Thursday, July 14, 2016

Police Public Relations becoming sour in the US- some personal thoughts

Can't resist to add my 2 cents to spoiled ‪#‎police‬-public relations. Personally, my love and respect for police has gone sour a bit over years. Besides killing people, there is another issue- traffic tickets, the way they are used to raise money for governments is annoying. Traffic tickets are not cheap in the USA. Sometimes they cost a full paycheck for many families. When such fine is for some minor carelessness or negligence, it can make anyone frustrated at police. If you go to any traffic court in Los Angeles, you would see more colored people, more of those people who seem to have limited financial resources. Tail lights are likely to broken for car owners who run old cars and have limited money to spend on such fixes. They don't serve to be punishes with several hundreds in fines! If you are driving at 90mph in a 65 miles zone, police should stop you and give a ticket. However, some cities, and some cops, are trying to find, or bring out LOL, criminals out of ordinary drivers. Sometimes back, in evening hours, my wife missed to turn on the FULL light when she was picking up our son from volunteer work at local hospital. It was just getting dark. A cop, waiting for a hunt, stops her. He does a quick test to make sure she is not drunk!!! At 630in the evening? And for a lady from India who has never tasted wine or alcohol in her life?? My son and she both are scared. Then he gives her a ticket that the FULL light is not on! Low light (parking light?) was on, and hence the panel inside the car was lit which could fool most drivers. Plus, it was just getting dark and the street had street lights. I would expect a reasonable public friendly cop to give a warning but here we have a $300 ticket! FOR MANY PEOPLE, this can be a big part of their after tax take home weekly pay!! Cities and cops think that this is free money but it is not free money! It costs you love, respect and trust from public! It makes people dislike you if hate is a too strong of a word!
Another recent incident. On summer days parking gets bad on ‪#‎Malibu‬beaches. You spend up to an hour looking for a parking spot. One day recently, I parked my car against a fence. There is no "No Parking" sign or parking restrictions! I always walk around and make sure I am not violating any law before I park my car anywhere. The car was completely off the road. It was not creating any inconvenience to anyone! We came back and some money hungry cop had posted a ticket that only Parallel parking is allowed on the ‪#‎Malibucity‬ beaches!! There was no such sign, any other parking restriction, around where I had parked. I felt terrible- not only for the money part, but it sucks when a cop has to punish families that are trying to enjoy public beaches! If my parking is creating any inconvenience, I can understand but it wasn't the case. I am sure everyone has some stories like this. 
I wouldn’t be surprised if unfortunate ‪#‎DallasShooting‬ has roots in that cop stopping ‪#‎PhilandoCastile‬ to give some ticket for his broken tail lights!!‪#‎AttorneyGeneral‬ or someone needs to put brakes on cops issuing tickets for minor incidents.

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