Police Officer Gives Himself $21,000 Raise Using Stop Sign Tickets

July 18th, 2008 Posted in Traffic Tickets

A recent article by John Stossel examined a Michigan police officer’s penchant for giving out stop sign tickets as a means of increasing his income.

Day after day in Warren, Mich., people wait in a long line to pay traffic fines. Many are there because police say they didn’t come to a full stop at a stop sign. Often the policeman saying that is Officer David Kanapsky.

On last week’s “20/20,” you heard a motorist in court insist that she did come to a complete stop. The judge replied, as judges there often do: “I find Officer Kanapsky’s testimony to be credible. He is an unbiased witness.”

But the officer is not really unbiased. The more tickets he writes, the more overtime he gets. Last year, Kanapsky spent so much time in court he increased his pay by $21,000. Rolling through a stop sign in Michigan puts two points on your driving record. That hikes your car insurance premium. Fighting the ticket could cost even more. So to avoid the points and legal fees, most people plead guilty to a lesser offense: impeding traffic. The court sounds like an assembly line, ” … no points … $135 … “

Last year, the town made half a million dollars from such fines. Some drivers told us it “seems like a moneymaking scam.”

The city denies it, but Stossel is skeptical:

[Police Commissioner William] Dwyer denied the tickets were a moneymaking scam. He said he didn’t think it odd that Kanapsky wrote thousands of tickets. “It’s not unusual for a traffic officer to write 10 to 20 traffic violations a day, if not more.”

Please. I’m all for highway safety, but I suspect that America’s roads have too many rules, and that gives cops too much arbitrary power to harass people or profit off them. As the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao-Tse said, “The more laws that are written, the more criminals are produced”.

At the end of the article, Stossel references recent accident statistics that poke holes in the “it’s for safety” argument:

Remember the stop sign in Warren, Mich., where Kanapsky wrote many of his tickets? It’s been changed to a yield sign. One result: fewer accidents.

Police say, “[B]etween Jan. 16, 2008, and May 21, 2008, there have been no accidents reported. During that same time frame in 2007, there were four crashes reported.” Good. Let’s get rid of more signs.

And to all the cops who eagerly punish us for doing what they do, give me a break.

Additional Note: In November of last year, the city of Warren made our list of the worst speed trap cities in the United States.

http://www.motorists.org/blog/traffic ... -raise-stop-sign-tickets/

Look up Splendora Texas and it's History with traffic fines.

AMEN to that. Now there are still really bad drivers out there and they are still allowed to run amuk due to never being caught (the whole wheres a cop when you need one). I agree that there are many places where stop signs should be yeild signs or places where they have placed too many lights. But what can the tax payer do?

Georgia has their own versions of Splendora Texas:

Georgia City Rakes In $1,136 In Traffic Ticket Fines Per Resident

October 9th, 2007 Posted in Corruption, Traffic Tickets

According to the Athens Banner-Herald, the city of Pendergrass, Georgia took in about $558,020 in fines in 2006 - enough to pay the police department’s $312,636 budget in 2006 and then some. That’s quite a profit for any town, but it’s even more amazing when you consider that Pendergrass only has 491 residents. If you do the math that’s a bill of $1,136 per resident! That figure is by far the biggest in the state.

Either people spontaneously become much more dangerous drivers on Pendergrass’s one-mile stretch of highway or the city is trying to pad its budget by ticketing as many drivers as possible. The city can claim that it’s all about safety, but the numbers just don’t add up. Pendergrass takes in nearly five-times the revenue per resident collected by the town with the next highest police-revenue-per-resident numbers.

So why don’t the residents revolt? The answer is simple. They’re not the people getting the tickets. Because they live in the town and know the areas where the police carry out their strict enforcement, they’re largely immune to the fines being given out and receive the benefit of an increased town budget at no cost to them.

Unfortunately, out-of-state drivers and people unfamiliar with the area don’t have that luxury and find themselves paying for additional Pendergrass police resources. More police resources means more tickets. And more tickets means more revenue for the city. It’s a vicious cycle that can only be stopped through speed trap legislation.

If you’re a Georgia resident, contact your legislators and let them know that it’s not right to value revenue over safety.

http://www.motorists.org/blog/corrupt ... icket-fines-per-resident/

Here's a new one Georgia is pioneering:

Atlanta Suburb Turns Drivers Into Fuel Pumps

June 18th, 2008 Posted in Traffic Tickets

It’s a ridiculous concept, but somehow it seemed inevitable. Check out this story from USA Today:

The surging price of gasoline has come to this: a “fuel surcharge” on your next speeding ticket.

Drivers caught speeding in this north Atlanta suburb [Holly Springs] soon will have to pay an extra $12 — to cover $4-a-gallon gas costs for the police officers who stop them.

Is your police cruiser running low on fuel? No problem, just pull over someone driving home from work, ticket them, and you’ll have a full tank of gas in no time. It doesn’t matter who you pull over because — thanks to Atlanta’s notoriously under-posted speed limits — everyone is a speeder.

Need to balance your budget? Maybe you should look to Pizza Hut for inspiration:

[Police Chief Ken] Ball says he was seeking ways to maintain patrols despite record high gas prices. “I was hearing that Delta (Air Lines), pizza deliverers, florists were adding fuel charges to their services, and I thought, why not police departments?” he says.

Unfortunately it looks like this isn’t going to be an isolated case. As with any situation where money is available to be taken from citizens, local government is on the case immediately:

Ball says he’s being “inundated” by calls from police chiefs and city managers. “I’ve heard from at least a dozen police chiefs and half a dozen city managers,” he says of the measure passed Monday night. “They want to know how we did it, and could we send them a copy of the ordinance.”

http://www.motorists.org/blog/traffic ... -drivers-into-fuel-pumps/

We must have some Police Officers here that can enlighten us to "the other side" of this. It is the photo crap that really gets me, since I thought you had the right to face your accuser (albeit for profit for the accuser). Did anyone ever notice the most good law abiding people love firefighters and Military and feel the opposite of Police? I wonder why...?
I guess I have never had a USAF, USA, USN, USMC Officer pull me over and ask for money (sorry, my license).

I'm all for the fuel surcharge for people getting tickets unless they start ticketing more heavily as a way to cover fuel costs. You break the law, you pay the price.

Pendergrass and Arcade are terrible speed traps. Picture this, a new and very wide four lane concrete highway running through the foot hills of a picturesque country side. There's not too much traffic so you can stare at the mountains less than a hour away ahead of you. Speed limit 35 mph. It is now 45 mph through Arcade and Pendergrass. Arcade actually got in serious legal trouble because of their 35 mph zone, legally it could not be less than 45 mph because of the type of road and its location. I can't remember if Pendergrass got in trouble as well. All the same, I've never come close to getting a ticket. Just pay attention and be patient, the speed gets back up to 55 mph soon. Boy, do you want to fly at 80+ though.

Over here in 2001, they shut down all the red light cameras because the private company operating them (and issuing tickets) was getting $35 per ticket in their contract.

It was shut down another time when the sensors were found to be out of adjustment or not installed in the right location.

There was also accusations that they reduced the yellow light time to net more tickets, which supposedly increased rear end collisions, but I haven't seen that proven.

How do you argue against a faulty machine in court? I guess it's no different than arguing against a faulty cop, but it still irritates me.

Law enforcement is always going to be inherently a conflict of interest though, so long as it costs money to provide the enforcement.

I got a ticket in Spain from photo radar that I had no idea I got until I went to turn in my rental car and there was this bill. There was no discussion unless I wanted to hang out for a few more weeks. I was at a cocktail party here later and bitching about it and saying that I thought the photo radar and photo stop light thing was unconstitutional in the US and should be banned. This woman said that she thought it was fine because after all, they have it in Spain and Germany. I said, great they have it the home of Franco and Hitler, just what we want to emulate! That ended that...

That's nuts...

Quote:

Great analogy.