I do it sometimes you know. Think!

Like my friend in the picture above, chewing on his Cud, I was just thinking ………….. about the number one excuse cops have for pulling a person in a car over.

You know, the famous (wink, wink) Broken Tail light or burned out tail light? We know, and the cops know that we know, that this is just an excuse to get their heads (and noses) into our cars, so they can have an excuse for writing a ticket of some kind.

What if we passed a law that cops could no longer pull a car over for such a minor problem with an automobile? Face it, we all know this one little thing is really just a legal excuse so the cop can pull someone over and get a closer look at them, in the hopes of finding something else to write them a ticket for.

Oh sure, they do get a few DUI’s using this ploy. And, honestly, they do catch a few real crooks, but the vast majority of the stops are just excuses for our; town, city, county and state police to make a buck from their frivolous tickets.

Yes, I said it, frivolous tickets. The majority of these tickets are, in most cases, what justifies the burgeoning size of our local police forces.

As the old saying goes, “It takes Money to Make Money”, and the simple tickets make the majority of the money that supports our police forces.

You see its abuse every day. Small towns with an actual SWAT team equipped to take down a major terrorist threat with surplus Army personnel carriers, heavy arms and other battle-ready equipment.

And many times, if the frivolous tickets were curtailed, our police might be found actually patrolling our streets for “bad guys” rather than sitting in gangs on the interstate highways and main thoroughfares of the country trapping the average American doing 10-15 mph over the posted speed limit. All paid for by tickets that, I think, are an abuse of the good people of our country, in the vast majority of the cases.

And then there is the famous “LICENSE CHECK“. You know, the cops will block a busy road, in the night, to check everyone’s drivers license, when the whole purpose of the stops is to get you to roll your window down so they can smell your breath and maybe, just maybe write you up for DUI.

I guess what bothers me about this is the question of why so many of our “protectors” gathered on our roads to make this easy money for their governments, while the real crooks are; robbing stores and banks, beating up women and the elderly, killing people in hit-and-runs and such.

And they, the real crooks, get away with these crimes? Why? Often, because the cops are “tied up” making money to support their excessive “battle-hardened” systems.

OK, you’re right. People shouldn’t be drinking and driving, and they shouldn’t be speeding. But guess what? the vast majority of those caught are regular citizens, and not the hard core crooks who are getting away with the real and violent crimes.

Another crazy thing, to me, is the inequity applied to the punishment for these types of crimes; A speeder can get a $100 or so fine. A DUI driver can get a conviction that stays on their record for 10-years. While the hard-core DUI abuser can get multiple offenses and still be driving on our roads, looking for someone to kill.

And a Bank Robber, or wife beater, or a hit-and-run driver? Why, they can get convicted and often end up; being put on parole, or get several years in jail. How can you tell what they get? Its actually a roll of the judicial dice, often dependent on the judge assigned to each case. And I won’t even mention lawyer-judge payoff system in some towns.

The whole darn system of misdemeanor crime and the associated punishment system is so screwed up and everyone, on both sides of the law are abusing it. What I see, is the honest citizen who has the rare and occasional offense and trusts the legal system to treat them fairly.

Like I said, I was just wondering. Where is the best bang for the buck, anyway? Is it writing frivolous tickets so the police can buy the equipment for their own SWAT TEAM Truck, or actually making the priority the protection of the public from serious crimes and hard-core criminals?

by Don Bobbitt, 2015

Copyright Don Bobbitt, 2015, All Rights Reserved.

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