This is one that really bugs me, reason enough to leave California.
With the advent of the economic slow down, California has taken to the streets with a wonderful new policy heretofore unused to a great degree. They've started to use Law Enforcement Officers as a means of digging into the pockets of already strapped citizens.
The most egregious policy is the local Drunk Stop inspections on the weekends. Aside from the fact that such a policy may well be unconstitutional under the pre-crime selective enforcement amendment, it's become a money grab. You are pulled over at a traffic choke point, asked if you've been drinking, then you are required to produce driver's license, registration, and proof of insurance. If you fail to produce one of the foregoing, your car is impounded forthwith, and you are left with a towing bill, impound fees, and storage fees amounting to close to $3000.00, most of which the local government gets.
Nice pay for a five minute stop meant to get drunks off the road.
The next little goody for the government is the registration stop by local cops. They pull you over if the tags are one day out of registration. One day. Never mind the fact that your registration fees have a penalty added for the first day out of date, and that it goes to nearly double past thirty days, nope, one day out, and they can impound the car with all the fees listed above.
Did I mention court costs? Add a bunch on to those figures, and a car worth $2000.00 isn't worth the parts.
Here's another one.
Parking in this city, on streets we paid for, is now $2.00 an hour. One minute out of time, and you're hit with a $55.00 parking fine, and it's worse than it sounds. Parking enforcement officer on bikes, or in their little LPG cars (very expensive items, even at fleet prices) are stationed on the streets where government offices do business. This means that if you are doing business with the bureaucracy, said officials will eat up your time, you can't leave to feed the meter for fear that you'll lose your place in line, and they'll ticket you for the privilege of waiting for them.
Add to all of the above, the fact that law enforcement officers have been told that to save their jobs, they have to stop anyone for the least minor judgment calls, be it a mile or two over the speed limit or an "unsafe lane change." No papers: car impounded.
Not more than four days ago, I saw some poor young woman (stopped my a bike officer) pacing back and forth while on her cell phone, frantically talking to someone about her insurance, trying to keep her car from being impounded. The bike lights were flashing away. The animated phone conversation was going on. People were slowing down on a heavily trafficked street, and there was a three-car pile up from drivers trying to do a "move over" to avoid a ticket for that.
The cops laughed.
Slick, huh?
Who does this hurt?
First of all, it clobbers the financially weakest....working stiffs who need a car to get to work. Second, it hits the middle class....people who can ill afford the time or money to take care of court, etc. Third, it hurts law enforcement who become the de facto enemy of all drivers. (I have an ex-homicide-cop friend who said he'd rather have a sister in a whorehouse than a brother who's a traffic cop.)
This is a money grab by a government which would rather pick the pockets of drivers than get their own spending habits under control.
It says somewhere in Proverbs that "When the righteous rule, the people rejoice. When the rulers are corrupt, the people groan."
Lots of groaning in California....and in the United States.
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