Here my two cents on this . . If I get pulled over for speeding odds are I know I am speeding and breaking the law. I just shut up and pay up, I got caught plain and simple whether they are sitting on the side of the road lights on or off or whatever. I could be wrong on this but you can have a radar detector . . I have not heard anything about people not being able to have one ?
Legal question regarding Police Vehicles without lights on during speed traps
- Thread starter 04Mach1Blurr
- Start date
Virginia,Oklahoma, and Dc do not allow radar detectors period.
New York, Alabama, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri , Montana, Nebraska, Ohio , Oregon, Tennesee, Texas , Utah , Washington, and Wisconsin do not allow them in comercial vehicles.
And I believe counties may have their own laws regarding use.
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There are no winners in a game of semantics. I think we all know what the term speed trap refers to; it's officers dedicating time to monitor traffic in a specific area and ticket those caught speeding in excess of what the officers consider acceptable given current traffic conditions. It's not entrapment which is what some of you are implying. Don't read so far into it.
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How much revenue does speed enforcement generate? Does it generate a profit?
No idea. But when I hear from a local LEO and a local government lawyer both tell me "its all about the money" seems telling enough. Plus in NY a violation can result in fines and surcharges in excess of $1200 seems like the money is pretty relevant. That is my layman's take on it.
Notice I've not said anything about the officers, they just do as they are ordered, its the institutional directive that bugs me.
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You do know the books of cities, counties, and states are available for you to review, right? Those records are audited and tell you exactly how much "revenue" was generated. If you actually take the time to research yourself, you'll see whatever "revenue" generated from traffic citations is negligible to probably 99% of political entities in the US. In fact, when accounting for costs of the police force, courts, debt collectors, reports to the state, etc traffic enforcement actually cost municipalities much more money that it generates. It doesn't make much sense for a business to keep doing something for revenue purposes when it causes them to operate at a loss, does it? So why would a municipality do the same?
Let's look at the city of Austin. The cost to run the police department is $216 million, and the cost to run the municipal courts which oversee traffic cases was $11 million. For the FY09, the city had $8.8 million in traffic fines. This is out of a city budget of over $2 billion. That's .33% of the entire city budget. So, the "revenue" generated by traffic ticket's doesn't even cover the cost to run the administration of the departments tasked with writing them. Yeah. It's obviously a revenue issue.
http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/budget/09-10/downloads/Exe Final Draft.pdf
Taken directly from the city budget:
So, for FY10, we have $10 mil in traffic citations in a budget of $2.64 billion. That's .38% of the entire budget for the city.
They even provided graphs in the budget for those that have trouble looking at numbers. While the graph shows revenue for fines and fees to be 4% of the budget, there are $60 mil in other fines/fees included in the budget, but since we're talking about traffic citations, those don't count.
Look at any other city and the breakdown will be similar.
I'm done debating it, it generates revenue, that is a fact as you posted. I never said it was significant and numbers can be spun in many ways. They way you quote it its as if those costs would not exist otherwise and you know that's not the case.
Best wishes and goodnight.
Best wishes and goodnight.
I thought in commercial vehicles it was illegal period ? Good to know thow man. Everybody on this topic has good points there not a right or wrong here
and it only took 40 posts to bring up this argument...Thanks for your honest opinion. :bored:
Lol wtf to that ? So I was right. Thanks
It is neglible in the grand scheme of things. I am willing to bet that less than 1/10 of 1% of all municipalities can generate positive cash flow from civil citations.
The point is still that the vast majority of jurisdictions do NOT make a positive cash flow from traffic tickets and that violent and wanted felons are arrested every day on simple traffic stops.
Buy me one Dave. Thanks, you are the best. :banana:
There are plenty of things that generate money but cost more to produce, like ethanol. Therefore, it is not a positive revenue stream and certainly not the reason for such enforcement.
If you have such a problem with traffic enforcement take it up with your legislature and demand they remove all law related to enforcing traffic violators and the police will no longer have it as part of their job. Im sure the roads will be a safer place for it. :bored:
Thats what a CB Radio is for:idea:
Amen...I have been trying to state this for 4 posts but all I get is a response about how people are not "trapped"
And we are simply arguing semantics here.
Yup.... AND I found out that radar/laser Jammers are illegal everywhere in the U.S. since they emit a "signal." Go figure- you can't emit a signal without FCC approval therefore making it illegal- or so Google tells me.
You do know the books of cities, counties, and states are available for you to review, right? Those records are audited and tell you exactly how much "revenue" was generated. If you actually take the time to research yourself, you'll see whatever "revenue" generated from traffic citations is negligible to probably 99% of political entities in the US. In fact, when accounting for costs of the police force, courts, debt collectors, reports to the state, etc traffic enforcement actually cost municipalities much more money that it generates. It doesn't make much sense for a business to keep doing something for revenue purposes when it causes them to operate at a loss, does it? So why would a municipality do the same?
Let's look at the city of Austin. The cost to run the police department is $216 million, and the cost to run the municipal courts which oversee traffic cases was $11 million. For the FY09, the city had $8.8 million in traffic fines. This is out of a city budget of over $2 billion. That's .33% of the entire city budget. So, the "revenue" generated by traffic ticket's doesn't even cover the cost to run the administration of the departments tasked with writing them. Yeah. It's obviously a revenue issue.
http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/budget/09-10/downloads/Exe Final Draft.pdf
Taken directly from the city budget:
So, for FY10, we have $10 mil in traffic citations in a budget of $2.64 billion. That's .38% of the entire budget for the city.
They even provided graphs in the budget for those that have trouble looking at numbers. While the graph shows revenue for fines and fees to be 4% of the budget, there are $60 mil in other fines/fees included in the budget, but since we're talking about traffic citations, those don't count.
Look at any other city and the breakdown will be similar.
So if we take traffic enforcement and the traffic court out of the picture you'd be saving the city almost 3 million dollars?........ sounds like a plan to me. How do we make that a ballot initiative again?
Of course on the other hand the function of Gov't isn't necessarily to be efficient, and while it's a worthy goal to save money when and where you can it's not the gov'ts job to make $ like a business does so comparing the 2 doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Just my .02:thumbsup:
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