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posted by n1 on Monday April 14 2014, @09:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the rules-are-made-to-be-broken dept.

Alex Mayyasi writes that a close look at the cars outside Silicon Valley's venture capital firms reveals that the cars share a mysterious detail: they nearly all have a custom license plate frame that reads, "Member. 11-99 Foundation" which is the charitable organization that supports California Highway Patrol officers and their families in times of crisis. Donors receive one license plate as part of a $2,500 "Classic" level donation, or two as part of a bronze, silver, or gold level donation of $5,000, $10,000, or $25,000. Rumor has it, according to Mayyasi, that the license plate frames come with a lucrative return on investment. As one member of a Mercedes-Benz owners community wrote online back in 2002: "I have the ultimate speeding ticket solution. I paid $1800 for a lifetime membership into the 11-99 foundation. My only goal was to get the infamous 'get out of jail' free license plate frame."

The 11-99 Foundation has sold license plate frames for most of its 32 year existence, and drivers have been aware of the potential benefits since at least the late 1990s. But attention to the issue in 2006-2008 led the foundation to stop giving out the frames. An article in the LA Times asked "Can Drivers Buy CHP Leniency?" and began by describing a young man zipping around traffic including a police cruiser and telling the Times that he believed his 11-99 frames kept him from receiving a ticket. But the decision was almost irrelevant to another thriving market: the production and sale of fake 11-99 license plate frames. But wait the CHP 11-99 Foundation also gives out membership cards to big donors. "Unless you have the I.D. in hand when (not if) I stop you," says one cop, "no love will be shown."

[Editor's Note: I would also like to draw attention to a transport story that came out today.]

The BBC reports:

A rail union has claimed a hedge fund manager was able to "buy silence" after he repaid £42,550 in unpaid fares to Southeastern - but remained anonymous and avoided court action.

On Twitter, blogger Martin Shovel wrote: "Biggest rail fare dodger in history avoids prosecution because he's rich enough to pay back what he owed #OneLaw"

 
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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Drew617 on Monday April 14 2014, @10:42PM

    by Drew617 (1876) on Monday April 14 2014, @10:42PM (#31547)

    I don't like the practice but I think "ultimate corruption of justice" is maybe extreme.

    As far as I understand it, in most places it's within an officer's discretion to write a ticket, warn you, do nothing, whatever. Certain things - addressing the cop respectfully, not whining, not driving like an idiot (speed and recklessness are different things), your car not being a safety hazard - will affect the cop's opinion of you and will factor into the decision he or she makes. This is one of things. Maybe shouldn't be, but it's not bribing a judge, either.

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  • (Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:06AM

    by sjames (2882) on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:06AM (#31598) Journal

    Anyone can be respectful and not whine. Nobody should drive like an idiot and nobody's car should be a safety hazard. But not everyone has an extra $2500 burning a hole in their pocket.

    That and 'donating' some bux seems to be a lot more reliable.

    • (Score: 1) by Drew617 on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:53AM

      by Drew617 (1876) on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:53AM (#31618)

      Can, should, yet some people don't.

      This is not a binary decision between donating $2500 and getting tickets every day. There's a lot of room in between those extremes to avoid or mitigate tickets in the first place, like speeding only at +10, etc.

      I'm not arguing that it's fair, only that it's clearly not the same thing as buying off a judge or slipping that $2500 directly to a cop. It's not directly corrupt, and how do you reasonably correct the problem anyway? Outlaw the local PBA? Outlaw stickers on cars? Require 100% enforcement of all moving violations? Prove that a group of officers systematically DIDN'T ticket people, knowing records don't exist of the drivers they didn't ticket?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:24PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:24PM (#31836)

        "Outlaw the local PBA? Outlaw stickers on cars?"

        Absolutely! What's unreasonable about outlawing something whose sole purpose is to abet corruption of public servants?

        Hey nice Friends of Meat Inspectors sticker ya got there. Hey is that an SEC Christmas Club emblem on your broker terminal?

      • (Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday April 16 2014, @04:11AM

        by sjames (2882) on Wednesday April 16 2014, @04:11AM (#32173) Journal

        That depends on how surely a nice donation gets you out of the ticket. If it's nearly a sure thing, it *IS* a bribe. Collecting it at arms length through what is effectively a bribe clearinghouse for legal reasons doesn't actually change that.

        Not all bribery transactions involve a lot of throat clearing and winking.

  • (Score: 1) by Leebert on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:10AM

    by Leebert (3511) on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:10AM (#31600)

    As far as I understand it, in most places it's within an officer's discretion to write a ticket, warn you, do nothing, whatever.

    I do not pay law enforcement to be a judge or jury. I pay him to observe legal infractions, identify and detain a suspect as necessary, document the incident, and testify.

    LEOs having selective enforcement capabilities leads to all sorts of abuse. It also doesn't bring the home the consequences of bad laws to the average citizen.

    • (Score: 1) by Drew617 on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:25AM

      by Drew617 (1876) on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:25AM (#31607)

      I understand your argument, but selective enforcement is reality with or without expensive license plate frames in the equation. It's another discussion entirely. If police were unable to exercise discretion, ticketing at every observed infraction - think every time I've rolled through an EZ pass gate at 18 mph - most of our licenses would be revoked.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Leebert on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:38AM

        by Leebert (3511) on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:38AM (#31610)

        If police were unable to exercise discretion, ticketing at every observed infraction - think every time I've rolled through an EZ pass gate at 18 mph - most of our licenses would be revoked.

        No doubt; I recognize the practical impossibility of what I purportedly support (and I admit that it's somewhat hyperbolic.)

        However, if everyone got a ticket, guaranteed, for rolling through an EZPass gate at 18 MPH, one of two things will happen:

        - The speed limit will be changed to something more sane, or
        - People will go the speed limit.

        Either of those is a much more highly desirable outcome than "let the cop decide if he likes this white guy or wants to search the car of this black guy."

        The funny thing is, I'm rabidly anti photo enforcement. Only because of the fact that they can't issue a ticket, on the spot, to a driver. The assumption that I'm guilty because it's my car is just the antithesis of due process. HOWEVER, if we could fix that issue, I'd be all behind them. They issue tickets without any bias. Cops get 'em, politicians get 'em. THAT is the way we should be enforcing laws.

        Yeah, I know, if wishes were horses I'd have all the glue I could ever need.

        • (Score: 1) by Drew617 on Tuesday April 15 2014, @02:08AM

          by Drew617 (1876) on Tuesday April 15 2014, @02:08AM (#31625)

          All good points, and I agree absolutely re: photo enforcement. I don't understand how that hasn't generated more outrage.

          Part of the reason that I appreciate the policeman's discretion is that it allows for some of my own. Where I drive, the limits often seem too low, though I'm not a highway engineer. Thing is, even if they were all raised, the speed limits and traffic rules would still be arbitrary to a degree. In dense areas especially - thinking of Boston because it's where I drive these days - safe speed (as determined by me) varies greatly depending on wildly fluctuating traffic conditions, weather, time of day, visibility, which stretch of a road I'm on when the DOT applied a single standard to the whole thing.

          As it is, the system lets make my own determinations (within a sane variance, say +25% at most) and be left alone for it. The system assumes we have some intelligence.

          • (Score: 1) by DrMag on Tuesday April 15 2014, @12:30PM

            by DrMag (1860) on Tuesday April 15 2014, @12:30PM (#31758)

            Part of me wants to agree about policeman's discretion, but the side effects of such a thing existing cause far more problems than you might think. In Montana, for quite a while, we had a literal speed limit of "Reasonable and Prudent". It was wonderful. It got struck down. Why? Out-of-staters would contest their violations in court, despite there being nothing reasonable nor prudent about driving 95 mph at night during a snow storm. A law has no value if it can't be (or isn't) enforced clearly and specifically. So set a hard limit--you'll get the ticket if you're 25% over--but at that point, why not just set the speed limit to a more reasonable value, and then enforce it?

            Laws need to apply to everyone equally. I can't tell you how many times in the DC area I'm tailgated by a cop who then swings past me at a high speed; when I glance over to be sure there's enough clearance, I often see that they're chatting on their cell phone. When I look back at my dash, I'm usually going 5-10 mph over the speed limit already. How can anyone take a law seriously when 1) it's not enforced, and 2) the "enforcers" themselves have no regard for it?

    • (Score: 1) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:31AM

      by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:31AM (#31608)

      "As far as I understand it, in most places it's within an officer's discretion to write a ticket, warn you, do nothing, whatever."

      "I do not pay law enforcement to be a judge or jury. I pay him to observe legal infractions, identify and detain a suspect as necessary, document the incident, and testify.

      LEOs having selective enforcement capabilities leads to all sorts of abuse. It also doesn't bring the home the consequences of bad laws to the average citizen."

      Well, yes and no. The law might be considered an absolute but justice should rarely be so. A good officer, and there are some, should be capable of making a determination as to whether escalation of the justice system's involvement in an incident is warranted. I'm not going to make a list of cases where it is correct to do so and where it is not, but I will point out that a lack of discrimination (the proper kind) or an inability to apply it because of legal restraints leads to things like three strikes laws or zero tolerance policies, and you don't have to be a long time reader of this site or its predecessor to know how wrong that can be.

      • (Score: 1) by Leebert on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:50AM

        by Leebert (3511) on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:50AM (#31616)

        A good officer, and there are some, should be capable of making a determination as to whether escalation of the justice system's involvement in an incident is warranted.

        Fair enough; and as I noted elsewhere I was being somewhat hyperbolic in my reply. The big thing is that I'm talking largely in the context of traffic enforcement.

  • (Score: 1) by broggyr on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:33PM

    by broggyr (3589) <broggyrNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:33PM (#31783)

    A bit hyperbolic, no?

    As long as it's not hypergolic.

    --
    Taking things out of context since 1972.