This is incorrect. For small towns and economically declining cities fines are a very significant portion of their budget. One example was Ferguson Missouri and it's surrounding area, where fines were over 20% of the revenue.

https://www.governing.com/archive/gov-ferguson-missouri-court-fines-budget.html

https://www.governing.com/archive/fine-fee-revenues-special-report.html

I've met a few nice cops. Had a few cop friends when I worked private security. Most act like trash when dealing with the public though. The stories my cop friends have told me about pen fucking are scary. Too much leeway and not enough transparency.

this is pretty interesting

but also unrelated, my point is about cops playing willing enforcers for authoritarian bullshit

we arent going to collect the hundreds of billions lost directly and all the future lost revenue by fining a few dudes not wearing a mask

your articles describe blatant money grabs, but the covid cult is not about money

on a sidenote: thr country with the highest prison population on earth should really think about handing out more fines instead of prison, when prison time is not absolutely necessary

It's relavent to "young police officers handing out bullshit fines on unconstitutional laws".

They are trained to hand out fines to generate revenue for the city. Courts are trained to hand out court costs to generate revenue. It's a really shitty situation because we've been trained to think "TAXES BAD DON'T TAX AT ALL COST" for the past 50+ years under neoliberal conservatism.

Honest to god though my last interaction with a cop was a few weeks ago when walking in down. They pulled up to me thinking I was the public defender in town doing court rounds. He said "Are you the public DA?" I said no wrong person and he said "Good, dont ever be one!" and drove off.

Seems a little inappropriate for a cop.

lot of cop stories. here is maybe a unique one. Some one i worked with asked me if I drank on the drive home. I said I did. after that shift i thought that was a weird question. so i didnt open a beer that time and i got pulled over by a local cop. YA? for the next two weeks i was pulled over like every other day. would that coworker do a dirty like that? ya i think he would. As i understand it if you help get some one busted for DUI you get a % of the take.

its weird how many times i have been pulled over. not much in my life but working. i do my best to avoid them, seen to much. they can be as kooky as a lefty

This post was edited by TiStuff on Jun 28 2021 02:15pm

I haven't had many interactions with cops but most of them have been extremely positive. That being said, cops are not your friends and you should always be extremely careful when interacting with them.

" cops are not your friends "
(yup)

a vid i remember as being accurate
Don't Talk to the Police
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

This post was edited by TiStuff on Jun 28 2021 02:21pm

Yeah, we both laughed. No one would likely find it inappropriate here. We have much larger problems.