct commanders, who are crooked in order to satisfy the demands of the police chiefs, who are crooked in order to satisfy the demands of the city officials, who are crooked in order to pander to voters, rake in citation income, and satisfy the demands of the Feds who are doling out the pork.
Even if we fired every single crooked beat cop, their replacements would turn out to be just as crooked, because it’s a systemic problem. Law enforcement needs to be divorced from funding based on the number of citations, arrests, convictions, or amount of property confiscated, otherwise it will just spiral further and further out of control. We are just subsidizing the bad behavior, and if you subsidize something, you will get more of it.
With all due respect, I think you are missing too big a piece of the picture for me to not comment. You said:
“...it’s important to realize that ‘crooked cops’ aren’t the heart of the problem, the ‘crooked system’ is.”
I submit that you may not understand that police work (authority) is inherently corruptive in nature. The very foundation of our government is that THE PEOPLE are the government. Not politicians. We have drifted far from the Constitutional Republic afforded us by our Founding Fathers, but that doesn’t mean that this type of thing was not forseen.
The fact is, that EVERY step of the process was supposed to involve players from the general public, not life long politicians, and that includes municipal (corporate, for hire) police. Citizens are meant to police themselves. They even have the power to arrest. Police are meant to enforce the law, as a county Sheriff is [supposed to be] a citizen chosen by his peers by a once-in-4-years election to do full time police work, and be swapped out with ALL his deputies (whenever the new sheriff chooses) at the leisure of the people. We now have unionized thugs, responsible to know one, and with lifetime superior status.
What kind of effect does this superiority bring. See: “The Stanford Studies.” It doesn’t matter who you are, if you’re given complete authority over another person, you’re GOING to abuse them. Now, you may not see it as abuse, because you’ll get a demented mind, but the fact is, your sense of reality becomes warped. Rare, and I mean virtually nonexistent, is the (wo)man who will not abuse authority when it’s thrusted upon him/her. And those (wo)men are the ones who don’t want authority in the first place, they want to be left alone. But when the need requires them to take up authority, they throw it down just as quickly as they can.
Therefore, I submit to you, that while you do mention several factors that multiple this fundamental human issue, you may not have considered the real issue. Government, whether it be the executive, legislative, or judicial branch, is not mean to be a lifetime, and never-ending, position of power. If we had true representation at the Federal level (our true number of U.S. House Reps should number in the 1,000’s, and our Senators should be revokable, pre-17th amendment), then laws would better reflect the wiull of the people, and judges and presidents would be far more likely to be impeached if the people wanted that.
The truth is, the statists want to consolidate as much power in as few people that can be bought with as little money (or additional power, if you will) as possible. That’s all it took to create the police state we live in. If you didn’t know, video games were invented to get people to kill one another (WW2, I believe was the starting point). Now we have a generation of people raised on video games, who’s ultimate fantasy is to kill someone in a contest that show’s who’s the bigger “man.” (And women who show want to show that they can handle the men, the “feminazis.”) What does it take to buy these cretins off? A gun and a badge. But wait, now they have tanks, full riot gear, nifty gagetry that can see through walls, hear conversations by pointing lasers at windows, see you naked. Add to that drones that can peak at you from the sky, frisking women (I had busty friend who was repeatedly frisked by several male officers on several occasions, with several people witnessing it, but unable to do anything because of the police state we live in.)
Unfortunately, it’s going to take some real solutions to get rid of this issue, not chatting. We need full representation in Congress, we need to break up all municipal police departments, and we need an involved public. People are not going to tolerate abuse forever. Term limits on all police officers should be imposed, and a relative number of short years fixed as the term. ZERO pensions for them either. No government job should carry a pension, EVER. No insurance or any other way to sap the people. Pay them a wage affixed to the jobs of the public. Police work is not difficult, technology has made it child’s play. Police work is not dangerous, not even in the top ten most dangerous jobs. Cops aren’t risking their lives for anyone. In places that are really dangerous (a la Oakland), they either don’t go in, or go in with something like a tank, and full tactical gear.
No, no. In order to fix the police problem, we need to revert police back to Constitutionally-minded bounds. The nature of corruption must be understood, or else it just happens over and over. The Founding Fathers understood these issues, but gave us the rope (leeway) to proverbially hang ourselves so that if we became apathetic, we’d pay the piper. Now we are reaping the whirlwind. THe day we traded liberty (policing ourselve) for security (allowing thugs to ravish us like wolves) was the day we got neither. And that day is today.
In Michigan funding from traffic tickets go to the courts and a portion to the state. There is a small pittence left over that can only be given to the municipal general fund or to the library system.
The rules are very tight so most municipalities elect to have the funds go to the library. The biggest reason though is that it takes the ‘funding’ issue off the table.
Most of the current fine structure in my county is set up to fund the COURTS, not the police. The courts tacked on $25.00 to each ticket a few years ago in order to hire another clerk. They have since upped that amount.
For instance, the standard for 5 over is $100.00 in Michigan. My daughter just got a ticket and her fine is $135.00. The difference is funding the local court.