Tag: revenue generation

Want To Challenge Your Speed Camera Ticket? That’ll Be $100.

Motorists caught speeding in Peninsula, Ohio, have options: They can pay with Visa, Mastercard, Discover, or PayPal. But if they want to dispute a ticket, the flexibility ends.

Before vehicle owners can appear in municipal court to defend themselves, they must pay a $100 “filing fee.” No exceptions. No discounts. No deferrals. It’s the cost of admission—roughly the same as a one-day ticket to Disneyland.

Many drivers skip the expense and plead guilty, which works well for Peninsula. In just the first five months after launching a handheld photo radar program in April 2023, this village south of Cleveland generated 8,900 citations and $400,000 in revenue. That’s an average of about 1,800 citations and $110,000 in revenue per month.

These are staggering numbers for a community of just 536 residents. If revenue from the program continues at this rate, Peninsula could meet nearly its entire $1 million annual budget from traffic enforcement alone. Six police officers, rotating among nine strategic locations, could keep the village solvent with virtually no help from tax collectors.

Locking the courthouse doors to all but the most determined defendants—who also have $100 to spare—is key to the scheme. The tactic solves a built-in problem with photo radar enforcement that municipalities have grappled with for decades.

These programs are designed for maximum efficiency, which means eliminating human contact as much as possible. The only hiccup occurs when people demand their day in court. Hearings involve old, labor-intensive technology, which has not changed much in 200 years. A sudden strain on the system—inevitable when a police department starts cranking out more than three citations per resident per month—can produce a backlog.

So Peninsula is hiding its judges behind a paywall. Now officers can point and click without talking to anyone. No traffic stops. No trips to the courthouse. No testimony under oath. Revenue can flow like the nearby Cuyahoga River.

The streamlined approach might not seem novel. Many states impose court costs for minor traffic offenses. Appearance fees range from $22.50 in Maryland to $226 in Illinois.

Other states let people contest their tickets for free but charge for lawful behavior outside the courtroom. Arizona, for example, requires hand delivery of automated traffic tickets, which means vehicle owners can ignore violation letters that come in the mail. Once a process server tracks down these people, they must pay extra for not waiving their right to proper notice.

All of these fees undercut the Constitution, which guarantees due process. But judges typically wait until they hear evidence and render a decision before demanding payment. The timing is important. It means even the poorest citizens—people with no money in the bank—can at least show up and confront their accuser.

Keep reading

Cars That Don’t Meet London’s Emissions Standards Now Subject to Daily Fines

Drivers in London will now face financial penalties if their cars don’t meet emissions standards. While the proposal isn’t without merit, it’s unlikely to make a difference even as it penalizes motorists.

In April 2019, the British capital instituted an Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) in central London. The rule required all vehicles to meet certain emissions standards. Certain vehicles, including taxis or certain historic vehicles, were exempt; for most noncompliant vehicles, drivers would face a fine of 12.50 pounds ($15.56 USD) per day. The rule is enforced by cameras that capture license plates.

Mayor Sadiq Khan’s office touted the rule as “the world’s toughest vehicle emissions standard.” Khan referred to the city’s air quality as an “invisible killer” that is “one of the biggest national health emergencies of our generation.” At the time, Silviya Barrett, research manager at the Centre for London think tank, told the BBC, “The ULEZ is really needed especially to help poorer Londoners who live in urban areas with high pollution,” though its effect was “limited at the moment due to its small area.” It was later expanded in 2021 to cover about one-fourth of the city.

Transport for London (TfL), the city’s transportation authority, expanded the ULEZ to the entire city on August 29, 2023. All noncompliant vehicles traveling within the city—including those not registered in the U.K.—will now have to pay the daily fine. Notably, the city already assesses a 15-pound ($18.69 USD) daily Congestion Charge to all motorists who drive in central London during peak hours.

The city is bullish on the proposal: In 2020, Khan’s office released a report showing that at the end of the ULEZ’s first 10 months, measured concentrations of nitrogen dioxide were 44 percent lower than was projected without the ULEZ, with an average compliance rate of 79 percent.

Keep reading

‘They’re everywhere!’ Residents complain as their Texas town of 250 people employs 50 cops

The tiny Texas town of Coffee City is taking the concept of “over-policing” to a whole new level.

Local news station CBS 19 reports that Coffee City, with a population of just under 250 people, employs 50 full-time and reserve officers – that’s one police officer for every five residents.

And these officers appear to be very busy as well, as CBS 19 has found that they issued a whopping 5,100 citations last year that generated more than $1 million in revenue for the town budget.

This has left many residents questioning why such a small town needs an overwhelming number of police officers.

“They’re everywhere, literally everywhere,” complained one woman to CBS 19 who asked not to be publicly identified.

And that’s not all.

Local news station KHOU 11 Investigates found that a surprisingly large percentage of police employed by the town had been fired from previous law enforcement jobs.

In particular, KHOU 11’s investigation found that “more than half of the department’s 50 officers had been suspended, demoted, terminated or dishonorably discharged from their previous law enforcement jobs” for actions including “excessive force, public drunkenness, untruthfulness and association with known criminals.”

Greg Fremin, a retired Houston Police Department captain who is now a lecturer at the Sam Houston State University College of Criminal Justice, tells CBS 19 that he’s “astounded” by the tiny town’s massive collection of rogue cops.

Keep reading

Federal Judge Orders Kansas Cops To Stop ‘War’ On Drivers Coming From Legal Marijuana States

The Kansas Highway Patrol has been ordered to stop its infamous “two-step” technique by a federal judge, in what the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas calls a “huge win” for all motorists using state highways.

The U.S. district court ruled KHP’s policies and practices violate the Fourth Amendment, releasing a Friday opinion that the KHP “has waged war on motorists—especially out-of-state residents traveling between Colorado and Missouri on federal highway I-70 in Kansas.”

The trial challenged the constitutionality of the KHP’s policy of targeting out-of-staters and other “suspicious” people for vehicle searches by drug-sniffing dogs, along with the “Kansas two-step” maneuver. The “ two-step” is a technique taught to KHP personnel, in which they end a routine traffic stop and begin a separate effort to dig for information and gain entry to a vehicle to search for contraband.

Keep reading

Hundreds of state troopers may have falsified thousands of traffic tickets, audit finds

Connecticut state police troopers may have falsified thousands of traffic tickets.

WFSB reports a recent audit found nearly 26,000 fake tickets.

According to an internal investigation, troopers falsified tickets for their own personal benefit as those who appear productive are often eligible for federally funded overtime.

And lawmakers are now demanding answers.

Governor Ned Lamont said those who intentionally wrote bogus tickets should be let go, including management.

The audit also reportedly found that troopers not only falsified thousands of tickets but more than 32,000 were inaccurate.

“Those people should go, and I think their management should take a look at themselves as well,” Lamont said.

Ken Barone with the Public Policy Institute at the University of Connecticut pushed for the audit.

According to Barone, this has raised concerns about skewing racial profiling data.

“The records that should have been likely reported to the system were not,” Barone said.

Officials said it’s possible hundreds of state troopers were involved in falsifying tickets.

Keep reading

Officials Demand Mom Pay Them $5,000 for the Privilege of Selling Homemade Cookies

In the land of the free, attempting to earn money in certain professions without first paying the state for the privilege of doing so can and will get you kidnapped and extorted. These laws are applied to children behind lemonade stands as well as adults selling flowers. The state callously and with extreme prejudice has been documented arresting people, or even beating up women to enforce these licensing laws. As the following case illustrates, even mom’s trying to have a bake sale to raise money for their children’s college fund will be subject to the government’s tyranny.

Recently, the state of New Jersey passed an ordinance that allows folks to sell their home-baked goods for commercial purposes. For $100, citizens of New Jersey can obtain a permit to sell their cookies with a yearly gross income maximum of $50,000. This permit is good for two years.

While this price may seem steep to sell cookies from your home, Maria Winter, a fourth grade teacher in Somerville, just found out that $100 is just the beginning.

When Winter applied for a home-baked license in the city of Somerville, she was told that she had to shell out $5,000 — to sell cookies for her son’s college fund.

Keep reading

“We Can Find a Reason to Pull You Over” — Cop Admits Police Can Make Up Reasons to Extort You

Every year in the ostensible land of the free, millions of Americans are extorted, arrested, caged, beaten, and even killed for traffic “offenses” which have no victim — like no seat belt, dark window tint, and even something as trivial as having an air freshener hanging from their rear view mirror.

Traffic stops in the land of the free, are a means of bolstering the prison industrial complex by extracting revenue from those who can pay and incarcerating others who cannot. When someone attempts to resist being forced to pay, they are beaten, imprisoned and killed.

For those too poor to pay their tickets, routine traffic stops end up in repeated imprisonment due to mounting fines or even violent encounters. It is a vicious cycle that ends with debtor’s prisons, hospital stays, and funerals.

If traffic stops actually made Americans safer, we would see declines in accidents and careless driving — but this is not the case at all. What’s more, as the following case illustrates, a “violation” need not exist in order for cops to extort you, because they can simply make something up.

A police officer in Washington state is under investigation after he admitted in a TikTok video that he can pull people over for anything and that he will use this power whenever he wants — especially against people who don’t immediately prostrate themselves before his almighty “Author-i-TIE!”

In the 40 second clip which has since been deleted from the platform, Federal Way officer Straus is seen ranting about citizens failing to move out of his way when he drives his police car. He doesn’t mention emergency situations and was simply talking about driving.

“PSA to everyone out there, I’m speaking for myself but I’m probably speaking for other officers out there if we’re driving on the freeway in our police car, get the f*** out of the way,” said Straus. “If us officers stay behind you long enough, we can find a reason to pull you over.”

When he says he speaks for other officers, he’s not exaggerating. Police officers all too often pull people over for the most ridiculous reasons and many times, it is done solely out of spite or profiling. 

Keep reading