(With all apologies to Jimi Hendrix)
If you have driven for even a short time, you may have received a warning, or even a ticket, for a traffic violation. Sometimes the ticket is for a petty but expensive reason. Like the $100 ticket I got in DC for parking at 9:25 am in a no parking zone that was in effect until only five minutes later at 9:30 am. Or if you drive like me, the ticket I received for going 70 in a 55 mph zone.
Even if the ticket was for a petty reason, or a fairly reasonable ticket like the one I got for going 15 mph over the limit, I think I may know what you were thinking when the cop pulled you over. And, although I may be wrong for presuming this, maybe the same thought, Sandra Bland was thinking when she was pulled over in Texas.
Please join me under the fold for where I'm going with this...
Again, in light of the fact that an innocent driver ended up dead, I want to empathize that my concerns about traffic enforcement is only one small, even petty, part of the reason Sandra Bland ended up alone in that Texas jail cell. So although I may be defying my own rule against being preoccupied about my own "luxury of small concerns," I feel my point is an important part of the Sandra Bland story.
Here is roughly what I think Ms. Bland may have been thinking, just as me and many millions before and after us might think when we see those flashing lights: "Don't the police have better things to do than stop me?"
And of course the answer to this question, considering all the logic you can muster in such a frightening moment when it it seems all the power and resources of "big-government" appears to be coming down on your head because you went 15 miles over the limit, or for a much more untimely tragic and petty "reason" like not using your turn signal, is always a great big YES.
Why are police allowed to spend time enforcing petty "laws" like "failing to use a turn signal"?
Although this complaint may seem small, just imagine all the people who, like Ms. Bland, ended up alone in some measly little county jail cell because they broke a "law" that was no more criminal than spitting gum on the sidewalk.
And, why are we expecting police, who on a daily basis might need to go from situations like gunfire, or domestic violence, to then cool down enough to enforce the local traffic? To expect any sane person to switch up from doing a job like stopping a tragic domestic violence incident to calmly stopping a car for speeding is, in the words of at least one 2016 GOP POTUS candidate "stupid."
There is a great distance between speeding on an interstate highway and a violent crime. Of course, if the speeder is dangerously swerving in and out of traffic, driving under the influence or driving 1000 lbs of Cocaine to New York then he is committing other crimes so the police must be involved. But if he is only driving 15 miles over the limit, there is no reason at all for the police to be involved.
We need to consider separating traffic enforcement, from crime prevention and control. Not only to protect citizens from unlawful arrest by police, but to protect police from exhausting their own power on giving drivers like me a speeding ticket.
There is already plenty of precedence for separating traffic control from police enforcement. Like the parking control guy in DC who gave me a ticket, to the camera on I-695 that caught me going 70 in the 65 mph zone. We don't need the police to enforce these non-criminal "laws." We need the police to focus on real crime like domestic violence and elder abuse. Not traffic "violators" like Sandra Bland.