There was a notorious road in Wilmington VT that was known for targeting out of towners in the mid to late 90s.
It was a 35 MPH road that abruptly changed to 25 MPH. I'm from MA. I was in the area camping and I saw the 35 MPH speed limit. Was driving 35 MPH. Then I saw the 25 MPH and began slowing down at a sensible rate and got immediately pulled over by a cop who was literally camping out between the 2 signs. I got a ticket for going 29 MPH in a 25 MPH zone. The only way you could have gotten down to 25 MPH was to slam on the brakes.<p>I could fight the ticket, but that would mean driving back to Vermont for the court date (a 3-4 hour drive and whole day away from work).
I just ended up paying it (it was over $100). Only later did I find out that stretch of road was notorious for this and the cops preyed on out of towners who had no idea they needed to slam on their brakes before the poorly indicated 25 MPH zone (locals knew to do this).<p>The traffic stop served absolutely no purpose other than revenue.
The more I read and experience such things along with the healthcare scam and sudden bills from hospitals and haggling with insurance, the more I wonder why I immigrated to the US when I could have taken my software skills and education to anywhere else like Europe or Canada. This country is for hustlers and grifters and the cunning.
Down here if FL we had a town called Waldo who's police department was disbanded for similar behavior, it was notorious for a long time:<p><a href="https://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/os-waldo-speed-trap-no-more-20180711-story.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/os-waldo-speed-trap...</a>
This is such a clear conflict of interest with the potential for corruption that every state should require that municipal fines go to a general fund. Under no circumstances should a police department be a revenue center.
This sounds a lot like the typical small town where they try to make up for lost tax revenue by aggressive policing. One town I'll remember to never go I guess, not that I'd probably ever go there anyways.<p>There was an old Rockford Files episode called Pastoria Prime Pick, where a small Calforinia town was growing economically by mixing small real and manufacturing/setting-up people with big crimes in order to either solicit bribes for lower crimes and take in huge fines.
Welcome to Alabama! Many many towns and cities use the 1.5 mile jurisdiction [1] to rake in extra revenue from neighboring unincorporated areas.<p><a href="https://www.annistonstar.com/the_daily_home/state-supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-cale-over-lincoln/article_5853b694-87ba-11e8-b09f-ab1400b8bf51.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.annistonstar.com/the_daily_home/state-supreme-co...</a><p>Basically for the cost of a city attorney whose job literally rests on loose interpretations of state statutes, you can collect monies from all sorts of people outside of your official city limits.<p>Think safety codes and enforcement and then make the easy jump to Dollar General business licenses which are a percentage of turnover.<p>Policing I22 in Brookside is the tip of the iceberg
> Brookside Police did patrol the 1.5-mile stretch of Interstate 22 within their jurisdiction and wrote tickets that brought in $82,467 in fines.<p>So that was the most productive one? After salary, health care and operating costs, The roi does not sound all that good.
Chevy Chase and Demi Moor did a documentary about this practice <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_but_Trouble_(1991_film)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_but_Trouble_(1991_film...</a>
There are a lot of towns like this in America. Towns where the sole source of income is traffic tickets, and often that revenue stream comes from a disproportionately black and/or poor population (this was the case with Ferguson MO. The justice report after Michael Brown was murdered pointed to this as one of the factors that led to so much contact between the minority population and police)
<a href="https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releas...</a><p>----
> Ferguson has allowed its focus on revenue generation to fundamentally compromise the
role of Ferguson’s municipal court. The municipal court does not act as a neutral arbiter of the
law or a check on unlawful police conduct. Instead, the court primarily uses its judicial authority
as the means to compel the payment of fines and fees that advance the City’s financial interests.
This has led to court practices that violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process and equal
protection requirements. The court’s practices also impose unnecessary harm, overwhelmingly
on African-American individuals, and run counter to public safety.
Most strikingly, the court issues municipal arrest warrants not on the basis of public
safety needs, but rather as a routine response to missed court appearances and required fine
payments. In 2013 alone, the court issued over 9,000 warrants on cases stemming in large part
from minor violations such as parking infractions, traffic tickets, or housing code violations. Jail
time would be considered far too harsh a penalty for the great majority of these code violations,
yet Ferguson’s municipal court routinely issues warrants for people to be arrested and
incarcerated for failing to timely pay related fines and fees. Under state law, a failure to appear
in municipal court on a traffic charge involving a moving violation also results in a license
suspension. Ferguson has made this penalty even more onerous by only allowing the suspension
to be lifted after payment of an owed fine is made in full. Further, until recently, Ferguson also
added charges, fines, and fees for each missed appearance and payment. Many pending cases
still include such charges that were imposed before the court recently eliminated them, making it
as difficult as before for people to resolve these cases.
---<p>The full report is with reading.<p>Also add asset forfeiture to the equation (usually targeted at poor and minority populations who cannot find it) and you have a toxic cycle of racism that feeds into more traffic stops of certain populations which then feeds into stats about that same population, rinse and repeat.<p>But asset forfeiture can cast an even wider death. The murder of millionaire Donald Scott by LA county police was motivated by the fact that they hoped to seize his ranch through asset forfeiture if they found any wrongdoing/illegal activities there (there were none)
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Donald_Scott" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Donald_Scott</a>
Interested to see what fully self-driving cars will do to these types of schemes. What happens to police departments when the cars no longer do anything ticket-able?