Getting It Right-“Violating A Sacred Cow”

August 9, 2007

By: Sid Riley

This column presents a non-partisan, conservative viewpoint about items of interest in our community and our lives. Focus is on items that are impacting your pocket book, your personal freedoms, and your rights. I hope that you will read the column regularly and that it occasionally influences your opinions and actions. Now, on to the subject of the week:
"This week’s column finds fault with one of our sacred cows, the Cops."
Before I begin I want to clearly state that I have a deep respect and admiration for the members of the police force. This includes everything from the F.B.I., the Highway Patrol, to the Sheriff and his Deputies, to the Municipal Police Forces. They are there when you need them, and are always willing to put their lives on the line in your behalf. Our society would be chaos if they did not exist.
However, you can have too much of a good thing. Unfortunately all police agencies are part of the bureaucracy. They are part of the system that is consuming our society. A lot of their effort goes into supporting bureaucratic concepts instead of law enforcement.
In my opinion, a big percentage of the man hours expended by the massive, multi-jurisdictional law enforcement establishment in our nation is directed towards those activities that generate revenues to support the huge bureaucracy of which it is a component.
For example, I would estimate that at least 70% of the total law enforcement man hours are expended in patrolling our highways looking for a speeder, a drunk, or someone running a stop light. Thus, traffic laws violation must be the most serious crime in our country. That is where the majority of the police effort is focused.
When I was young, when you went on a trip you would see one police car about every 100 miles of travel. Today, when I travel from Marianna to see my daughter in Gainesville, Florida, I normally see between 22 and 28 blue lighted vehicles. That is about one each eleven miles of travel.
In 1975 "Johnny Mac" was chief deputy for Sheriff Ronny Craven. They had eleven deputies on the road at that time. The county population was 38,000 to 39,000 residents. Since then we have added approximately 4,000 non inmate citizens, and the number of deputies in the sheriff’s department is around forty. Those 4,000 new people we added must have been a real bad bunch, we had to hire 29 new deputies to keep them under control!!
Now, let’s go back to the highway enforcement issues. To me it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to build sleek cars that will run over 120 miles per hour…..and then hire several million cops to go out and try to catch someone speeding!
It would seem more logical to enact laws to make only autos that only run at 80 MPH, with a short duration passing gear in case you needed a burst of speed.
Then we could get rid of about half of our highway patrol force. That would leave most of the time, money, and law enforcement energy spent fighting real crime instead of raising revenues from traffic fines in what amounts to a "road tax".
The recently published statistics on Traffic Citation Data reveals what a huge revenue generator traffic enforcement is for the bureaucracy. Based on the data provided, I would estimate that the total revenues within the State Of Florida from traffic enforcement exceeds $150,000,000 per year! This is a big boon for the greedy bureaucracy!
That is why our legislators are continually raising the level of fines for traffic offenses. It is not on the belief that the higher fines will improve traffic safety, it is actually because it will help them balance the state budget!
Most individual troopers are hard working, dedicated individuals that are doing their best to serve the public. However, regardless of their level of dedication, every one of them is subjected to continual pressure to issue tickets and generate revenues. The system within the police bureaucracy will chastise and eventually remove them if they do not generate enough "business".
I realize that it is not proper to criticize our dedicated police officers. I want to emphasize that I am NOT criticizing any of the officers……however, I AM criticizing the bureaucratic system that they are part of. It has moved their focus too much into traffic enforcement instead of fighting crime. I think most police officers would rather be thought of as "crime fighters" than "traffic cops". They would rather be out working to solve a murder or robbery case than be lurking behind a bush trying to nab someone not wearing their seat belts.
As citizens I believe that we should all strive to obey the law, respect the work of our law enforcement officers, but at the same time we should let our legislators know that we do not favor increasing the level of fines just to raise revenue, that we discourage broadening existing laws, and we do not think their staff size should be increased for several years. If we do these things, we will be "Getting It Right"!