We should be viewing these situations as a cry for help instead of a criminal activity. This is what I hoped the "Defund the Police" movement was targeting. Sadly that phrase had good intentions but pretty bad optics.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/4agyzq/a-homeless-mississipp...
A relative who is a policeman knows 2-3 guys too old to migrate south for the winter who commit some misdemeanor in front of a cop to spend the winter at the county lockup.
Beat officers often feed these guys and help them out in small ways.
You're right. When we uphold a law for the law's sake, we've lost our way.
The value of a local, penalty-backed law is in it's ability to guide bulk behavior. These laws imply a bargain we make with our governments, that enforcement will be limited to the stated objective.
Reducing traffic speeds by citing a few speeders - this upholds that bargain. Citing every possible speeder while those fines fatten the police budget is a gross perversion.
I understand why people opt for the highways and paying a small amount now vs a bigger unexpected bill later on.
Another example of government policies and taxpayers money aiding private companies the government sold something to (they used to be public).
What I found really effective were traffic lights with speed meters that would turn red for five seconds if you were over the limit. No cameras, no fines, no police.
I don't know. I feel that the citing every speeder is overall better than selectively catching a few speeders. First, it's fairer, leaving less space for selective enforcement based on arbitrary criterion. Second, based on my experience on US highway, the latter isn't very effective. While I usually cruise at speed limit, vehicles rush past me at 80~90 mph every day.
I certainly don't agree with the idea that police should give fines as much as possible to make profits. But it's equally wrong to deliberately reduce the amount of enforcement, because less enforcement leads to less profit.
In my opinion, enforcement is enforcement; the profit-making problem shouldn't even be a consideration when we decide how enforcement is carried out. It should be dealt with separately.
However, my world view is that all rules should be written to be broken in the right hands, with just enough pressure for someone who shouldn’t be breaking the rule to be discouraged from doing so. Nothing is perfect in life anyway, and you can never truly capture a complex world, so I think you might as well consider it in rulemaking.
That said, it does open the world to profiling, but that will already happen regardless. Racists will always find a way to be racist.
Tying budget to citations is a perversion. Applying the law equally to everyone is just. You're conflating two issues.
Other people, like the NYTimes, believe it literally means abolish the police: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...