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DOJ Cracking Down On Profit-Driven Policing, Audit Looks At How Far It's Spread (muckrock.com)
v3rgEz writes: Federal civil rights officials at the Department of Justice are launching an effort to combat widespread constitutional abuses in U.S. courts in the hope of ending budget-driven policies that cripple those unable to afford fines and fees for minor offenses, the Huffington Post reports. The DOJ's focus on court fees and bail practices follows the Ferguson report which found officials had colluded to raise revenue when they hit residents with exorbitantly high fines and fees, regardless of their ability to pay, and jailed people to extract the money. The Sunlight Foundation and MuckRock recently launched an audit to see how widely the practice has spread.
It's everywhere, you don't have to be a minority to get hit with excessive fines for minor (usually traffic) offenses.
Hard to believe that the D.O.J. is cracking down on Profit-Driven Policing when Obama's new Attorney General has been a huge advocate of "civil forfeiture" where the government takes your money without charging you with any crime or even having any suspicion that you committed any crime. I even saw sign on Interstate 70 this summer when driving through Kansas that there "checkpoints" ahead to check for "drugs" or "cash". Just part of the government's war on citizens.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The problem is the tool set of advance electronics tracking, on going maintenance costs of "free" military hardware at a city, state and local level is starting to catch up with traditional wage based/over time policing budgets.
The new federal mil toys have real federal budget support budgets and upgrade costs over the years that a city or state did not fully understand.
Add in over time, pensions, fancy out sourced "private" sector training and the costs are getting more interesting every decade. How to cover the costs?
Civil forfeiture in the United States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... that no longer goes to the victim or into state, city funds but can flow in part into a department with not much oversight or controls on what the cash is spent on.
The constant need to top up limited funds becomes the mission.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I posted this link a few days ago here on ./ but it's topical and worthy of a repost here:
Cops Now Steal More from Citizens than do Actual Criminals
And also on the "policing for profit" topic: Prisoners are now billed for their time in jail.. More here with some commentary here.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
their opinion is that they did nothing wrong, like most here
When you see speed limits decrease from 55 mph to 25 mph on an 8 lane divided highway with no pedestrians, no cyclists, no residential zones and no driveways to turn off onto, you kind of start to understand how the system works. Then the 25 mph sign is taken down, so it's a speed trap without any posted speed limit signs. The county will park about 12 cop cars out there to write tickets to the people who have no clue that the speed limit goes from 55 mph to 25 mph. 911 response for things like home invasions start doubling or tripling since the county has all their cops parked to write tickets.
It's pretty easy to see why people hate cops and mistrust traffic laws.