America’s towns are once again depending on an outdated tactic to make ends meet: converting their police departments into debt collection organizations in order to extract money from the people they are pledged to defend.
Municipalities are employing law enforcement to combat dwindling tax bases by aggressively enforcing fineable infractions like speeding, all the way from Texas to Ohio. According to a 2019 analysis, fines and forfeitures account for at least 10% of general fund earnings in roughly 600 counties nationally.
Of course, speed traps are nothing new. For instance, The New York Times covered a particularly successful ticket-writing effort in Fruithurst, Alabama, in 1975.
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However, the current programs violate Americans’ fundamental rights, damage public safety, and undermine community trust. Furthermore, it is remarkable to see how many tickets were written and how much money was raised.
In just five months this year, police in Peninsula, Ohio, employed handheld speed cameras to issue 8,900 speeding tickets, raising the total amount of fines to at least $1.3 million. In a town with 536 residents, that translates to more than 16 tickets per resident.
With an annual budget of approximately $1 million, the village was able to collect $400,000 in fines. Targeting and Solutions Ltd., a private business that provides the cameras, was paid over $250,000 in fines from drivers.
Even worse, Peninsula charges a fee of $100 to anyone who wants to challenge a ticket in small claims court. The right to due process guaranteed by the constitution is taken away from those who cannot afford the price. If the fine is maintained, even those who can afford it run the risk of having their ticket cost nearly twice as much. It makes sense to just pay, even if you think you’re innocent.
A judge mandated last week that the village halt collection of the charge.
Some local governments have implemented their own for-profit police initiatives. According to AL.com, Brookside, Alabama, a hamlet of roughly 1,200 people, had a more than 640% boost in revenue in just two years after police launched a vigorous campaign of traffic stops and ticket issuance. Nearly half of the town’s budget was made up of fines and forfeitures.
When stops at traffic aren’t “routine”: “We bear the responsibility of making sure we are not murdered,” Black Americans say during traffic stops.
In a town with 250 residents, police issued 5,000 tickets.
Coffee City, a small Texas town of roughly 250 residents, employed 50 full-time and reserve police officers last year, and they issued over 5,000 penalties. The penalty the town received exceeded one million dollars.
Courts have acknowledged that there are significant constitutional concerns when penalties and fees account for more than 10% of revenue. That proportion was created four times by Peninsula, five times by Brookside, and six times by Coffee City.
Furthermore, these programs frequently infringe against other fundamental rights, such as the ban against the imposition of exorbitant fines or the prohibitions against unjustified searches and seizures.
Beyond these constitutional issues, a 2019 Institute for Justice study revealed that a community’s cooperation and trust with its police agency can be negatively impacted by a dependence on fines or fees. According to a separate 2018 study, localities that rely heavily on penalties had much lower rates of violent and property crime resolution.
These programs have nothing to do with assisting the general people. If it did, cities wouldn’t have to concoct excuses to stop someone or charge exorbitant fines to discourage people from contesting their tickets.
If the goal of Peninsula’s program was to increase public safety, as stated by the officials, the village would have taken more precautions to alert the 12,000 tourists that pass through the town on their way to Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Rather, Peninsula gave inhabitants advance notice of the tickets’ arrival but did not notify guests of their arrival.
Citizens shouldn’t be treated by the government like a piggy bank.
No government has the right to handle its people like ATMs. The American people are supposed to be protected against abuses of authority like this by the Constitution.
Numerous municipal governments have been sued by the Institute for Justice for violating residents’ rights by obtaining disproportionate fees using means that go against due process rights. The institution served as a warning to Peninsula village leaders, stating that they would be sued if they did not bring their speed enforcement program into accordance with the Constitution.
These revenue-generating projects are an annoyance to American towns everywhere. They undermine community trust, violate people’s civil freedoms, and endanger public safety. Fortunately, Americans may confront communities like Peninsula and make them stop treating their citizens like walking piggy banks by using the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.
