101–110 of 158 posts
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Local journalists got the cops fired. How the hell such a thing exists, I'm not sure.. Probably teens or funded by a local community college.
Or Pulitzer winners. One of the three for sure!
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Regarding a (at least in the US) I think a big part of the problem is a system of laws that people generally agree is unjust (i.e. the drug laws)
I find it strange that the US has laws that many people break and the law is only enforced sporadically. Some examples in California are speeding, missing front license plate, age of consent laws, use tax on out-of-state/internet purchases, and illegal immigration. Having a bunch of laws that people break with impunity has a "broken window" effect, leading to less respect for the law overall. (Whether or not these la…
OP here. I'm sensing some generalized anti-police sentiment. Many cities allow residents to "ride along" in a police car for a shift. (In the front!) It's not a bad thing to do.
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Number of times I have stopped for gas on a 30-mile stretch of local toll road: 0. Why would someone stop, just to get an excuse to speed later, at the same average? The few people drag-racing, maybe. Not the vast majority who want to to arrive at destination ASASP. You are conjuring up a ridiculous hypothetical and claiming it is the common case.
>Why would someone stop, just to get an excuse to speed later, at the same average? You do understand that there are service plazas on toll roads. People stop for gas because they need gas, not because they want to speed. But once someone has stopped, or intends to stop before the toll booth, they're no longer subject to the timer and end up creating a dangerous speed differential against the drivers who are.
Also, all the toll roads in South Florida use the same electronic system (EZ-Pass); it's also usable up through Orlando (from personal experience). With such a system, there's no need to even slow down to pay the toll (and there are no more toll booths in Miami; if you have no EZ-Pass system, a photo of your license place is taken, and a bill (not a ticket) is mailed to the license holder).
Edit: There are also three service plazas along the Florida Turnpike in South Florida, one in Dade County (Miami), one in Broward County (just north of Ft. Lauderdale) and one in West Palm Beach (towards the north end of the county), each separated by approximately 30 miles. Depending on where the cop in question lived and worked, he might have never even passed a service plaza (and besides, the gas there is more expensive).
>The reporters found nearly 800 officers who reached speeds of 90-130 mph, many of them while off duty. The accidents caused by officers driving at high speeds had caused at least 320 crashes since 2004, killing or maiming 21 people. That's such a horrifying statistic if true. Even at their peak, homicide offending rates in the US were at around 20 per 100,000; assault rates about 10 times as high: http://bjs.gov/con…
doesn't terrorism scale better, though?
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(Shrug) There aren't any "consequences of speeding." If you hit something or kill somebody, you were doing something wrong besides speeding.
Yes, you were doing something wrong like not understanding physics involving the coefficient of friction, acceleration formulas, and the inability to see through solid objects to know that a child is about to step out on the road in front of your car at a distance where you could have stopped had you not been speeding.
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I think the issue here is that off-duty police officers speed aggressively with the knowledge that, if caught, they will be almost certainly let off the hook due to their job. That makes the situation completely different than people with any other "just a job" job.
Or analogous to any other abuse of position.
How can we expect them to investigate abuse of position if they are abusing their position?
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Yes, you were doing something wrong like not understanding physics involving the coefficient of friction, acceleration formulas, and the inability to see through solid objects to know that a child is about to step out on the road in front of your car at a distance where you could have stopped had you not been speeding.
The parent comment was aiming at the fact that speed is rarely a cause of an accident, it is often a condition. The difference is small but relevant, as law enforcement focuses on speed as a cause, ignoring the real causes (e.g. Car parked before crosswalk preventing visibility of child that is crossing the road)
>The reporters found nearly 800 officers who reached speeds of 90-130 mph, many of them while off duty. The accidents caused by officers driving at high speeds had caused at least 320 crashes since 2004, killing or maiming 21 people. That's such a horrifying statistic if true. Even at their peak, homicide offending rates in the US were at around 20 per 100,000; assault rates about 10 times as high: http://bjs.gov/con…
Frustrating? Yes. Shocking? No. Did anyone really believe that taking a job as a police officer somehow suppressed these people's natural desire to drive fast? Hell, that's probably what make them join the force in the first place. Sure, it's irresponsible and illegal for off-duty officers to speed, but it's also irresponsible and illegal for regular citizens to speed, and yet that doesn't seem to stop them from doin…
"The database was so innovative that two law enforcement agencies sent investigators to the newsroom to learn how to replicate it." Expect your ticket in the mail, while legislation is passed that prevents cops from being held accountable.
I'm curious as to the technical details. I can't imagine why investigators couldn't get access to the raw Sun Pass database, which records tag id, toll booth, and a timestamp, if it works anything like my EZ-Pass system. From that, it's trivial to match up enter/exit records and divide the distance by the time to come up with an average speed. The article says they got the data from 12 police departments. I wonder wh…