[quote=“BoNeCrAcKeR”]
The father who was driving the vehicle was wrong. He broke traffic laws en route to the hospital and then refused to stop for the traffic cops until the police car blocked his route. Plain and simply…he was wrong.[/quote]
So plain and simple that the RCMP pulled the ticket? Why did they write it in the first place? Did the law change between the time the ticket was written and the time it was pulled? If not, what changed?
Why wasn’t he charged with the offense of failing to stop? Probably because it wouldn’t net the city any revenue, and cost the officer a day or two in court?
If anybody else gets caught in this toll booth, remember that the Motor Vehicle Act says that you only need to signal when there is traffic. You don’t need to signal a turn if there is no traffic. I bet the traffic cop tax collector doesn’t tell you that, though.
If there’s a cop there to stop you, it’s pretty obvious there was traffic around–even a parked cop car counts as traffic.
They probably pulled the ticket because it would be bad for everyone involved. It would look bad for the RCMP, it would be a hassle for the driver, it would take time to deal with–all for what really chalks up to a big, unfortunate misunderstanding.
On the traffic cops: Right now they pay for their own salary through tickets, right? What would the opinion here be if the money went to something else? Would you all be happy to pay your tickets when you break traffic laws?
They don’t seem to have a problem with looking bad these days.
It’s not a big, unfortunate misunderstanding. It’s a big misuse of expensive police officers. The RCMP is understaffed, and has been understaffed for about 7 or 8 years now. There isn’t enough manpower to do real police work, yet somehow they have enough manpower to assign a bunch of the valuable and expensive cops to tax collection.
Watching them use undercover cops to give traffic fines is just sickening.
There wouldn’t be a direct connection between funding positions and the amount of tickets written. Then perhaps Prince Rupert RCMP wouldn’t be writing a lot more tickets than Terrace, for example. Terrace, by the way, uses its traffic fine money for crime prevention and community programs.
Funding police with fines may be ok in the Third World, where corruption is standard. But it really is a misuse of RCMP, in my opinion. Let them do the real police work they were trained to do, and that we don’t have enough officers to do.
They should be able to write tickets with discretion – instead of thinking about revenue.
The RCMP is service driven and many of its priorities are set out by their clients, in this case the city of Prince Rupert. The city decided that it wanted a traffic enforcement unit and one was created. The city pays for the traffic members (and costs are offset by revenue). Mig, I think you pointed out in another thread that Terrace spends the revenue on other projects and Prince Rupert funnels the money back into traffic enforcement. If you as a resident of Prince Rupert do not feel there is a need for a two or three member traffic unit in a small city then lobby the city to spend their money elsewhere (your taxes and the revenue generated by the traffic unit).
Parking tickets aren’t issued by the Prince Rupert RCMP because the city does not hire them to enforce parking bylaws. Their client doesn’t ask them to. They hire bylaw officers to take care of the job. Could non-Criminal Code traffic offences be investigated by another agency? Sheriffs do it in Alberta. Is that system more efficient, more cost effective and better suited to meet their clients needs? I don’t know enough about it.
For me personally, I’d like the police to continue to do traffic enforcement. Just like when I go for surgery, even minor operations, I’d like a doctor to do it. Sure a nurse could get the job done but in the rare cases where things didn’t go according to plan I’d want the doctor there to save me. Same as when a stop for not signaling turns into a drug seizure, or a car turns out to be stolen or the driver is wanted, etc. I wouldn’t want the other agency to have to back off and call the police because they’re ill equipped or not legislated to be able to deal with whatever they find.
Regardless of the public opinion of the Prince Rupert traffic unit and how they do their jobs, I bet that Prince Rupert drivers are safer because of their efforts, however minor some offences they charge for are in people’s minds.
So mrt I’d like to hear your opinions on the RCMP members involved in the vancouver airport tasering incident getting off with no criminal charges. Do you think its write or wrong?
What do you think of the attempted coverups/spin afterwards? or are you banned from speaking your opinion on that matter
I appreciate that–it seems like a silly little cycle they’ve got going. However–back to my question. If the money was reallocated, let’s say to crime prevention and community programs, but the rate at which tickets are written stayed at its current level, would you pay fines without complaining? Essentially–do you take issue with our fines being used to pay the people handing out the tickets, or with the high volume of tickets?
Well, they’re both. The high volume of tickets is directly related to the fact that the position handing out the tickets is funded by the tickets!
Like I said, there’s no reason that Rupert RCMP should be writing more tickets than Terrace RCMP. Especially since Terrace has more people, more traffic, more intersections, more highway, etc.
It is a silly little cycle, and in order to keep the volume up, they need to write the silly little tickets.
Hence the undercover operations to bust people who only stop 2 seconds at a stop sign, instead of 5 seconds. Think about that. This is a detachment that hasn’t had full strength in years, that is constantly complaining about being underfunded and understaffed. Yet they can have an undercover operation to bust people for imaginary traffic offenses?
And then they wonder why people have a negative view of the RCMP?
Stop the imaginary traffic offenses, and put these highly trained and well paid police guys to work doing real stuff, not making up for the city’s lack of funding.
Have you seen how overworked the guys on the weekend shifts are? They can’t keep up with the calls. There’s no justification for the focus on the imaginary traffic offenses.
If all of the ticket revenue is going back into the traffic section, then am I right in assuming that it’s the ticket revenue that’s paying their wages? If true, that’s a pretty crappy position to be in. Basically it’s “write tickets or lose your job”. You can see where the eagerness to ticket comes from. It comes from survival.
Mig, you often say that these guys should be out doing real police stuff. IF the ticket revenue is paying their wages, then it’s not the case where they can be re-assigned to general duty. No ticket revenue, no officer.
So it’s a shell game, to try and make the underfunding less severe. The basic problem is that the detachment isn’t being funded to full strength.
I think one of the traffic positions is funded by the ticket revenue, not all of them.
And when I say that these guys should be out there doing real police work, I mean that it doesn’t require an expensive and well-trained RCMP officer to give tickets for stopping at a stop sign for 2 seconds.
I don’t think I would have any problems at all with the setup, if they weren’t giving out these douchebag tickets. Speeding tickets, red-light tickets, running stop signs, whatever – those are all legit, and should be given, no problem.
Setting up an undercover operation to give out tickets for people who only stopped at a stop sign for 2 seconds, that’s just the ultimate in douchiness. I hope that’s a word. If not, then it should be.
Oh, and for the record, I’ve never received one of these fake offense tickets.
It’s been a while since they created the traffic section but if I remember correctly, two positions are funded by the province IF the city funds one additional position. I believe it’s an all or nothing kind of thing.
I understand how the tickets can piss people off. From a policing point of view there is another benefit other than just money for the city. Stopping someone for a ticket gives the police an excuse to run the person through CPIC. You have no idea how many people in this country are running around with outstanding warrants for their arrest and get caught in a traffic stop.
Still… setting an arbitrary time for stopping at a stop sign, one that isn’t written into the law, is not something I agree with. I totally understand the aggravation.
If the purpose of the bullshit traffic tickets were to run people through the system, then I think the supreme court would love to hear about it. Are you supposed to run people through CPIC just because they stopped for 2 seconds instead of 5?
No, the purpose of the tickets is revenue.
Think about the rationale and thinking that leads to an undercover operation to stop all those people who only stopped for a second or two at a stop sign. Did they think that this was such an important safety concern, that people weren’t stopping for 5 seconds, that they needed to mount an elaborate operation to combat it? Really?
Or did they just think they could net a lot of cash?
I have to agree with MiG. When they did the traffic camera thing, in spite of all the fooferall about putting them in school zones and traffic safety claims, etc. the only ones I ever saw were placed on the long lone stretch of highway between Vanderhoof and PG where they could ticket as many cars as possible as fast as possible.
You know, the ten mile straight stretch where everyone passed because there were only 2 short passing lanes in the entire 100 km stretch.
Everyone knew to look out for the blue van parked on the side of the road and pass after it!
A complete loss of credibility for any “safety” claim, just like the ticket I got on that section for going 96 kmh in a 90 zone, in a phone truck (the only other car was the ghost car headed toward me) on my way to chair the PG District Safety Council years ago.
We should get a pool together and offer $10,000 reward for a notarized pdf of a ticket for going too slow or impeding traffic, cuz I just don’t believe there’s ever been one issued… urban myth!
Traffic fines are a penalty for failing to abide by traffic laws that have been legislated by our elected officials. Traffic fines are only a source of revenue because many of us fail to abide by these laws. It’s not as if the traffic cops are looting your wallet or scamming money. They can only take what we collectively give them.
It’s when they set up an undercover operation to write tickets that aren’t for breaking a law (ie: 2 seconds stop instead of 5 seconds stop) that it doesn’t fit in with your view, Bonecracker. That’s just a basic shakedown. They’re banking on the fact that most people won’t know the law, or they won’t contest the ticket.
There’s nothing in the motor vehicle act about how long you should stop at a stop sign, by the way. So it’s not a part of the legislation.
Nobody has an issue with writing of legitimate tickets. It’s the toll booth and shakedowns that are the problem.
I talked to one of the traffic cops about the whole “ticket quota” and was told that they don’t see any of the funds from the tickets. It goes straight to the government. I’m sure it funds the RCMP along with other things, but it’s not like the more they write, the more they get paid. They get a yearly salary, not on commission.
Still, once he realized what the situation was, he should have just let him go on his way.
Tatoo guy (dad) was on the very low end of resistant. There for the officer could use empty hand hard technique. Intermediate devices could be used but for good sakes a frickin taser???..That would be bigger and better than the airport incident.
very few CPIC returns for warrants would be enforcable…radius are small.
[quote=“MiG”]
If the purpose of the bullshit traffic tickets were to run people through the system, then I think the supreme court would love to hear about it.[/quote]
Now I didn’t say it was the purpose. No one would ever claim that, for obvious reasons. Don’t kid yourself though. If you get pulled over, that officer is running your name through CPIC while he’s writing up the ticket.
And yes, Mcsash, a good number of warrants are province wide.
