LA man’s carbon-neutral reign of terror may have come to end

[VeronicaConnor]

@Shuck

That seems crazy to me. I’d think it would be something the cops would be eager to enforce, as a low-hanging fruit to get their stats up, if nothing else.

It’s the kind of thing that gets charge-stacked if they pull you over for something else, or the kind of thing you get a fix-it-ticket for when parked in fancy neighbourhoods. Basically a tax on poor people, which is most of how LA’s vehicle code enforcement is.

I’m certain people of colour get pulled over for it all the time.

As for cop stats, they really don’t need it. A given CHP officer pulls over dozens of speeders a day if they want to, because everyone is speeding all the time. You have to just to go with traffic. If they need numbers, they can pull people over at random all day. I’ve seen it when they’re doing it in front of where I lived. They pull someone over, write the ticket, go back to their spot, pull someone else over, and repeat all day long. Even with every officer doing that, any given person has essentially zero chance of getting caught.

There are 13 million people and 7000 CHP officers. Maybe 3000 on duty at any one time. There’s no hope of actual enforcement at scale with numbers like that. It’s all a weird kind of futile theatre mixed with racism at the end of the day.

[Shuck]

@VeronicaConnor

Basically a tax on poor people, which is most of how LA’s vehicle code enforcement is.

Yeah, and I suppose someone driving an expensive car (e.g. a Tesla) is far less likely to get cited for it - there are less likely to be other car issues they can tack on to the ticket, and the driver is more likely to have resources (and a lawyer) they can use to make things more complicated for the cops. So the real low-hanging fruit for cops is just… anyone in a poor neighborhood.