[s-cars] guilty, not guilty?

[JC]

Wow. Touched a nerve, brian?

Yeah, not being an expert litigator, I have tried the laymans traffic ticket
fight with mixed success. Once I tried a ploy on a lawyer friends advice
that in retrospect looked all too much to the country bumpkin court officers
as some high-falutin' "Law and Order" TV-court defense. Magistrate didn't
take one second to consider a thing I said - as far as she was concerned I
was on a motorcycle and that alone was defacto proof of guilt but also an
upstanding cop said I was guilty so therefore I most certainly was.  Cop of
course lied straight away as I'm sure he does every single time "yes of
course your honor I am certain the defendant absolutely had accelerated
above the speed limit some feet before he reached the higher speed limit
sign and no possible way could my radar gun could have captured his speed
driving away after that threshold and I am completely sure my depth
perception was perfect in terms of his location." Said cop then later
enjoyed a nice sneering chuckle from his seat at my naively trying to
actually use law and facts.  So yep. Don't count on facts (or law) to be
helpful when the system is setup purely for revenue maximization and cop ego
inflation. (oddly enough I later became somewhat-friends with that very same
cop... he had his good points and own legitimate struggles with 'the system'
as well when doing REAL law enforcement vs. revenue enhancement).

Anyway, I'm not sure about all of your discussion here but two things about
the current situation disturb me the most:
1 - over-legislation and control and the somehow default assumption that we
all agree that any methods and means to result in higher safety are A.
effective, and B. acceptable vs. trade-offs and sacrifices. London famously
has vast swaths of the entire city blanketed in security cameras. which
don't seem to help your chances of getting your teeth knocked in late night
in the wrong spots. rolling stops or rolling right-on-reds are really the
scourge of society, causing massive death and dismemberment? hardly think
so.
2 - conflicts of interest and borderline corruption resulting from these
'public - private' partnerships and profit-earning entities operating
enforcement systems.  I'm a strong supporter of private sector / private
enterprise and capitalist systems to handle certain societal issues, but
sometimes using a hammer as your one tool for everything just leaves you
with a pile of junk.  As I said to my wife the other day regarding these
'cameras for profit' operations - there is a massive inherent contradition
here: The state, at least in 'good faith' theory, wants 0% violations. The
vendor however obviously wants to maximize violations.  How is this an
appropriate system for law enforcement?  Just as an illustration I can see
the "3 second stop" limit mentioned earlier coming about over a meeting-room
table with the vendor saying "well to pay for all this we need at least a
3-5 second stop rule, if it's less than that it just doesn't justify us to
install the equipment" and the bureacrats saying "OK OK well how about 3
seconds? (By the way how much does your model say WE will make if it's 3
seconds?)"

OK OK enough ranting... I had more but I realized it's just useless winding
up... I just wish there was someone to give us sensible solutions and leave
political labels and insults out of it but sadly today everybody seems
focused on bickering and not how much there is to agree on about the
bullshit and what we should do instead.


>
> Well Bill, that sucks. Is it 2010 or 1984?
>
> I would like to add my comments because unfortunately I didnt
> see my position posted.
>


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