this post was submitted on 08 May 2024
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Toronto
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"Don't take the law into your own hands!" ๐ฎโโ๏ธ
"Can we call you for help?" ๐ค
"No." ๐ โโ๏ธ
Citizen proceeds to do it themselves.
Look, if the excuse is a lack is resources, we need to up fines and tickets for people caught breaking the law.
The bulk of police funding should be coming from fines, not taxpayers. Those fines would pay for more police, which would result in more fines. It's a simple system.
For example, the maximum fine for a conviction of theft over $5000 is up to $5000 with or without a jail sentence. Why not make it $15,000 or $50,000? Fighting crime shouldn't be at a loss to society, it should generate enough revenue to at least cover the costs, unless the city's crime rate drops so low that law enforcement isn't needed.
Anyway, good on these folks. We need more people taking the law into their own hands, since it seems to be the only option available!
Raising fines doesn't doesn't deter criminals from doing crime. They don't have the money to pay the fines, it's not like rich people are going out and stealing cars - people stealing things are typically destitute.
When they generate income from fines what happens is that the police becomes a business instead of a public service. The reality of funding through fines is simply that police begin to find more pointless and small reasons to harass and ticket people, in order to boost their revenue. It becomes a game of maintaining the bottom line, and it's not about doing the right thing or enforcing the rules. Instead of enforcing the rules they will throw the book at you just to generate a buck, and pull you over four blocks down from where you supposedly did a rolling stop.
You can't give public services financial motives. They should always be permitted to operate at a loss because dollar value is not the same as social and societal value. When you create financial motives for a public service it ceases to provide public value at all costs (which is the literal point of social services) and becomes another business cutting corners to make line go up.
The lack of resources excuses is growing thin. Imagine if we spent what we spend in policing for any other service and it was still this ineffective. We'd have shut it down and defunded it by now