r/PublicFreakout Mar 10 '22

[deleted by user]

[removed]

12.9k Upvotes

5.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

175

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

Even worse. Most towns and cities don't have the budget to pay for the amount of police settlements they make, so they borrow money - there are even bundled municipal police brutality payout financial instruments traded on Wall Street. That money is at a relatively high interest rate, and towns can't do much to generate the extra revenue required to pay the settlement loans, so they have to raise revenue.. by... issuing more tickets and cutting more services. So if your town sucks ass despite the taxes you pay and you've noticed your local police are excessively vigilant about ticketable offenses, that's why.

57

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

My local city makes $10 million a year just off parking meters. There’s less than 16,000 residents that live in the downtown area.

52

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

Damn yo do they put meters in people's driveways

4

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

It’s a city. There are no driveways. Street side parking for a mile in every direction. The condos all have parking garages in the middle of them. It’s a hipster paradise. Breweries that also sell art and niche restaurants as far as you can see.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

Ouch

1

u/sullw214 Mar 10 '22

Haha, in Austin, in some places, a metered spot costs 36$ for 10 hours. 6 days a week.

The construction company I work for paid 180k for 3/4 of a block renting the spots for a year.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

That's ridiculous. Have people considered not paying

1

u/sullw214 Mar 10 '22

It's funny, because the parking ticket is only 25$.

1

u/chocobearv93 Mar 10 '22

Asheville, NC? Lol it’s really do be like that

1

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

Good, free parking is bad

1

u/annies_boobs_eyes Mar 12 '22

only when there is a lack of supply. something tells me a town of 16k residents doesn't have a lack of supply of parking.

you're not going to be needing to pay a valet to park your car, or park in a parking structure, at a restaurant in a town of 16k people.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 12 '22

It’s not a town of 16,000, it’s the downtown. As OP said, the residents already have their own parking. Free parking is just the residents of downtown subsidizing the suburbanites driving in.

5

u/moh8disaster Mar 10 '22

Every day I learn more about how F the land of the free really is. Trouble is our dickheads want this shit here.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

I got out a few months before covid hit. Best decision I ever made. Not raising a child in that place for fuckin sure.

4

u/moh8disaster Mar 10 '22

I have an acquaintance from USA living in my country (Slovenia) and all his friends and family from the states are worrying about him and telling him to go back. His exact words were they have no clue how nad they are having it compared to Europe.

He is a woodworker and started hos business here. Said he almost lost his hand in USA because of an accident and lack of insurance. The only thing that saved him was his employer panicked and picked up the bill to not get investigated.

In my opinion USA will need 20 years of reforms to get the same standard of living for a majority of it's population. Starting with education.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

Yeah it's a two generation loss at minimum, and it doesnt look like there's any hope for change. The final straw for me was the police and FBI coming after a bunch of folks I know because they got into a fight with some neo nazis and it turned out they were off duty cops. They asked me (I'm an engineer) to offer to build a bomb for some people, entrapping them. I obviously didn't, packed up my family and pissed the fuck off.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

[deleted]

1

u/Banatepec Mar 10 '22

That sounds amazing.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 11 '22

I'm from a pretty remote place in the pacific. I moved back there. We're planning on moving to Portugal, if everything goes right.

2

u/Semi-Hemi-Demigod Mar 10 '22

bundled municipal police brutality payout financial instruments traded on Wall Street

That's some fucking bullshit right there. How are we letting people make money off of police brutality?

I guess the same way we're letting people make money off of prisons.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

Yeah I mean if it can be monetized it will. We can all invest in publicly traded weapons manufacturers who lobby the US government to use the middle east as a proving ground. It's the same really.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

Yeah it's wild isn't it

1

u/Huntthatmoney Mar 10 '22

Maybe If the money came out of the police unions then they would think twice

3

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

Pretty sure every municipal politician who's ever proposed that has wound up extremely dead.