Traffic cop sues city for get-out-of-jail-free cards for NYPD friends and family | Hacker News Reader

Traffic cop sues city for get-out-of-jail-free cards for NYPD friends and family

theguardian.com

182 pointsbelltaco47 comments

We all know the whole system is corrupt as hell but I hope this guy ends up not being ground to dust and that this helps temper some of carte blanche privilege of this magic card that has no legitimate reason to exist beyond "some animals are more equal than others."

I wish they didn't try to shoehorn a racial element into this since it sounds idiotic. "More people with cards tend to be white and therefore the cards are racist" is such a weak take - there are more white people than minorities, for one. And of course there is structural racism that leads to more white people being in a position of power such that more white people are handed these cards but... you can't yell racism about every byproduct of structural racism with removing causality and intent from racism, which makes it completely illogical.

> And of course there is structural racism that leads to more white people being in a position of power such that more white people are handed these cards but... you can't yell racism about every byproduct of structural racism with removing causality and intent from racism

"You can't yell racism about racism" is how the racism stays unfixed. There is a legitimate problem both philosophical and practical in untangling individual responsibility in a structurally racist system of power and policing, but I would be interested to see if any of the cardholders were black.

(The cardholders, and anyone found issuing them, should obviously be jailed, regardless of how trivial the offence they're trying to get out of is, otherwise you're never going to restore public trust)

> but I would be interested to see if any of the cardholders were black

So are you implying that black police officers don’t hand out these cards and/or black people refuse to accept them. This seems to be an issue almost entirely related to wealth/income inequality than anything else.

> "More people with cards tend to be white and therefore the cards are racist" is such a weak take - there are more white people than minorities, for one.

But this is quite different from what the article actually says. What they're saying is P(Card|White) > P(Card|Minority), not P(White|Card) > P(Minority|Card).

>> White drivers in the borough, the complaint said, “are significantly more likely to have courtesy cards than minority drivers”. As a result of a ticketing quota system, this means “police officers are forced to disproportionately ticket minority drivers”.

Yes, so the argument is, if the main token influencing the posterior is the prior rather than the likelihood, then in the presence of such highly unequal priors, presenting unequal posteriors as strong evidence of unequal likelihoods is disingenuous, or weak argumentation at best.

OP simply adds on top that it is also less useful (or even actively harmful) in the discussion, and does a disservice, because it serves to weaken the argument pool and desinsitize/polarize people to the topic in the long term.

The quotes you quoted don't seem to contradict that view in any way.

Having said that, I didn't feel that the article struck the wrong tone in flagging the inherent racial bias issues here. Specifically, they were very careful to avoid a "racist cops" / "racist cards" wording/angle, which is probably good reporting in this case, and I would argue should go some way towards alleviating OPs concerns.

I’d also love to see every public official who has outstanding parking tickets forced to pay up. And also have no exemptions for private car parking tickets and not allow private use of public vehicles.

>but I hope this guy ends up not being ground to dust and that this helps temper some of carte blanche privilege of this magic card

They buried the last NYPD whistleblower by throwing him into a mental institution against his will. Nothing has changed and I see it repeating

Fun thing: if this would have happened in east europe the offending country would be sanctioned, and the media in certain eu countries would be frothing at the mouth over how could such a country has been allowed to join the eu since of course this type of behaviour is imprinted in its culture, and possibly dna.

How the perspective changes when it happens in a country with overwhelming power.

Turns out human nature does involve corruption and immoral behaviour and it’s up to us to constantly weed it out as it can happen anywhere. But boy does a little bit of power help sway those that will use it as proof that it’s inherent to your ethnicity rather than human nature.

It's not really the country, it's the politics and power that the media/propaganda machine it is aligned with.

If this kind of thing happened in a rural town in a southern state, it would be the same thing. There would be documentaries and opinion pieces and talking heads on television wringing their hands and clutching their pearls.

But because it's in the premiere leftist / globalist city and state with a majority-minority police forced headed by a black chief of police, is sanctioned by unions, and all overseen by the Democrat party, the facts are quietly mumbled over, followed by confidently unfounded assertions about how racist this is is insinuations that white supremacy and/or privilege must be behind it.

See, at this point admitting anything else implies that their entire platform has been built on lies from stem to stern, or at the very least completely unproven and now failed claims. So they have no choice but to keep digging. Zero introspection. None of this can possibly be the result of any of their failures, it must be due to racism. And as we know from their litany of unfounded claims, only they are qualified to address. It's extremely convenient for them. And every year of failed policies that go by, the more they assert without evidence that racism has continued to become worse.

It's bad whether it happens in Eastern Europe or in the US. No one (who doesn't benefit from it) in the US thinks this is a good thing.

Meanwhile, this is a corruption thing, not a racist thing. Although corruption tends to invite racism, that's not the primary driver.

The systematic destruction of all democratic institutions in "certain eastern EU countries" is not comparable or relevant here but OK.

Destruction? There was nothing left to destroy after world war two as there wasn't much left standing. Let alone after the communist cancer that further plagued east europe.

There’s only construction in that region and failing to acknowledge that is rather harmful.

The toxic mindset of ostracisation, threats, sanctions, slander, and worse, the notion that certain choices are immutable traits of ones culture or folk is what pushes people towards pis, orban, aur, and others.

Hmmm, anyone know if scans of these cards are available online?

Seems like making them widely available to pretty much everyone would help fix the problem. ;D

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If someone really wants to mess with that system, they could duplicate these cards and drop a few in every letterbox throughout entire areas.

"No need to send police here, every resident in the area has one of these cards..." ;)

One approach to solving this problem would be a mass distribution of fake courtesy cards. I wonder if the NYPD has an effective way of verifying that a person has a real card that they received from a real cop.

It’s not the NYPD, it’s the union. In NJ, when I was given one of those cards from a friend’s father as a teen, I was told the card would be surrendered if I got a moving violation and I’d answer to him later.

I threw the card out, it was useless trash.

I mean, by "surrendered" he meant he personally would take it back. And that was probably just meant to make you drive normally and use it to get out of tickets, not as a carte blanche to break every traffic law flagrantly.

I don't live in NY or NJ, but from some reading in the past, a card like this will get you out of a minor violation - speeding < 15 mph over the limit, or a rolling stop at a sign. It might get you out of a bigger one, but the officer on the scene can and will confiscate the card and take it up with the issuing officer directly.

It's still dirty, but the system is not completely without checks and balances.

But the existing system (involving courts) was determined by individuals who were rather directly voted on by the citizens.

This system of out-of-jail-free cards was decided by a separate group of individuals. If the elected representatives wanted police & friends to be above the law they could've done so and in fact for police they often have (Sovereign Immunity / Qualified Immunity) but for friends they didn't.

I was told the officer would take it in lieu of writing me a ticket, and the card would get back to my friends dad.

In the UK, traffic cops used to have "Black Rat" stickers [0] on their personal vehicles (for various reasons they are nicknamed Black Rats- this started out as a derogatory nickname from other police, but they adopted it as a point of pride).

Once it became clear that the stickers were being sold to the public, they stopped working as a way to avoid being pulled over.

[0]http://bluelightgifts.org.uk/stickers/

In case you were wondering what happens with those hypothetical "good apples" you keep hearing about. All cops aren't bastards, but the ones that are demand conformance from the rest. Doing this so openly blatant is a strong sign the NYPD union is too far gone to reform, and should be prosecuted with the laws used for organized crime, because that is what it is.

Yep, politicians keep saying that most cops are good, but it seems like even the good cops are ok with stuff like this.

Whenever this topic comes up you have some people arguing that it's not a big deal. Often these people admit to having these cards and carrying them around but still insist that they aren't valuable.

Yet this system has existed for decades across the country. If these cards weren't valuable people wouldn't bother to keep printing them and handing them out. It's clear that the people carrying these cards expect that it will help them get at least a little special treatment.

This is basically what ACAB means anyway. It's not that only bad people become police, it's that the individual morality of any specific cop doesn't really matter. The system demands you be complicit in corruption and unjust violence, you either lathe your soul so that it fits or you leave entirely.

If you actually want to know a "Good Cop", you go looking for someone who switched careers after a while trying to not conform to the depravity of most police departments.

The underlying cause of all this is that the police has a us versus them mentality.

As a police officer you get a warped view of society because every day you are dealing with crap. Suicides, domestic disturbances, football hooligans. All the bad stuff of modern life is your job. And you're underpaid and nobody likes you.

Yeah, I worked with a former cop. He got out because he was getting very jaded from constantly interacting with people at their worst. He was a good guy, the type you’d want to be a cop too.

Cops make very good money (at least in the US), making above the median income even before you count pensions, overtime and excellent health insurance. Not to mention an almost inability to get fired.

Other places I've also seen Police associations sell stickers in exchange for "donations". I honestly believe it should be illegal for civilians to donate to any organization setup to benefit police and/or their families. It's bribery by another name.

Anything that could be even slightly seen to benefit public official should result in extremely lengthy prison sentence for all parties involved. Be it a cop, city worker or a teacher.

I think cops should be held to a higher standard. Trash collectors and teachers don't have a monopoly on violence.

This is comedic level of corruption.

Reminds me of the post communists Eastern European country I grew up in -- you piss off someone, a call is made, you get demoted or reassigned to a dead end post.

Separately, the minority bias angle seems a bit forced to me: is the percentage of white card holders large enough to explain a significant percentage of observed ticketing racial bias? I very much doubt it.

I doubt also. But it depends on who has the cards, how they're obtained, and how many are allowed to be given out.

I wouldn't be surprised at all - the NYC police force demographics don't come particularly close to the city as a whole. Blacks are significantly underrepresented while Latinos are actually over-represented. Assuming the cards go mostly to people of the same race, which is likely if they go to relatives/neighbors/friends, you end up with meaningful bias.

Tax payers end up fronting the bill for all this bad behavior :-/.

As an irrational New Yorker who’s paid thousands of dollars in those evil yellow parking tickets, I’m for this and anything else that reasonably makes a traffic cops life more difficult and unfair on the job.

You are for punishing the one traffic cop complaining that, although you get tickets, the family of cops don't? Just because you don't like traffic cops in general?

Yea, my thinking is pretty absurd. But it’s because I’m being irrational. The feeling will pass. ultimately, I am wrong.

If it helps, making it so that cops and their families are no longer immune to traffic tickets would make it so they tighten up the rules on giving tickets in general. So this guy is very directly fighting to get you fewer tickets.

This cop is either ignorant of history, or suicidal.

Likewise his lawyer who recommended a 1A approach to litigation is an idiot. Writing tickets is not private speech.

Public corruption is illegal and blowing the whistle on it is protected speech.

I think the parent poster is pointing out that similar whistleblowers have been murdered or intimidated out of their city.

Read the article.

He is being punished for complaining about the practice by his public employer. That is a violation of his free speech. It’s an appropriate approach by the lawyer.

America is just as corrupt as any other country on the planet.

Lol no. Not by a very wide margin. You’d have to have never lived long term anywhere but America or say the G7 to believe that.

Let's take just two examples. In Mexico it's not uncommon for traffic cops to plainly solicit a bribe on the spot. And India has often made the news with popular attempts to rein in corruption which is so pervasive that every encounter with a government employee or official is likely to benefit from a little bribery.

The U.S. has it's own brand of corruption, but I don't think we need to worry about taking the title.

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