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