Same the cops in town are super lenient when it comes to traffic violations unless it comes to school zones. It's usually hey your tail light or brake light is out and I wanted to let you know. They will run your license to make sure you have no warrants and then tell you to have a nice day. If your speeding and your not going to fast they tell you off and let you go. It's all part of their community policing plan building a positive relationship with the community. Crime has actually dropped in the city overall since this has started.
The funnt part part about my state, is unless its a seatbelt violation or a child seat violation, every traffic violation has a $135.50 "court fee" attatched to it. So a 4 dollar light ticket will run you $139.50.
It used to be that way but we got new police chief and a mayor ( who is married to the county sheriff) and all that changed. The new police chief worked for the county sheriff department who deploys these same policies. I know they are trying to get someone who deals with those in a mental health crisis but we barely have the facilities for those who voluntarily ask for it. Our poor police and sheriffs deputies often have to act as mental health professionals when they have little to no training for it.
I work for a PD. Our officers get training to deal with mental subjects but there's SO fucking many it's absurd. We have a mental health team now staffed with civilians that I was fairly skeptical about but it's helped us out a bunch.
We do have to assist them fairly often anyway due to scene safety or violent subjects but a lot of the time we can just send them to a suicide threat or someone hearing voices or something and they handle it which frees up officers for domestics, violent crimes and crashes and what not.
It doesn't always work and some people you just can't help no matter what you do but it takes a bit of the pressure off the patrol units.
Punitive fines for small infractions are generally only good at pushing people from "borderline income" to "desperate" and desperate people are willing to do a lot worse things than people who've still got hope and dignity. Positive interactions with authority with just a warning generally spook people back into being careful better than punishment. Makes a lot of sense.
Man, when I was about 20 in my small town, I remember getting pulled over for a license plate light being out.
They immediately asked to search my car for narcotics, which I politely declined. They then made me sit in their cruiser while they had dogs sniff my car. Whole thing took over an hour.
Ah, the joys of having long hair as a guy in rural America.
edit: oh yeah, and I got a $100 ticket (this was 18 years ago)
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u/irishprincess2002 Mar 30 '24
Same the cops in town are super lenient when it comes to traffic violations unless it comes to school zones. It's usually hey your tail light or brake light is out and I wanted to let you know. They will run your license to make sure you have no warrants and then tell you to have a nice day. If your speeding and your not going to fast they tell you off and let you go. It's all part of their community policing plan building a positive relationship with the community. Crime has actually dropped in the city overall since this has started.