Originally Posted by
caloso
I have not noticed anything different in Sacramento. What city are you referring to? This is a big state.
A city in San Mateo county
Originally Posted by
prairiepedaler
It is called the law enforcement growth industry. Many towns in the USA rely heavily on tickets in order to stay afloat. Read "Why We Drive" by Mathew Crawford. He has a very healthy dedication of pages with references to this topic in that book. Many cop unions push for these kinds of victimless crime laws. More laws -> more potential crime -> more cops neccessary. Locally, the cops fight each other over who gets traffic detail for the last 5 years of their "career". They go nuts issuing traffic tickets because this effects their performance review and pushes up their bonuses. For the bulk of their "working" life, they'll get $108k/year. But, on traffic detail, their salaries go up to $160k/year and that is what their pensions are pegged to. They receive 60% of that $160k as pension (fully indexed to inflation) for the rest of their lives. It is one of the reasons I want to move away from here.
Wow, my trust in my local police went from an 8/10 to 1/10. An uncle of mine was visiting Moscow and a Russian police officer told him to give him all his cash or else he'd take him to jail. I got shaken down for 5x what my uncle handed over