Re: cops, avoiding tickets, speed traps

[richard bies <bies@domain.elided>]

A few comments on this thread --

"Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." (Acton)
The wearer of a badge immediately faces a challenge to enforce the law
evenly and rationally, and to suppress private whim -- which challenge is
rarely fully met.

"Protection" raises a quandry -- the realization is another way of saying
intimidation.  The police game is intimidation -- a fall-out may be
"protection".  Recall the kid in a school bus, arrested for having flipped
a cop the |digitus impectus|.  The Supreme Court reversed the conviction.
The police want everyone intimidated -- perhaps a trivial few are immune,
but that's irrelevant.  What was the FBI doing in Moscow comparing notes
with the KGB <before> the wall came down?  The most effective masters of
intimidation to date, in confab with the technology to make it even more
total.  From a police point of view, the optimum is to be able to arrest
anyone at any time, and make it stick.

"Safety" has little or nothing to do with "law enforcement".  You can
check that easily by determining the ratio of tickets issued for
"speeding", compared to Obstruction of Traffic.  On of the great
propaganda campaigns has been the anti-auto anti-speed cause.  It is not
high speed which endangers others, rather, stopping in the roadway or
<low> speed (check the experience -- at the extremes, <all> collisions
involving a stopped (zero speed) car are multi-car incidents, at extremely
high speeds virtually all incidents are single vehicle accidents --
involving <no-one> else [and the curve between is essentially a smooth
hyperbola, tending to infinite probability of involving others as speed
approaches zero; tending to zero probability of involving others as speed
climbs]]).  "Speeding" makes money, encourages surviellance and
intimidation, and is a favored cause for "women" drivers.  (Those who have
not done so should experience the incredible feeling of freedom in driving
on the Autobahn; no need to monitor for gum-ball machines.)

We are naturally built with "pattern recognition" -- and corresponding
sensitivity to deviations -- why a trout rises to the right fly on the
surface, and why conspicuous cars get more tickets.  Sometimes it makes
good sense, as with racial profiling when searching for crack runners.
Sometimes it makes no sense at all.

Hire, or at least consult an attorney familiar with the local scene --
good luck convincing the "impartial" magistrate the fuzz he just had
coffee and donuts with is lying. 

r.m.bies

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