quote:

Originally posted by Bulldog7972:
This is a sore spot with me. I get the need for effective traffic enforcement. So write the guys that are way over the limit ( and I don't think 20 or so over the limit on an Interstate as way over the limit) and those that are driving like morons. But to write a guy for doing 57 in a 55 is too me, just pimpy. Like I said before, I signed up to be a Policeman, not a revenue agent. Most people will never have contact with the Police except for traffic stops. Treat them with respect and courtesy when you stop them and showing a little compassion would go a long way to creating good will between the Police and the citizens. Enforcing speed limits with an iron fist will do just the opposite.

quote:

Originally posted by 41:

quote:

Originally posted by Bulldog7972:
This is a sore spot with me. I get the need for effective traffic enforcement. So write the guys that are way over the limit ( and I don't think 20 or so over the limit on an Interstate as way over the limit) and those that are driving like morons. But to write a guy for doing 57 in a 55 is too me, just pimpy. Like I said before, I signed up to be a Policeman, not a revenue agent. Most people will never have contact with the Police except for traffic stops. Treat them with respect and courtesy when you stop them and showing a little compassion would go a long way to creating good will between the Police and the citizens. Enforcing speed limits with an iron fist will do just the opposite.

Excellent. Like any agency, there are bad apples that ruin it for everybody. I remember the old days when you got an ass chewing that made you feel guilty and made the officer look bad cause you were in his neighborhood so you wanted to do better and felt good when he gave you a break which made you want to do better.

Now it is all about the revenue and with the old radar gun, it may have not been you but a tractor trailer further down the road. The last two tickets I got in the late 80's were someone else since I was in the slow lane and they passed me. And the Judge says, he was in the Navy and knew all about radar.

There are small towns that setup traps to get their revenue and do not care about anything else. Bedford is one of the small towns that sets up traps on Rt 460.

Sometimes the traffic flow on the interstate can be well over the speed limit. If you are in the slow lane and the traffic is heavy, you will impede the traffic flow by going the speed limit. I had my doubt's when they raised the speed limit on I81 to 70 MPH but it seemed to reduce the congestion at times.

41

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Originally posted by Sauer Kraut:
I worked in the D.C./Alexandria, VA area and drove from central NC for several years. Had a crash pad up in Alexandria. I would drive I-95 several times a month. I learned the hard way about speeding in Virginia. Same as you I was zapped for speeding/reckless driving while going with traffic. I was just the poor bastard that the deputy picked out of a crowd. 76 in a 55 mph zone on the interstate. Those speed limits have now been bumped to 65/70. But at the time I was going over 20 over the speed limit.

The whole freakin state is a speed trap/money generating scam. It's not just state troopers. The local sheriff's department and municipal police get in on the action too.

I used attorney Robert Battle He seems to have practically made a career out of defending "reckless driving" charges in Virginia. But he worked for me and the charge was around $600 if I remember correctly. I have no affiliation with him. He just made it very simple to have the charge reduced. At least look at his website. It has information about the racketeering industry of "speed enforcement" in Virginia.

I travel all over the country and still drive through Virginia quite a lot. I do not speed there, maybe 5 over and that's it. As others have said, I still harbor ill feelings toward those ass holes. It's all about the money. Anywho, good luck!

quote:

Originally posted by h2oys:
Tigerdore,

My daughter, with MO plates by the way, was caught going over 80 on the highway in VA - I posted about this last year.

If the speed limit is 70 and your going 80, it is considered reckless driving, a criminal offense, and can be up to 1 year in jail and/or $1000 fine.

We hired an attorney and had our first court date. We sent a copy of my daughters clean DMV report to the attorney and the judge agreed to drop the charge to 79mph provided that at her upcoming 5/11/17 court date; a) we produce another clean MO DMV report, b) she produces a completion of 25 hours of community service letter, c) we pay court costs and fines.

We went this route because if you just pay the fine, she would have a criminal record.

When interviewing attornies via telephone, I asked all of them if this ridiculously punitive measure was a vestige of when the speed limit was 55mph as then 80mph or higher would have been 25mph over the limit. The answer was "no" from all of them.

Sounds like revenue generation system for the attornies and court system to me as 10mph over is considered "normal" in most areas of the country.

quote:

Originally posted by MikeinNC:
In VA if you are over *80mph it is automatically C&R. (not because the cop was a douche or anything-it's the law there, and he was doing his job.)

Get a lawyer in the area you were summoned and have him pay it off. Ask him to plead it down as low as he thinks he can get and pay it.

Then move on. It's not the end of the world, you got nicked and you pay your speed tax.

DO NOT CALL YOUR INSURANCE COMPANY.
The cops don't call insurance companies. The drivers usually tell on themselves. Once they find out, your rates will go up...let them find it 2 years down the road when they run your DMV history....the fine is nothing compared to a 10% rate hike.

It's not a scam between the cops and the lawyers and the courts....VA is serious about speed laws and have figured out that its lucrative to the State if the cops enforce it.

Next time slow down in VA and don't have a radar detector (those are forbidden in VA- and its an expensive ticket on top of losing your detector)

Oh, don't forget. Pay the ticket, if you don't a warrant will eventually be issued for your arrest and your license will be revoked in VA and they will notify the DMV in the state where you live and it will get revoked/suspended there also.

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Originally posted by TigerDore:
Thanks, h2oys. Do you recall the attorney that you used?

quote:

Originally posted by h2oys:
Tigerdore,

My daughter, with MO plates by the way, was caught going over 80 on the highway in VA - I posted about this last year.

If the speed limit is 70 and your going 80, it is considered reckless driving, a criminal offense, and can be up to 1 year in jail and/or $1000 fine.

We hired an attorney and had our first court date. We sent a copy of my daughters clean DMV report to the attorney and the judge agreed to drop the charge to 79mph provided that at her upcoming 5/11/17 court date; a) we produce another clean MO DMV report, b) she produces a completion of 25 hours of community service letter, c) we pay court costs and fines.

We went this route because if you just pay the fine, she would have a criminal record.

When interviewing attornies via telephone, I asked all of them if this ridiculously punitive measure was a vestige of when the speed limit was 55mph as then 80mph or higher would have been 25mph over the limit. The answer was "no" from all of them.

Sounds like revenue generation system for the attornies and court system to me as 10mph over is considered "normal" in most areas of the country.

quote:

Originally posted by h2oys:
Her ticket was in Shenandoah County, Woodstock VA. We are using Dragana McCleary of McCleary Law Offices. Their phone number is 540-459-2444. Something I also forgot to include in my original post is the judge also wanted her to complete a safe drive course. She was able to do this online and it cost about $50.

quote:

Originally posted by TigerDore:
Thanks, h2oys. Do you recall the attorney that you used?

quote:

Originally posted by h2oys:
Tigerdore,

My daughter, with MO plates by the way, was caught going over 80 on the highway in VA - I posted about this last year.

If the speed limit is 70 and your going 80, it is considered reckless driving, a criminal offense, and can be up to 1 year in jail and/or $1000 fine.

We hired an attorney and had our first court date. We sent a copy of my daughters clean DMV report to the attorney and the judge agreed to drop the charge to 79mph provided that at her upcoming 5/11/17 court date; a) we produce another clean MO DMV report, b) she produces a completion of 25 hours of community service letter, c) we pay court costs and fines.

We went this route because if you just pay the fine, she would have a criminal record.

When interviewing attornies via telephone, I asked all of them if this ridiculously punitive measure was a vestige of when the speed limit was 55mph as then 80mph or higher would have been 25mph over the limit. The answer was "no" from all of them.

Sounds like revenue generation system for the attornies and court system to me as 10mph over is considered "normal" in most areas of the country.

quote:

Originally posted by KevinCW:
. . .The entire point of traffic enforcement is road safety, or at least is supposed to be. . .

quote:

Citation Nation
How America turned into a gigantic speed-trap.
C. Jarrett Dieterle
April 4, 2017

In April 2013, when California resident Derick Neal rolled through a red light, it was no surprise that he received a ticket. What did surprise Neal was how much his mistake would cost him. While the base rate for his infraction was $100, he ultimately was on the hook for nearly $500 by the time state assessment fees ($100), county assessment fees ($70), court construction fees ($50), emergency medical-services fees ($20), and more got tacked on.

Neal’s ticket was no isolated incident. Local governments increasingly are using tickets, fines, and fees to generate income, rather than to deter crime or enhance public safety. The funds derived from these sources are treated as part of the annual revenue base, and sometimes even built into governments’ budget baselines. This phenomenon, which has been dubbed “taxation by citation,” has troubling implications. While most citizens understand that penalties and fines are key components of effective law enforcement and public-safety protocols, few are likely aware that governments use citations as a means to enact stealth tax increases.

Examples abound of communities generating immense revenues from tickets and other fines. In Colorado, numerous towns generate anywhere from 30 percent to 90 percent of their yearly revenue from tickets and court fees. Similarly, multiple towns in South Carolina rely on traffic fines for more than 60 percent of their annual budget. Washington, D.C. collects more than $200 per-capita in annual law-enforcement-related fees and has floated proposals to increase certain traffic penalties to $1,000.

According to surveys, 90 percent of U.S. mayors are seeking new revenue from sources other than traditional taxes, and 65 percent are looking to increase municipal fees for services. The attractiveness of tickets and fines as revenue generators is underscored by the fact that most people who receive tickets simply pay the fine and move on. Few are motivated enough—or possess the requisite time, patience, and resources—to challenge tickets in court. For those who do, the process in many local jurisdictions can be so time-consuming and convoluted that they simply give up and pay the fine even if they feel they did nothing wrong.

Though traffic tickets have often been suspected of serving revenue purposes, the practice seems to be becoming systemic. In 2006, Nashville Mayor Bill Purcell worked a 33 percent increase in traffic-ticket revenue into the city’s proposed budget: the revenue boost was intended to help the city spend an extra $60 million on various projects and initiatives. Similarly, a 2011 bill introduced in the South Carolina Legislature attracted widespread attention for proposing to direct money from certain traffic tickets into the state’s general fund.

Traffic tickets issued by police officers are not the only type of fine that can be used for revenue generation. Red-light and speeding cameras long have been criticized for their revenue-generating functions, and some municipalities have turned to ordinance violations to gin up more revenue.

Fees for particular government services and operations have gained popularity as well. Many court systems have raised court fees for hearings, and some municipalities have even introduced trash and ambulance fees. The city of Winter Haven, Florida, for example, introduced an accident-response fee, leading to shock among residents when they began receiving $300 bills in the mail weeks after an ambulance was called. And in Northwoods, Missouri, residents were told that they either had to begin paying a $20 trash pickup fee or risk the possibility of layoffs in the city police department.

Some fee-for-service systems can be justified under a beneficiary-pays principle, which holds that the beneficiary of a particular government service should foot the cost. But effective user-fee systems require transparency and clarity about which services are funded by fees. The beneficiary-pays model is undermined when governments start using fees from one service to cross-subsidize another service, rather than simply to recoup direct costs. While many local governments maintain they use fines and fees only for legitimate law-enforcement goals, mounting evidence points to the contrary.

For one, the pace with which localities are issuing tickets suggests that revenue, rather than public safety, is increasingly the true driver of ticketing and fines. In St. Ann, a suburb of St. Louis, the issuance of speeding tickets increased almost threefold in the span of five years—all at a time when the local population was falling. Similarly, New Miami Village, Ohio, with a population of just over 2,000, issued 45,000 tickets in a 15-month span before a judge intervened and ordered a portion of the citation revenue returned to local citizens.

In an article for the Journal of Law and Economics, economists Thomas Garrett and Gary Wagner analyzed ticketing data from North Carolina countries over a 14-year period, controlling for demographic, economic, and law-enforcement factors. They found a statistically significant increase in the number of traffic tickets issued by localities in the year following a decline in local government revenue. In other words, local governments that saw a dip in revenue from traditional sources, such as property taxes, were more likely to respond by increasing the number of tickets they issued.

Additionally, the lack of a public-safety rationale is exposed by tracing where the money from fines and fees goes. When traffic-ticket revenues go to the local police department, it’s possible to argue that they have a nexus with law-enforcement goals. When the money goes to an unrelated government project or to the general fund, any such nexus disappears. As a former St. Louis County police chief quipped, “you’re not supposed to be able to buy chairs for the mayor’s office with traffic-ticket fines.”

Using tickets as a form of stealth taxation also has significant drawbacks in terms of local budgeting policy. Whereas property taxes generally create a stable revenue base—mostly because housing prices generally don’t change rapidly over time—fines and ticketing are notoriously unstable. Further, taxation by citation is tremendously regressive. Because tickets and fees are high-variance, low-probability events, it is difficult to plan for them, and this uncertainty is especially problematic for those with limited resources. At a time when only 37 percent of Americans say that they have the savings needed to cover a $500 car repair bill, it’s unsurprising that low-income citizens are hit the hardest by large, one-time fines.

Worse still, taxation by citation undermines the ability of citizens to hold public officials accountable for taxing and spending decisions. Traditional tax increases are usually transparent and heavily debated; increases in fines are opaque and clandestine. Most residents are wholly unaware of how much a speeding ticket or a fine for a municipal code violation will cost, as localities rarely post fine and fee schedules online or in other easily accessible formats. Taxation by citation thus allows governments to use revenue from fines to avoid politically sensitive fiscal decisions, such as cutting spending or reforming public-sector pensions.

Given the significant problems posed by taxation by citation, steps should be taken to curtail its further growth. Missouri recently enacted statewide legislation capping how much revenue municipalities could generate from tickets, fines, and fees. Under the most recent iteration of the law, municipalities can raise no more than 20 percent of their annual revenue from tickets and fees. The law also caps the maximum dollar amount that cities can charge for minor traffic violations and other infractions.

Another option is to limit the ability of local government to direct revenues derived from fees and fines to their general fund or to cross-subsidize unrelated government services. Beneficiary-pays models may be appropriate for certain government-provided services—such as a monthly fee for local trash pickup—but localities should be transparent about how the collected funds will be used.

Finally, law enforcement should be encouraged to prioritize basic policing over generating revenues. The Dallas police chief recently reassigned traffic patrols to more pressing issues in the city, which led to traffic-ticket issuances falling from 495,000 in 2007 to fewer than 212,000 in 2013—all without a rise in traffic accidents. “The purpose of traffic enforcement is to improve traffic safety, not to raise revenue,” the chief said.

Residents deserve a voice in the budgeting decisions of their local governments, and the taxation-by-citation trend works to prevent effective citizen oversight. Local governments are supposed to be the most responsive level of government in our federalist system. Until they are honest with their citizens about how they use citations to generate revenue, they will continue to fall far short of that ideal.

C. Jarrett Dieterle is a Fellow at the R Street Institute in Washington, D.C.

quote:

Originally posted by KevinCW:
While I am partially in the "don't speed" camp.... some of this sounds absurd.

The entire point of traffic enforcement is road safety, or at least is supposed to be.

If I do a traffic stop, it is either for a bigger purpose (warrant, drugs, suspicious vehicle, etx) or because a driver is unsafe to the point of creating a hazard for other drivers.

I don't get some sort of bonus for writing tickets. I get EXACTLY zero for doing it. My only motivation for doing traffic enforcement is to combat unsafe driving. That means excessive speed, aggressive driving or road rage, drunk driving, or other similar behavior.

Anything else is just cops who can't actually be cops and have to get stats to justify their paycheck (or being pushed by a bad supervisor or command staff)

quote:

Originally posted by KevinCW:
While I am partially in the "don't speed" camp.... some of this sounds absurd.

The entire point of traffic enforcement is road safety, or at least is supposed to be.

If I do a traffic stop, it is either for a bigger purpose (warrant, drugs, suspicious vehicle, etx) or because a driver is unsafe to the point of creating a hazard for other drivers.

I don't get some sort of bonus for writing tickets. I get EXACTLY zero for doing it. My only motivation for doing traffic enforcement is to combat unsafe driving. That means excessive speed, aggressive driving or road rage, drunk driving, or other similar behavior.

Anything else is just cops who can't actually be cops and have to get stats to justify their paycheck (or being pushed by a bad supervisor or command staff)

quote:

Originally posted by TigerDore:
Update as requested. After several re-schedulings, My case finally heard yesterday. It was dismissed completely. I have to about $80 inc out costs, but no ticket and no mar on my driving record. I hate their speeding trap game, but I am very glad to have come out with this result.