You guys are the cops with street experience, and I admit many of my political ideas are crazy to most and I’m probably a lunatic. With that out of the way, I support stripping most traffic stop privileges from not only LE but the government entirely. I think (based on absolutely nothing. I’m a lunatic, remember) that 90%+ of traffic stops have little to do with safety and have more to do with an aggregate combination of:
- Ticket revenue quota
- Fishing for warrants
- Fishing for arrests
- Let’s pull over white people to balance out the racial metrics
- I’m bored
- That girl might be hot, I’d like a closer look
- It’s going to look like I didn’t do anything today if I don’t write some tickets
You mean to tell me driving 10MPH over an artificially low speed limit is such a danger to society that we need an armed officer to make him stop?
There’s a big difference between weaving in and out of traffic at high rates of speed, egregiously running red lights 3 seconds after red, and:
- Oh look that driver didn’t make two full complete stops, one at the sidewalk and then a second one 3 feet later
- The road is completely empty and he’s doing 20MPH on the interstate with dry conditions and 1/2 mile visibility
- He rolled through a stop sign after looking and seeing it was clear instead of a full 3 second stop
- He blew through a yellow light and clipped 1/10 second on the red
- He made a right turn into a multi lane street and turned into the middle lane instead of the right lane
I’ve only ever been pulled over for fishing nonsense, the cops were always polite, admitted they were fishing, apologized for wasting my time, and let me go with no ticket.
If we cut the shit and told the truth that a large percentage of all arrests occur from bullshit traffic stops because violent criminals who have warrants also tend to drive like shot, then I’d be more open to this game. But it’s obviously just revenue generation and fishing for criminal arrests. How do I know?
Imagine gun ownership was 99% like car ownership and everyone carried a gun everywhere. And you’re at the grocery store and a guy takes out his gun and starts waving it around in the air, muzzling people not with malice intent but being a jackass. Just reckless. Would the police come and ask him to see his ID, run him for warrants and issue him a $200 fine? Or would the police arrest him for aggravated assault and lock him in prison and take away his gun?
But put the same guy behind a 2 ton vehicle that can and DOES injure more people that guns annually (when you exclude suicides) and now we’re not arresting everyone we pull over for a felony endangerment. We restrict the felony endangerment to a small subset of traffic stops, maybe less than 1%. Where’s 99%+ of jackassery with an unholstered gun in public would result in an arrest.
Why is this the case? Because 90%+ of the time when the police pull someone over, it’s not the equivalent endangerment to society as waving a gun around. It’s, “oh shit you were going a few MPH over the speed limit” which if it doesn’t meet the degree of danger to society to justify an arrest, why are armed officers effecting a traffic stop?
‘You we’re doing something so reckless and dangerous to society that we needed a trained armed person with the lawful authority to use lethal force but here’s a piece of paper telling us to send us a check, and now you can go off in your 2 ton vehicle on the public road a few minutes later and potentially keep doing the extreme danger to society you were just doing”
My theory is simple. Strip traffic laws down to a single subjective “reckless driving” felony charge. If the person is doing something so terrible that the driver is imminently putting other people’s lives at risk, like waving a loaded gun around a store, perhaps the gun is unholstered tucked under an armpit while texting at the grocery checkout line. Arrest this person immediately. Either they are such a danger that they need to be immediately locked in a cage, or leave them alone. Cops will stop 90%+ of traffic stops
I have the same argument against red flag gun seizure laws. Either this person is an imminent threat to society and we put them in a cage immediately. Or they are fully clear and free to go about their business with their guns. It’s when we start encroaching in the middle that people start to hate police, distrust the government, and disregard laws in general, even good ones.
I’m an admitted lunatic, I know it’s all crazy.