I recently got pulled over in Pinckney, MI, a town just north of me. It was one of those situations where the speed limit dropped ten mph and I missed the sign and got caught doing about 12 over. The cop seemed decent and just gave me a warning for speeding in exchange for writing me up for having an out of date insurance -- which was an outright falsehood, since I had an up to date certificate. He explained that he could do that and I would get no points and have only a $25 dollar fine. Annoying, but I know how to pick my battles so I quietly acquiesced.
Later when I went online to pay, I come to find out it was not a $25 fine, but $125 (and no, I didn't just misunderstand). It was probably no cheaper than a low level speeding ticket. I suppose I still got out of points on my license, but why would the cop do that? Why falsify a charge and lie about the fine when he could have just hit me up for a minor speeding ticket? Putting 2 and 2 together I remembered the reason for traffic stops is not for the sake of law enforcement but for revenue. The lie gets me to feel grateful and not fuss on the scene. Discovering the lie is frustrating, but even that is probably not worth it to fight. But if you throw in points on my license, I may make a fuss. I may decide to be a prick and force a court date just on the hopes of getting out of it. So the strategy is to weasel in an effort to gain revenue while minimizing the possibility of administrative expenses. In other words, maximizing profit. And that, my friends, is a dangerous game.
Back when I used to read a lot of travel writing, I would often run into stories of folks driving through Mexico and getting pulled over, often on false pretenses. There would be dire warnings and threats from the Mexican cops but then it would be made known that a small cash outlay would get them out of trouble on the spot. The travellers in these stories seemed to find it all entertaining in a genuine-cultural-experience sort of way. But how condescending is that? Look at it this way, if there was some cop in Ann Arbor pulling people over and squeezing them for cash, Heads Would Roll. If it started in the morning, by Noon social media would be on fire. People would be out of jobs by the end of the day. It takes a special kind of smug superiority to sit back in your bubble and have a laugh over a similar situation because it's the silly Mexican primitives doing it far away.
The business of using traffic fines as a source of revenue is tip-toeing on a fraying line. There are places in Georgia and Louisiana where this has already gotten out of control. It's important to take very seriously how much corruption will feed upon its own image. If you think the authorities are cynical and dishonest, you assume you have to engage with them on their own terms and corruption grows. If you want to see where that ends up, read my above comments about Detroit. So much of the order needed to maintain progressive civilization is a matter of broad based trust. If you doubt that, google "low trust societies". Cheap ploys like I had played on me are a plain and obvious broken window.
I don't mean to imply there is third-world level corruption in Pinckney, MI. Like I said, it's a mere annoyance to me and not anywhere near a major problem in the area. I just want to point out the dangers. A healthy community will not resort to speed traps for revenue, if it wants to stay healthy. If you find your community is increasingly financed by fines and speed traps, it might be time to find a new community. The writing is on the wall.
