Perfect example of policing in America. Their primary mission as a force is to protect themselves at all costs just like any other gang or criminal organization.
Fun fact! The police are the largest gang of armed robbers in the country, collectively stealing more money than all other armed robberies and burglaries combined, and it’s totally legal for them
Civil asset forfeiture is one of those things where when you hear about it your first reaction is that it must be some fringe conspiracy theory because there’s no way the police could get away with something like that, right? But no, it really is that bad and it’s done completely in the open. Cops can just steal your shit out of “suspicion” and the process of getting it back is deliberately labyrinthine and difficult.
Can you prove your inherited grandmother’s engagement ring actually belongs to you? Receipt please! Oh you don’t have one. It’s ours to auction off now!
And the father of civil asset forfeiture was DNC centrist darling and father of the Israeli genocide of Palestinians himself, Joe racist-dipshit biden, who belongs in prison along with trump and many other american politicians.
https://mises.org/mises-wire/joe-biden-father-drug-wars-asset-forfeiture-program
Well that’s sadly educational. Thanks for the info.
I first read about it years ago and you captured my reaction perfectly.
Taking all the lemon pound cake
Tbf, it tastes so nice
That’s their secondary mission. Their primary mission is to terrorise the populace into submission.
First line of the article says he is supposed to protect New Yorkers. That is not true. Police have successfully lobbied for decades and have absolutely no mandate to protect anyone but themselves. They loudly and clearly stated that their job specifically exists to enforce the status quo and to bulldoze through anyone in the way. They don’t want to help anyone. They don’t want to protect anyone. It’s in their job description and their training not to.
It’s in their job description and their training not to.
Chat, is this true?
Warren v. District of Columbia “is a District of Columbia Court of Appeals case that held that the police do not owe a specific duty to provide police services to specific citizens based on the public duty doctrine.” And Castle Rock v. Gonzales, is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled, 7–2, that a town and its police department could not be sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for refusing to enforce a restraining order, even though the refusal led to the murders of a woman’s three children by her estranged husband.
Batshit crazy and ruled 7-2 too not even a slim majority
In most circumstances, police officers do not owe a personal duty to protect specific individuals from harm. The dominant principle comes from the U.S. Supreme Court decision in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services (1989)
Also see: Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales (2005) Warren v. District of Columbia (1981) Linda R.S. v. Richard D. (1973)
As you can see from reading through the cases mentioned above, the law doesn’t require police to protect you or even to enforce the law. Combine this with precedent set by police unions and qualified immunity.
Tell me again how traffic cameras make us safer and we can totally trust them to be applied objectively for public safety and no other purpose?
They aren’t for safety…they are totally for revenue.
With regards to school zones, specifically, if they cared about safety, they would be putting in mechanisms to slow traffic naturally. Raised crosswalks. Rotaries. Narrower lanes. Crossing guards.
They don’t put any of those in.
A couple towns over from me, they just put a brand new highschool right on the intersection of two major state highways, about 1/4 mile from the interstate. If they cared about the kids, they’ve put the school in a less busy area to begin with.
But instead, they demo’d an old pedestrian bridge that was keeping kids off the road for crossing, and set up a speed cam and issuing tickets in the spring before the school even opened.
And of course the school zone creates a bottleneck for people exiting the highway in rush hour, with ripple effects well down the freeway.
Fucking assholes.
But at least Theil gets paid. Most of the money doesn’t even go back to the city. What a ducking ripoff.
I’m surprised no one has challenged you on this. (I agree with your point, but people do tend to defend cameras zealously)
Wait, I’m a zealous camera defender, what am I missing?
The one they put up temporarily by my kid’s school noticeably calmed traffic near it (myself included—I’m not perfect).
I thought of different ways to word a response and then I saw another user put it perfectly already:
If the goal is to reduce speeding, road design plays more of a factor more than cameras.
A fine means that it’s a revenue grab.
I would just also add that anecdotally they don’t seem to slow many people down in my city. I have gotten at least 5 speed camera tickets since I moved here, and every time I was going the speed of traffic and was unaware a camera even exists there. This city also has a huge problem with horrific driver behavior that goes unaddressed. I’ve seen some of the craziest shit ever here but I’ve yet to see anyone pulled over for a reason that didn’t appear to be related to a “worse” crime, as in they’re searching the person’s car and it looks like they’re about to go to jail. So I have to believe that the primary concern is making money, and if they work overall (providing the data people always tout) it’s a coincidence/accident. Most of that money goes to corporations too so even if you wanted to argue it doesn’t matter if money is the main driving force, you have that additional layer of the whole thing being corrupted from the start by capitalism.
Tear them all down.
Maybe in US…
From where I am, they are 100% slowing everyone down. In fact, so much that I am getting annoyed by that. Thing is, people will go 60 in 50 zone, then see a camera sign, slow down to fucking 40, roll pass it and then pedal to the metal back to 60.
Easy optional solution how to make people actually slow down on the camera: make fine indexed. If they earn a ton, they get a huge ass fine. Say 5% of a monthly income. Stacks to 50% if they are a serial rule breaker. That way not many will speedup.
It’s always exactly who you expect
Receiving 547 fines in the mail over 4 years means he’s treating speeding as a paid subscription. Strange that they don’t cancel his driving licence. In Canada, we have points, so this wouldn’t stand. I don’t think we could have even 5 tickets in 1 year without losing our licence.
License points are a thing in some US states too
If I was American, I would be a lot more than mildly infuriated about the pedocratic police state that is the US. But I am not American, so mildy infuriated fits perfectly for me I guess.
As an (US)American, I wake up every morning screaming into the Void.
Then the Void requests a subscription fee.
I’m not legally allowed to sleep until I’ve paid the Void, one way or another.
I wake up every morning thanking whatever god wants to listen that I wasn’t born American.
truck drivers are synonymous with speeding and drunk driving, and usually driven by meatheads.
It’s specifically Ram truck drivers for the drunk driving part, most DUIs of any make and model by a long shot.
they cant park either. smh
Fuck the police
comin’ straight from the underground
This highlights some pretty lax road traffic law tbh.
Not being able to suspend a licence because they were caught on a camera is fucking moronic.
After over 500 times it seems more appropriate to revoke and never allow reapplication
Here, after that many proven violations, the car itself would’ve been impounded.
This would seem to be the better route. Unless the owner has reported the vehicle stolen, they certainly know who is driving it and should still be responsible for letting the other person drive. Sorry, snitch them out if you don’t like thousands in fines. Deliberately using “you can’t prove it was me” while racking up fines with the expectation of getting away with it has to have some limits.
The cameras in north america typically aim at the plates and not the driver themselves, so there is plausible deniability for who was driving making the lisence difficult to suspend. That said, there is no good reason they can’t suspend the registration or impound the vehicle itself regardless of who was driving.
In the UK you are legally required to say who was driving at the time.
If you refuse then you get the blame.
Your friend can be driving the vehicle, they know the vehicle sped, but not who was actually driving. So demerits aren’t issued.
Wait, hold up. In the picture, is that the actual size of that truck? Or has the size been exaggerated?
I live in a small town so I’m sorry to say, that is exactly how big pickup trucks are now. What isn’t clear from the angle of that photo is the bed is most likely less than 6 feet long, meaning it can fit less in the bed than a minivan with only rearmost row folded down.
The best part is, in rural America there’s folks who look at that stock truck, say it isn’t big enough and get a lift kit and extra large tires installed so it rides 2 feet off the ground and the wheels extend multiple inches past the fenders (sometimes they’re further out than the mirrors even) and the illegality of such mods on public roads goes entirely unenforced. Oh and those are the folks who don’t also make their trucks roll coal
Oh god, the rolling of coal. So help me these fuckers literally give people cancer and think it is funny.
I bet the coal rollers are loving the modifications to use a crapload more fuel at the moment lmao
The modified truck drivers (nobody rolls coal locally to me anymore but plenty keep putting in lift kits and even more oversized tires than stock) always start moaning when gas prices go over $4/gallon, in part because they can no longer fully fill their tank in one transaction at many gas station (most stop after $100) and that’s also the point where the dealerships start advertising their vehicles with better fuel economy rather than the oversized gas guzzling trucks and SUVs
$4/gallon is really the magical point where change starts to happen, and most of America is not far from that right now. I’m hopeful that it does get up to $5 or so for a while because that might cause some meaningful change for the better
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What’s weird is is that truck isn’t tall enough for how big it is if you want to do practical work and haul shit. It would bottom out if you put a real load in it. These things are so weird to me. This thing is a glorified grocery hauler.
I think the lens or camera angle is wonky because in addition to the entire image looking flattened, it does looks slightly lower than I’d expect, but I don’t know how much of that is that I see so many trucks with lift kits installed on a daily basis, if thats because the camera is mounted higher than I’d be seated in my car or on my bike, of if it’s just it looks off in a photo but it’s actually bog standard
I’m fully convinced that in 50 years we will be STUNNED that this was normal once. Just like lobotomies, or smoking in schools.
Yeah well I remember being convinced that racism would go the way of the Dodo when I grew up too. Sadly some 40 years later it seems to be thriving.
2 times each 5 days over 4 years. How come he still has a license?
Cop
We could not determine whether Giovansanti has ever harmed someone by speeding. But the circumstantial evidence is not reassuring: The right side of his truck is visibly damaged, and he refused to answer a straightforward question about his collision history.
If it was his car being damaged while parked it would be the left side, so probably not that.
Have you never parked on a one-way? Or literally anywhere other than the right shoulder of a road? That said, it’s literally unbelievable this person still has a license (until you learn they are a fascist pig)
I bet that cop abuses their spouse.
there’s a polymarket for that.
This is comedically on the nose, absolutely ridiculous. How is reality so heavy-handed in its lessons
