Abusing Authority



Submit


“ Gary Wagner, a professor of economics at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, was one author of a study of moving-vehicle and parking tickets in North Carolina, covering a 14-year period. He found a strong correlation between a dip in government revenue and a rise in ticket-writing by the police. “But there’s a lag time,” Mr. Wagner said. “Typically, it’s about a year after the revenues drop that the police start writing more tickets.

Local Governments Turn to Fees to Fill Budget Gaps - NYTimes.com

It is extremely difficult to contest tickets already.  As law enforcement becomes an even important means of raising revenue, the Government will have even less incentive to protect due process rights.  Moreover, police will shift their efforts towards  revenue-producing endeavors (tickets, fines), and away from the revenue-draining ones (the investigation of violent crimes, for example).