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DOJ Cracking Down On Profit-Driven Policing, Audit Looks At How Far It's Spread (muckrock.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the mine-now-I-take-it dept.

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.

40 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. Everywhere by Aero77 · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's everywhere, you don't have to be a minority to get hit with excessive fines for minor (usually traffic) offenses.

    1. Re:Everywhere by C0R1D4N · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Simpler solution. Eliminate fines for motor vehicle offenses. Use a points only system. Rack up x number of points, one month suspension, more, 6 months, then a year, then permanent. Let the points decay at a reasonable rate. Should affect all drivers equally regardless of wealth.

    2. Re:Everywhere by andymadigan · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And the punishment for driving on a suspended/revoked license is?

      No, there's a simpler solution than that: don't let municipalities keep the money from traffic tickets (or any kind of fine). The payments should be made directly to the state's general fund. Take away the profit motive, no more profit based policing.

      --
      The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
    3. Re:Everywhere by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      How about ridiculously low B.A.C.'s which lead to DUI's or DWAI's and the non-stop barrage of fees and fines and general loss of rights for consuming a legal product. I'm in no way advocating drunk driving, but come on, in some parts of the country if you have 1 beer you're technically breaking the law, regardless as to whether or not you're actually impaired and shouldn't be operating a motor vehicle. May be the DOJ can look at the MADD cartel next.

    4. Re:Everywhere by peragrin · · Score: 2

      Every county gets to make it's own laws. in NY that is generally how it is handled at the state level, however each county can add it's own fees to cover court and processing costs.

      So you pay your fine and then another $30-$100 to cover the cost of court.

      It is why gun laws are so poorly defined, and enforced. every county has it's own gun laws. not just state, but county.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    5. Re:Everywhere by Darinbob · · Score: 4, Insightful

      True, but $1000 for me is not much pain compared to $1000 for someone who needs to skip meals to save money. Or are you one of those getting jailed over fines until you can manage to raise the money from family and friends? The problem is not high fees for minor traffic offenses, but the shake down from police officers and engaging in debtors prisosn in order to raise money. But points for the attempt at empathy.

      "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." -- Anatole France.

    6. Re:Everywhere by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 3, Funny

      Well, define excessive. If the tickets for improper HOV lane usage were lower, I'd probably be that asshole who uses it with no passengers all the time. Risk has to be greater than reward for disobeying.

      Snipers?

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    7. Re:Everywhere by AK+Marc · · Score: 2

      Nope. HOV infractions and speed cameras are often purely non-criminal. Like the citation is given to the car, not the driver. This is done because it's easier to collect and convict. But it also means that most are set up where you could get 1,000,000 of them, and so long as you paid the fine on time, there'd never be an escalation of penalty. Yes, you could change that, but it would be a fundamental change to the unattended ticket system, one that only barely holds on because so many people are against it, and they've never been shown to do what they say (it doesn't improve safety to send someone a ticket in the mail a month later).

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
    8. Re:Everywhere by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well, define excessive. If the tickets for improper HOV lane usage were lower, I'd probably be that asshole who uses it with no passengers all the time. Risk has to be greater than reward for disobeying.

      Simple solution, do what a lot of countries in Europe do, base the fine off a percentage of your yearly income. The rich asshole who uses his cell phone without a hands free device pays a $10,000 fine while the average Joe pays, say $1000 and the poor pays like $50. The fine should be large enough to hurt, but not enough to cause serious financial problems unless the person is a repeat offender too stupid to change their behavior.

    9. Re:Everywhere by Kohath · · Score: 2

      If the tickets for improper HOV lane usage were lower, I'd probably be that asshole who uses it with no passengers all the time.

      Would that be the end of the world? Is it worth all the bad things that come with higher fines and enforcement by armed officers to keep it from happening?

      I don't think it is. At some point you just have to say "we aren't going to micromanage everyone's daily driving using fines backed by government bullying, ultimately backed by armed enforcement". Instead of pretending we can micromanage everyone, let's just build safe, efficient roads, safe cars, and concentrate the enforcement on drunk or reckless drivers.

    10. Re:Everywhere by ToddDTaft · · Score: 5, Interesting

      No, there's a simpler solution than that: don't let municipalities keep the money from traffic tickets (or any kind of fine). The payments should be made directly to the state's general fund. Take away the profit motive, no more profit based policing.

      North Carolina does this. The state constitution actually requires that all fines collected "shall be faithfully appropriated and used exclusively for maintaining free public schools."

      I've seen this work to have the desired effect.

      The campus police at some of the state universities used to issue all sorts of nuisance parking tickets for things like "parked too close to line". At the time, the universities were keeping the money from the fines. Quite a few years ago, there was a legal case that went to the state supreme court where they ruled that the universities couldn't keep the money. After that, the number of nuisance fines dramatically decreased, even though officials claimed that there was no correlation between these events.

    11. Re:Everywhere by Ihlosi · · Score: 3, Funny
      most of which was written by an apostle who said that what goes into a person's mouth does not defile them,

      It wasn't an apostle who supposedly said that, but the water-into-wine guy himself.

    12. Re: Everywhere by bestweasel · · Score: 2

      No it doesn't. That progressive scheme, introduced in the '90s by John Major's Tory government, was abandoned after a short time amid stories in the press of excessive fines for trivial offences (usually because the person ignored the summons). The status quo was restored and the well-off could breathe easily again.

    13. Re:Everywhere by q4Fry · · Score: 2

      The signs says "Speed enforced by Aircraft," but I have yet to see them strafe anyone.

  2. Ban speed cameras and red light ones by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ban speed cameras and red light ones a lot of them are rigged to make more profit by erroring in the states favor

  3. Civil Asset Forfeiture by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about they also do away with Civil Asset Forfeiture considering that cops have now stolen more from people than all burglaries combined last year, and most likely this year as well.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com...

    Coupled with all the other crimes committed by cops and the "justice" system over the years, like the Cash for Kids program, how are these people any different from a government sanctioned mob? Then there are the dimwitted idiots that are still defending these monsters, is this really the society we want?

    1. Re:Civil Asset Forfeiture by known_coward_69 · · Score: 2

      CAF was originally created to fight the mafia and rich drug dealers who had the money to hire the best lawyers and to take their assets away so they wouldn't have anything to come back to after jail. it's like everything, after the problem goes away you find new ways to enforce laws

    2. Re:Civil Asset Forfeiture by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This, so much. In some jurisdictions the police can and will seize your car for something as relatively benign as soliciting a prostitute. And when you know that finding a tenth of a gram of marijuana in someone's car means your department gets to seize and sell that car, even if the person is never charged with a crime, there is a huge incentive to plant evidence and engage in other corrupt activities.

      Civil asset forfeiture needs to stop.

    3. Re:Civil Asset Forfeiture by Darinbob · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Perhaps there was an original reason, but there are a couple problems. First it has been expanded well beyond the original concept. And second there is no proof necessary before forfeiture happens. It would be blatantly unconstitutional if it were not for the Supreme Court siding with the hysterical tough-on-crime folks.

      "No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. "

    4. Re:Civil Asset Forfeiture by John.Banister · · Score: 2

      So, what I read here is that "the best lawyers" can make violating the law not matter and that this is fine for hereditary wealth but not for mafia wealth. How about we ditch CAF and go to single payer for lawyers? This would also greatly level the legal playing field between individuals and corporate entities.

    5. Re:Civil Asset Forfeiture by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      It discourages foreign investment too. A lot of Chinese people have been complaining (in a series of stories on state television) that they tried to buy property in the US, took cash for a deposit and the police stole it.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    6. Re:Civil Asset Forfeiture by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      CAF was originally created to fight the mafia and rich drug dealers who had the money to hire the best lawyers and to take their assets away so they wouldn't have anything to come back to after jail

      And anti-drug laws were originally created for all the wrong reasons, all of which are profit-centered. We could go down the list as usual but that would be tedious. Suffice to say that Big Pharma and Big Prison are the Big Supporters of the War On Some Drugs. Suffice to say that when you combine CAF with unsupported drug policies, the result is that the laws were created specifically to enable theft from people committing victimless "crimes".

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  4. Loretta Lynch by frovingslosh · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
    1. Re: Loretta Lynch by compro01 · · Score: 2

      Much the same thing is also being said in Canada.

      --
      upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
  5. I used to live by penguinoid · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I used to live in a place where the usual way to deal with speeding was to pay the standard bribe. If it was a bus, the bribe was bigger but the passengers would pitch in without complaint. As far as I can tell, that system worked very well for traffic violations and way better than the American system, where everyone is pretending they don't do bribes but instead they do it via crappy laws/policies and more inefficiently. Another similarity/difference is, there officers' salaries were reduced to account for the traffic violation income, while in the US police department budget is reduced to account for the traffic violation income.

    --
    Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
  6. Actually a serious problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is actually a very serious problem, and the linked articles don't do a good job explaining the actual issue.

    There are a lot of people who a 375$ fine (minimum for speeding in a construction zone nearby) for speeding is not something they can immediately pay, and may be 30% or more of their monthly income. If you can't pay immediately, you have to make a deal with whoever the Police contract out to.

    The trick is that a lot of those poeple charge an initial fee for the service along with interest and continuing fees, and any payment you make goes toward their fees and interest BEFORE it starts paying the actual fine down. These fees are typically 20% of the original fine or more, and for low income people make it effectively impossible to pay their actual fine.

    This then leads them to paying hundreds of dollars over the original fine, with none of it going to the original fine until the point where they are then jailed for not paying the fine. It is pure and out right corruption and fraud, and heavy legal action needs to be taken against any county or company that is involved.

    1. Re:Actually a serious problem by Sarten-X · · Score: 2

      I used to work nights on a road directing traffic. Every time I put on the reflective vest, I got to see the blood stain from my predecessor who got hit when someone didn't think they really needed to heed the warning signs.

      Yes, a speeding fine in an area where pedestrians are present should make your life hell for a while. You're risking someone else's life for the sake of getting to your destination a few seconds earlier. You don't get that right, regardless of how high or low your income is.

      --
      You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
    2. Re:Actually a serious problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes, a speeding fine in an area where pedestrians are present should make your life hell for a while.

      Doesn't stop anyone speeding and driving dangerously next to cyclists and other pedestrians, no matter how much I agree.

      But what the GP was talking about is that flat fines are stupid and you appear to missed the point. If someone makes $60k/yr, a $300 fine is an "inconvenient tax" on them, and their opinion is that they did nothing wrong, like most here. But if you make $10k/yr, $300 fine can be crippling. And then there are people that make $200+k, and for them a $300 fine is hustle, nothing more.

      Perhaps a better system would be to base fines on person's annual income. Like 1% of their yearly income, with $50 floor (considering driving costs money anyway). So a $10k/yr poor person pays $100, which is a lot of money for them. But a $100k/yr upper middle class person pays $1000. And it's $10k fine for the $1m/yr upper class person. Then such a fine is painful for everyone involved, not just the poorest.

    3. Re:Actually a serious problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

  7. Start in Texas by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Let them start with the double jeopardy they call the "Texas driver responsibility program". Pay a ticket, then also an exorbitant surcharge to the "Municipal Services Bureau" which is a private company. If you don't pay the surcharge, the private company suspends your license until you do... You pay the surcharge just for getting the ticket, whether the ticket was dismissed or not.

    Like I said double jeopardy.

  8. Local funding cant keep up by AHuxley · · Score: 3, Informative

    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"
  9. Excessive bail - based on the offense - also... by gavron · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Another way to make money is to make excessive bail requirements in possible
    collusion with bail bondsmen.

    TL;DR - bail should be set by the circumstances of the person's ability to pay and
    the nature of them being a flight risk, NOT the nature of the crime.

    Now the "I'm sorry but it got long" part:

    Bail from the eighth amendment to the Constitution of the United States:
    "Excessive bail shall not be required"

    Excessive is when it's greater than the amount necessary to bring the offender to trial. From Wikipidia:
    "In Stack v. Boyle, 342 U.S. 1 (1951), the Court found that a defendant's bail cannot be set higher than an amount that is reasonably likely to ensure the defendant's presence at the trial" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    Judges are starting to agree: http://blog.simplejustice.us/2...

    But some are still hungry for HUMONGOUS bail to avoid looking soft on crime when BAIL HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CRIME.

    Man kills cop: 3 million dollars
    http://www.philly.com/philly/n...

    Man kills man: 2 million dollars
    http://www.bellinghamherald.co...

    Cop kills man: 1.5 million:
    http://abc7chicago.com/news/ja...

    The US DoJ ought to take a long hard look at how our nation's Courts are handing out large bail
    requirements --unconstitutionally-- to make it look like they're "tough on crime."

    In fact, the people being granted bail are innocent until proven guilty, AND
    the amount of the bail is only supposed to ensure they show up for trial.

    We need a lot of reform in the criminal justice system. Hopefully the DoJ won't whitewash
    bail while they look at the other methods that "the justice system" screws the people.

    Full disclosure: I've never been arrested, offered bail, denied bail, nor am personally
    part of the legal / "justice" system.

    E

    1. Re:Excessive bail - based on the offense - also... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      In fact, the people being granted bail are innocent until proven guilty, AND
      the amount of the bail is only supposed to ensure they show up for trial.

      You're wrong.

      Bail is only supposed to prevent rich people from going to jail.

      Different crimes have different richness bars.

      The system is working as intended.

    2. Re:Excessive bail - based on the offense - also... by Dayze!Confused · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I would add that the bond system is used to justify higher bails as not being excessive. For example, 200,000 bail may be excessive, but oh, guess what, you can just pay 20,000 to the bail bondsman instead, so if you think 200,000 is excessive it isn't because you can just pay 20,000. What most people don't know until they go through something which requires excessive bails is that the bond payment is forfeited even if you show up to court. That person now has the option, if they cannot put up 200,000 and float it until the end of trial, to spend 20,000 as a non-refundable expense to have restricted freedoms restored while awaiting trial, or stay in jail.

      When I read the 8th amendment I do not see bonds mentioned as part of consideration for excessive bail, and the bond is essentially an excessive fee paid. Would it be the case that if bonds were done away with that the amount that makes a bail excessive would be much, much lower?

      --
      "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." [Thomas Jefferson]
  10. It's not extortion if by RichMan · · Score: 2

    It is not extortion if you are the law.

    Seems like the system is very very broken in the good ol' US of A.

  11. This is What happen From the No Tax Pledge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You Voted for them because they Promised to Cut Taxes But Not services.
    Guess What they are Politicians not Magicians.

    So stop complaining. You got what you asked for.

  12. Cops Steal More than Criminals by Jodka · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.
  13. Change how fines and forfeited assets are handled by Solandri · · Score: 2

    All the money from fines and forfeited criminal assets should go into a Federal escrow fund. Every year on April 15, the total amount in that fund gets divided by the number of people filing tax returns, and gets added as a credit to each and every tax return (2x for married couples filing jointly).

    Those fines and penalties are supposed to compensate for crimes against society. So it should be distributed back to society at large, not to police or government coffers.

  14. John Oliver covered this... by binarstu · · Score: 2

    John Oliver delivered an excellent treatment of this topic that is both informative and entertaining (and maddening). It's worth a watch.

  15. Re:Then enjoy your hellhole. by beastofburdon · · Score: 2

    The hell-scapes of Detroit and Baltimore are directly caused by police abusing the citizens you racist bastard.