Welp, got a $50 parking ticket today. Apparently, the University started giving out tickets again following a period of leniency. This they did without any warning, not to mention that the parking lot where I got the ticket was at about 30% capacity.
Essentially, I was just blindsided by a $50 ticket in a parking lot where a ticket was unwarranted in the first place.
This brings me nicely along to an inescapable reality of which I am constantly reminded by these little tickets a few times a year:
We need to promote massive legal reforms in this country.
We don't need to fully defund the police. But we desperately need to rethink the way we do law enforcement.
If you're a right-wing, Blue Lives Matter advocate, hear me out. This isn't going to be as bad as you think.
Because even you have to admit we have a major police image problem in this country. And this police image problem is exacerbated by our approach to law enforcement.
The fact of the matter is that the average American no longer associates police officers with the image of the selfless public servant, standing between civilians and lawless anarchy. Instead, the average American associates police officers with petty, low-key sources of irritation at best and full tyranny at worst.
Basically, you're more likely to associate police officers with oppression than with selfless acts of heroism.
This reality isn't necessarily the fault of police officers themselves. Instead, I primarily blame policymakers on the federal, state, and local level who create legal circumstances that place law enforcement personnel into positions that reflect poorly on their public image.
(I'm not apologizing, here, for law officers who wildly misuse their power to gun people down carelessly. I'm more talking about the run-of-the-mill cops who are asked to arrest kids for smoking cigarettes underage or who ticket you for not wearing a seatbelt).
I'm no different. I also have a largely negative view of law enforcement officers. One regularly reinforced (as it was today) by my frequent inability to live within the law, even when I'm legitimately trying to do so. By and large, my experiences are dominated by arbitrary citations, unnecessary speeding tickets, and overt pettiness. And this is as a white guy. Don't worry, liberals. I'm not forgetting to check my privilege, or whatever the most up-to-date woke terminology is.
I come across as a white, clean-cut, not-tatoo-having, all-American sort of guy and my experiences with law are STILL far more negative than positive. I can only imagine that it's worse for those with fewer born privileges.
Again, I don't necessarily blame law enforcement officers themselves for the reality of my experience. I blame policymakers. I blame whoever it was who made the decision to create the speed traps where I got ticketed, or whoever decided that the UPD should issue tickets without warning after a year of leniency in a lot that was basically empty.
Because (sorry not sorry) I didn't deserve most of those tickets or citations. Call me a bad apple if you want. Call me a sociopathic narcissist who thinks he's above the law. I really don't care. I wasn't wrong, the law was wrong. Almost by definition, these laws are corrupt. They're deliberately created to generate revenue, not to keep people safe.
That's why, when you're applying for a job, they'll ask a question like "Besides driving-related violations, have you ever been in trouble with the law?" That's because what they're really saying is "Ok so have you actually done anything bad or did the state just catch you a few times in their efforts to collect revenue?"
And I haven't. Notice above that I've never been in a driving accident. As a rule I don't drive under the influence or anything like that. I've never even run a red light. I have an otherwise perfect driving record for thirteen years.
They literally have just found excuses to squeeze every last dime out of me. And that particularly hurts because, on the scholarships and stipends I've lived for most of my life, every little $50 citation hits me right where it hurts.
At this point, you're probably thinking that I'm missing the point and your argument probably goes something like this:
(But dude, you're missing the point of our law enforcement and not giving nearly enough credit to our men and women in uniform. Yea, you may have gotten some tickets (and it sounds like you dang-well deserved most of them) but those tickets are a drop in the bucket compared to the Invisible forces of darkness that those in uniform protect you from every day. You really ought to show a little more appreciation.
Also, your complaint overall is rather shallow. Come on, man, you can't realistically think that we just shouldn't have a speed limit or that people should just park anywhere willy-nilly. You're starting to sound like those woke professors you work for, so disconnected from reality that they actually believe some of the implausible nonsense they spew on Twitter).
First off, again, that's not what I'm saying. I appreciate that law enforcement stands between me and the Invisible forces of evil and all that.
All I'm saying is that, in this country, we push policies that ultimately diminish the reality that law officers are a source of protection not oppression.
Because law officers could still be everything they need to be without essentially serving as revenue collectors for the state. Our policy approaches make it more likely for them to gain the perception of oppressor rather than saviour.
Secondly, I'm not saying we should do away with speeding limits and parking laws entirely. We just need to actually prioritize safety instead of revenue.
You can say I'm a crackpot academic and mischaracterize my position by saying I'm some anarchist who doesn't believe we should have any law or order. But that's just not true.
I'm not crazy to acknowledge the reality that modern law enforcement is largely constructed around generating revenue. That's why they deliberately and unapologetically create speed traps where you get hefty tickets for going 60 on a 45 in farm country. That's why they'll write you a ticket even if yours is the only vehicle in an otherwise empty, public lot. That's why an officer on a motorcycle can give you a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt. Shoot, many officers have actual ticketing quotas to fill each month.
Is it really such an insane, anarchist idea to say maybe we shouldn't do things this way? Maybe we should realize, for example, that speed traps in farm country ultimately do more harm than good because they don't keep people safe while they bleed much-needed money out of ordinary folks? That maybe we shouldn't ask men with guns to put their lives on the line just for the sake of collecting revenue? Or, conversely, that maybe otherwise innocent people shouldn't be confronted by officers with guns for breaking rules that were only ever made to entrap them? Our whole approach creates miniature powder kegs and then we wonder why people end up getting shot when it's SO OBVIOUSLY our policies that generated the explosive atmosphere in the first place.
But no. We can't have any reforms in this country.
Why?
Because liberals are unwavering in their defense of the state (if highly critical of those law officers who enforce that state) and conservatives are uncompromising in their defense of law officers (even as they're highly critical of the state those law officers uphold).
And so we get nowhere.
What liberals need to realize is that the powerful state necessary to implement their policies is necessarily one that makes law officers into tyrants. They consistently think that all we need to do is weed out the bad, racist cops and clean house and that everything will be ok after that. They're oblivious to the fact that their big-state approach to policy will ALWAYS turn law enforcement officers into oppressors.
What conservatives need to realize is that by continually defending a "law and order" policy approach, what they're actually doing is enabling a broken, revenue-based system that tarnishes the public image of officers. They see any suggested reform as an attack on the law and the men and women who uphold it. Oblivious to the fact that they're defending the very policies that undermine and endanger the officers they claim to support.
So, between our two primary political ideologies, we're not likely to see any practical reforms.
But, hey, who needs practical reforms? Why actually fix a broken system when you rely on the system being broken in order to blame the other side? Heaven forbid we actually take some positive steps, then Democrats and Republicans would lose the opportunity to blame one another for the mess we're in.