smacky and bucky

We went to a great Chinese restaurant for Laura's birthday dinner. Yum. On the way home, we were the fourth car to make a left turn at a stoplight, and a fat female cop was standing in the middle of the road and made all of us pull over. (The fact that she's female means nothing to the story. Pointing out that she's fat is just me being mean.) She went to each car and said there is a sign at the light that says no left turn between the hours of something and something. We then waited about 20 minutes while she climbed into her cop car (which she had left running with the air conditioner on... your tax dollars paying for that waste of gas. The car was also parked on the sidewalk.) and wrote each of us a ticket.

Cost: $30 for "failure to obey a sign" + $50 "processing fee" + $5 "local charge"

What the fuck is a "local charge"? I don't mind the ticket, whatever, sometimes it happens. But while the woman was writing the tickets, I watched FIVE cars turn without using their turn signals right in front of her, which according to the ticket price sheet she gave me, is just as serious an offense! It's the same $30 fine! It's just hypocritical, and that's what irks me. That and the fact that there wasn't a car for 3 miles coming in the other direction so there's no reason you can't make a left turn there. Plus you know that woman gets posted there every weekday between those two hours. It's a guaranteed money maker. They're not making the world safer in any way. It's a trap set up to make money for the county (and whoever gets that $5 "local" cut).

I'll spare you the self-righteous "I wonder what liquor store is being robbed, what woman is being mugged, and what child is being molested while this cop is writing tickets for illegal left turns" speech, but I do think that's valid as well. They pick and choose which laws to enforce (ignoring all the "failure to signal a turn" because, even though it's a fine of the same amount, is a one-on-one offense and doesn't make the same cash in the same amount of time).

I completely side with the people that pay the fines in person with pennies now, but I think I'll satisfy myself by writing "Traffic Scam" in the memo line of the check I send them. That or "County Blood Money."

I also would like to point out that there's a construction zone I drive through coming to and from work, in which the speed limit is 35. Every day I'm passed repeatedly in that zone by people doing 55 mph or more. I've never seen anyone pulled over, or even a cop sitting there as a speed deterrent. But again, that would be a one-on-one offense without the same "cash to time" ratio.

We all implicitly understand that citizens far outnumber cops. It's only our agreement to uphold the laws willingly that maintains any order in society, because if we all decided "screw the laws," there's nothing the cops could really do. You saw that in New Orleans for the most part, and that wasn't even a majority of the citizens looting. So the only thing cops can do is uphold some of the minor laws some of the time. This sort of random enforcement is designed to keep citizens on their toes. It's also terribly hypocritical.

In conclusion, I'm looking forward to the day when we sell our final house in this county and move away, taking all our real estate tax money, all our personal property tax money, and all our "stimulate the economy by buying crap" money out of the county. Let some other sucker pay for the gas in the "still-idling with the air conditioner running" cop car.