OK, given that we leave in a "free" society, we have some rights:
- The right to speak freely.
- The right to blaspheme.
- The right to practice, or not practice religion as we see fit.
- The right to insult and mock those in authority.
- THE RIGHT TO HATE THE TAX COLLECTOR
This last one is important, because as a matter of policy, w
url=e have been turning peace officers into tax collectors[/url]:
Jeff Smith, a New School professor and former Missouri state senator, had a sensational op-ed in this weekend’s New York Times that dived into the economic forces that have helped shape the strife in Ferguson. His big point is that the local police have a strong financial incentive to arrest, ticket, and otherwise harass the city’s black residents for minor offenses, because that’s how the department funds its budget.
How so? From Smith:
St. Louis County contains 90 municipalities, most with their own city hall and police force. Many rely on revenue generated from traffic tickets and related fines. According to a study by the St. Louis nonprofit Better Together, Ferguson receives nearly one-quarter of its revenue from court fees; for some surrounding towns it approaches 50 percent.
Municipal reliance on revenue generated from traffic stops adds pressure to make more of them. One town, Sycamore Hills, has stationed a radar-gun-wielding police officer on its 250-foot northbound stretch of Interstate.
When you split a metro area into dozens of tiny local governments (St. Louis County, to be clear, doesn’t include the actual city of St. Louis, which spun off from it in the 19th century), they tend to duplicate each others’ services, which is of course extremely expensive. But raising taxes so that each tiny borough can afford its own police and fire department is a nonstarter, since wealthy residents can always just move one town over. End result: You have police departments that self-fund by handing out tickets. And thanks to the delightful racial dynamics of U.S. law enforcement, black residents are disproportionately stopped and accosted, even though police in Ferguson are less likely to find contraband when they search black drivers than when they search whites.
Michael Brown wasn't being pulled over for speeding when he was shot. But we're talking about the broader issues that poison the relationship between a community and the cops who are, theoretically, paid to protect them.
The relationship between the populace and the tax collector is always fraught.
It has been the stuff of social comment and comedy forever. (In Die Fledermaus, Gabriel von Eisenstein is going to jail for insulting/assaulting a tax collector [in some versions, a constable])
Additionally, using court fees as a revenue source tends to fall on the poorest in society, since they lack the wherewithal to hire lawyers and challenge the charges, so police are naturally inclined to go after the poor, since they do not want to spend their time cooling their heels waiting for their case to be called.
That being said, traffic laws do need to be enforced, we just need to remove the incentives to over enforce the laws for revenue purposes.
Please put suggestions below in the comments.