Yeah, perhaps a better solution might be to have the federal or state government impose fines on local city governments for incidents where citizens' constitutional rights are infringed. I'm not as interested in personal compensation for the injury as I am making sure that cities and police can't violate citizen's rights without consequences that ensure that the activity isn't repeated.

The fact that this city was collecting 61% of their annual revenue through regular police stops (many of which seem to be unconstitutional) is alarming. There has to be a better solution than to just appeal or sue for compensatory damages, which in most cases, will have little to no affect on the city. Even the $30K damages in this case seems small compared to the more than $1 million they collected in 2006 alone.

It seems like they should be subject to substantial fines, if not jail time for the officers or judges that are involved in these stops and cases. It just seems wrong that a city can arrest and jail someone for almost a month for not paying a $1,580 fine, but no one in the city government gets jail time for violating the constitutional rights of thousands of citizens, while making millions from their disregard of the law.