Amen! Any government that relies on fine revenue or property seizures for its operating income is at war with the people and should be shunned by all. If an honorable city wants to spend more, it either charges a fee-for-service or enacts a general tax.

This goes equally for institutions such as banks, which rely on NSF fees as their main profit center rather than raise prices as an honest business would do.

The minute a government turns its police force into a revenue stream is the minute that police force loses the public's goodwill.

The main problem in Ferguson was not race, but a government that used traffic fines as a revenue stream. A worker in St. Louis who -- due to housing costs and rising crime -- lived in one of the outlying towns could end up getting multiple tickets for the same infraction, each in a different police jurisdiction, all while simply driving to his workplace.

And though the fines would be minimal, the attendant court costs would not. Nor would the court costs be dismissed if the citizen won his case in court. So, a $30 broken tail light fine with $180 court costs, even successfully litigated, would cost the litigant a day from work (usually without pay), $180 in court costs, and whatever it cost to repair the deficiency that merited the citation in the first place. And if the court docket ran long, the litigant could lose two or even three days from paid work. It was easier to pay the whole fine and beg the landlord for more time to pay the rent.

A simmering undercurrent of anger was building in those outlying towns, especially in the ones like Ferguson, where the population was poor, property taxes were burdensome, and the government relied on civil fines for a major portion of its funding, thus ensuring little leeway from the police on even minor infractions.

A government should not treat its citizenry as a limitless ATM. That leads to resentment, public anger, and civil unrest.

This goes equally for institutions such as banks, which rely on NSF fees as their main profit center rather than raise prices as an honest business would do. ~ jdgalt1 at November 4, 2021 8:08 PM

Amen, jdgalt1. I worked for the online banking group of a bank that was bought out by another bank. The acquiring bank did not have an online component -- this was several years ago -- and we did, so we met with their team to discuss how to plug their customers into our online system. In the meeting, we discussed how we would check the balance to make sure an online bill pay would be processed. It involved three checks -- one at the initial request, one at the end of the day's ACH transactions, and one at the moment the bill pay was finally processed. This captured all possible points at which an account balance would fluctuate. If the balance was too low, we sent an email to the customer alerting them that we had not paid the bill and why. No NSF fees were charged because this process was automated and cost us so little as to be effectively nothing -- no ACH handling, no paper checks, no manual activity whatsoever.

The acquiring bank team saw this as an opportunity to charge three NSF fees if the balance was too low at each checkpoint. We left the meeting in disbelief that they would treat customers that way and that they thought charging a customer $75 in NSF fees over a $20 bill pay request was reasonable.

Needless to say, the acquiring bank had ethical issues in its corporate culture and was later fined by state and federal regulatory agencies to the tune of millions of dollars for fraudulent activity brought on by its manic "sell, sell, sell" culture. In addition, when the unethical behavior came to light, the bank lost thousands of customers and is still struggling to recover from the self-inflicted black eye.

This meeting happened after I had turned in my notice and before I left for another company in a different industry, so I was only present for the initial meeting and do not know the final resolution on the multiple NSF fee issue. I can only surmise that, with the avarice shown in the meeting and the unethical behavior exposed later, that the resolution was not to the general benefit of the customer.

Couldn't shake a mental image of a stagecoach while reading Conan's post.... ;)

DC and Maryland have figured out the easy way to do this ... traffic cameras. You'll get tickets in the mail based on the cameras. And the algorithms that they use are tuned to maximize ticket revenue, even at the expense of safety. They will get you for traffic lights, stop signs, speeding ... just about anything they can.

"maybe giving a heads-up to a driver with a bum brake light."

Yep, that's what happened to me many years ago in the small town where I grew up. My car got stuck in the snow and needed a push. Well, one of my brothers giving me a push, instead of pushing the body of the car, was pushing against the tail light unit. Of course, his hand cracked the brake light section. It didn't break all the way, it was just a crack.

Later that day on my way home from work I was pulled over by the cop because my car was now missing that brake light cover. Although the brake light still worked part of the cover had fallen off sometime during that day.

I wasn't issued a summons, nor forced out of the car. It was just a friendly cop asking if I knew that my tail light was missing. I explained what had happened that morning trying to leave for work. He said okay and reminded me to get it replaced as soon as possible.

Now, that's how that type of situation should work. If the cop had been under pressure to write more tickets it might have turned out differently.

Annnd so we have missed that California does indeed have ticket revenue in its budget. Annually, they could lose millions if they would just do the speed limit.

Don't miss that these governments can do this because the public wants nothing to do with running the country.

Nothing.