Policing for Profit

After my post from a couple of days ago, it has become apparent that some people think that speed cameras are a good idea, saying that they don’t speed, and are tired of people who do. It’s cute that those people think that speed cameras have anything to do with traffic safety or actual speeding.

In Baltimore, a speed camera issued a speeding ticket to a stationary car. The real story here isn’t that one car was erroneously ticketed. No, the real story is the fact that Baltimore’s 164 cameras have issued $48 million in tickets over the last three years. If the amount of the ticket, $40, is typical, this means that 400,000 tickets a year are issued by those 164 cameras: roughly 2400 tickets for each camera. The officers that review the pictures before a ticket is issued review and issue 1200 tickets per day. On an 8 hour workday, that leaves just 24 seconds for each picture to be reviewed and a citation issued. In other words, this is nothing but a revenue generator with few safeguards or oversight.

Officials in Heath, Ohio installed 2 speed cameras to watch for excessive speed on Route 79, an area that had seen only one crash in the previous two years. Those two cameras alone accounted for 5,000 traffic citations in just 4 weeks.

Since it was such a money maker, ten more cameras were installed to watch intersections in town and look for red light runners. Those ten cameras were responsible for 5,000 more tickets their first month. At those intersections, light runners had been responsible for only 16 traffic accidents over the previous two years.

In all, the traffic tickets will cost the drivers in the area more than $12,000,000 in fines each year, of which the city will keep $10,00,000.

Then there was the Long Island traffic cameras that were responsible for $2.4 million in School Zone speeding tickets during the summer, when there was no school in session.

The big winner here is actually the private company that installs and runs the cameras. They frequently are involved in kickback schemes.

Miami, Washington, DC, and half a dozen other cities have been involved in this fleecing of the public. No oversight, with a private company running the camera while giving some of the take back to the city.

Still Counting Bullet Holes

Two cars full of NRA members white men gang members unidentified young men engaged in a running gun battle in Winter Haven, Florida. All four people riding in one car, and at least on person in the other car, were hit. The Sheriff’s Department spokesman said that they are still counting casings and bullet holes to try and determine how many shots were fired.

Winter Haven is known as the bailiwick of Sheriff Grady Judd. Some try to make him into some sort of ‘tough guy’ hero cop. While I certainly commend his stance on people who commit violent crimes, he is also the sort of grandstanding cop that I can’t abide.

Don’t forget that Grady Judd is also one of the Sheriffs who has broken Florida law by lobbying state legislators to defeat open carry and defeat Constitutional carry. It is illegal for government officials to lobby the State Legislature for changes to the law, but that doesn’t matter to a police official who supports ‘law and order’ when the law is in opposition to his orders.

His opinion on guns seems to change, depending on who is listening:

Crime DOES Pay

Orlando will soon be paying criminals to not commit crimes, and to counsel others to avoid crime as well. Called “neighborhood change agents,” they will be individuals who have similar backgrounds, come from similar communities as those who are at risk of committing violent crimes. They may be people who got in trouble as youth themselves, who have been arrested, and involved in gangs. According to the program:

Neighborhood Change Agents” (NCAs) who will intervene to disrupt situations when violence appears imminent, and maintain daily contact with participants, serving as mentors, case managers and life coaches. Their goal will be to pivot participants away from circumstances leading toward violence, and instead to non-violent, economically, and socially productive lives.

Paying criminals not to commit crimes. This was a program that began in Richmond, CA back in 2016. Fox News reported on it at the time. San Francisco started doing it last year.

So this year, as you are filing your taxes, remember that this is where your hard earned money is going: you are paying protection money to criminals in the hopes that they won’t kill you. I don’t even know why we need cops anymore.

I Wonder

The Manhattan DA has said he will not seek prison sentences for any crimes other than homicide or other cases involving the death of a victim, a class B violent felony in which a deadly weapon causes serious physical injury, domestic violence felonies, sex offenses in Article 130 of the Penal Law, public corruption, rackets, or major economic crimes, including any attempt to commit any such offense under Article 110 of the Penal Law, unless required by law.

Does that mean you won’t do time for owning an AR15 and a dozen 30 round magazines?

Air Security Failure

A man flew from Barbados to Miami International with a loaded .32 revolver in his carry on. They claim that he was arrested after TSA agents found a handgun in his belongings.

I don’t buy it. Since when does the TSA screen people who are getting off of a plane? One of two things happened here: Either he brought it to their attention himself, or he was caught because he had to exit and reenter security for some reason.

The article reads like the TSA is so much better at security than other agencies. This summer, it was announced that TSA agents missed 95% of weapons that were placed in luggage by inspectors. In 17 out of 18 tries by the undercover federal agents saw explosive materials, fake weapons, or drugs pass through TSA screening undetected.

The problem that I have here, all incompetence aside, is that TSA is wasting time and effort looking for drugs. Their main and only purpose is supposed to be safety. in fact, the only reason that SCOTUS even allowed this violation of the Fourth Amendment was that the TSA was for safety and not law enforcement purposes, but that is not the point of this post.

The 2021 failure rate is not anything new. In 2017, they missed 70% of weapons. In 2015, they failed 95% of the time. Congress has been briefed that the TSA is a colossal waste of money.

I can believe it. I have had two incidents where I accidentally flew with weapons.

  • I once flew from Fairbanks to Los Angeles with a large container of bear mace in my carry on bag.
  • I once flew from Orlando to Nashville, including a layover in Atlanta, with a Glock 9mm in my carry on. I had simply forgotten that it was in my bag. I went to the airport, passed through security, and boarded the plane. When I put my bag in the overhead compartment, I heard a loud thump. I wondered what I had in there that was so heavy, and it dawned on me in an instant. I flew the entire way to Atlanta in a cold sweat. I was worried that I would have to pass through security again to change gates at my layover. It turns out that I didn’t. Once I was on the second flight, I realized that most security is theater. The TSA is staffed with a bunch of minimum wage high school dropouts. The only reason that 911 hasn’t happened again is that no one has tried.

The TSA catches 4,500 or so firearms at checkpoints per year. Assuming that they catch as many as 30% of them, as they did in the best year they ever had, this means that 15,000 or more firearms per year wind up on America’s aircraft. If they only catch 5%, as they did in the most recent test, as many as 90,000 firearms per year wind up flying the friendly skies.

The TSA costs us taxpayers $8.24 billion per year. That is over $1.8 million for each detected firearm, while they miss 95% of the firearms in passenger luggage. Who knows how much extra the TSA agents steal on top of that? The TSA has fired nearly 400 employees for stealing from travelers’ luggage.

The Miami Airport is #1 in TSA agent thefts, which ranks twelfth in passengers, with 29 employees terminated for theft from 2002 through December 2011.

This is one of the marks of third world shithole countries: the police are often on the take. If they are willing to steal, how willing are they to take bribes? Officers in Palm Beach, New Haven, Newark, and Westchester have all been caught accepting bribes from people for circumventing security. In fact, 20,000 of the TSA’s 55,000 agents have had complaints of misconduct against them, but 95% of the time, no discipline is administered.

The TSA, like most of the government, is a jobs program that is nothing more than a waste of taxpayer money that doesn’t accomplish the mission that it has been assigned.

Disclaimer: The stories above are for illustrative and artistic purposes only. They may or may not have happened. The posts on this site should not be construed as a confession or admission of guilt. So if any Federal, State, or Local law enforcement are reading this page, you should keep in mind that I probably never did any of the things I claim to have done. So there.