lordredsnake t1_j5k1nyl wrote
Reply to comment by aintjoan in Hit-and-run crashes hours apart kill woman in South Philadelphia, man riding bike in Kensington by hdhcnsnd
The inability for police to pull over unregistered cars, uninspected cars, and cars with obscured license plates removes a great deal of risk for unlicensed drivers to operate vehicles—drivers who shouldn't be behind the wheel for a multitude of reasons.
I see cars with obscured license plates flat out run solid red lights for blocks on a near daily basis.
It is a well-meaning law meant to address the real problem of pulling drivers over for all of the reasons you listed as pretext for racial profiling, but it has some very real unintended consequences. People respond to incentives.
Couple that with a soft strike by the police, and it's chaos. Because I've seen those cars run red lights right in front of cops who don't do a damn thing about it anyway.
aintjoan t1_j5k2t59 wrote
The latter part of your statement is exactly why I'm saying the larger problem isn't the law itself. The police have responded to the law by choosing to stop enforcing all traffic laws. That's not what the law requires them to do; they're simply refusing to do their jobs because they don't like the bill.
Your first points are why I said that reasonable people can disagree about the law itself.
But again -- nothing stops the police from pulling over a driver for running a red light, for speeding, for driving recklessly -- whether their plate is covered, their car inspection is expired, their taillight is out, etc, or not. And the police are not doing that either.
The immediate fault lies with the people driving recklessly. But the average citizen can't do anything about that; we have to rely on the police to take action. And they're not doing that, even in the situations where they are empowered to. I don't think anyone here could say with a straight face that there is a shortage of flagrant traffic violations for them to see and respond to. They just don't.
lordredsnake t1_j5k43lq wrote
I've made the same post as yours in this sub many times, so I get it. I agree the law isn't the prime cause of the spike in recklessness, but it almost certainly is related.
Even if cops did want to do their jobs, we can't expect them to get all reckless drivers off the road just by observing the 1% of the time they're egregiously breaking the law instead of being able to respond to the 100% of the time they're breaking the law with fake or obscured tags.
People want to look at it like it's only one thing or the other, but the truth is in the middle.
JBizznass t1_j5k7axe wrote
If we want police to be proactive we can’t take away their tools that allow them to be proactive!
I understand the intent of the law, but removing tools that allow police to protect law abiding residents isn’t the way to foster equitable policing.
a-german-muffin t1_j5kc04j wrote
The kind of stuff scrapped in the Philly law is along the lines of NJ's license plate frame stops, which the state Supreme Court there called a total fishing expedition that has resulted in inadmissible evidence. If these are the kinds of tools cops need to do their jobs, when most of us could sit on our steps and count a dozen moving violations a day without even trying, that would seem to say more about the cops than the law.
Indiana_Jawns t1_j5kc3bz wrote
>The inability for police to pull over unregistered cars, uninspected cars, and cars with obscured license plates removes
The law doesn't say these cars can't be pulled over, it just says that can't be the only reason for the traffic stop. It's because the cops were using these as excuses to selectively target and harass minority drivers.
CT_Real t1_j5nhzpb wrote
>I see cars with obscured license plates flat out run solid red lights for blocks on a near daily basis.
Well they would still get pulled over for running a red light...
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