EDITORIAL FOR MAY 27-29,    2009

I’ve CAVE MANager Paul Lotsof.   If you’ve done any driving lately in big cities like Phoenix or Tucson, you probably have noticed that lots of cars have their license numbers painted over with a grey film.   People who make and sell this special paint claim that if you use it and you drive through a photo radar trap, the authorities won’t be able to read your license number on the photo  and you’ll escape having to pay a stiff fine.    I don’t know if this paint works or not but I certainly can relate to people who are buying it.   I can also understand why radar detectors are a hot selling item these days.

What we have done is to spawn a small industry that makes products to protect us from laws and from law enforcement officers who were hired to protect us.  

Our elected public officials try to convince us that they are looking out for our safety when they buy radar guns and other devices that result in strict enforcement of traffic laws.   Still,  a lot of people are skeptical about that claim, myself included.    Many Americans believe that the main reason for radar traps is to rake in the cash and that public safety is a relatively minor consideration.   How dangerously could a person be driving if the officer needs a sophisticated electronic device to determine if the law has been broken?   Personally I think that what’s broken is the entire system of traffic laws and their enforcement. It is a mockery of American justice. 

 If you decide to fight the ticket, you are entitled to your day in court.   You get to state your case before a judge who in theory, is impartial.   But is the judge impartial?   How can the judge be impartial when in many cases his employer makes money if he finds you guilty and his employer loses money if he finds you not guilty?   How can the judge be impartial when he probably knows the police officer personally?   If there were a jury trial and it came out that one of the prospective jurors was a friend of the arresting officer, that juror would be quickly disqualified but if the officer and judge are good buddies, that’s no problem.

I remember attending a Benson City Council meeting several years ago when the council was thinking of reappointing the magistrate.   The Vice Mayor drew the council’s attention to the tens of thousands of dollars that the magistrate had brought into the city’s bank account.  The council unanimously reappointed the magistrate not because he was a fair judge but because of all the money he had generated.

While we are on the subject of justice, we have all been taught that a man is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.   But in many if not most traffic cases, our lawmakers have found a way to deprive us of the basic concept of innocent until proven guilty.  We now have what’s known as a civil traffic violation.   The authorities change the word from “guilty” to “responsible” and they waive the right to put you in jail.  By doing that, they no longer have to prove a thing.  In a civil matter the standard is preponderance of evidence.   That makes it so much simpler to rake in the dough.

One interesting question is how all this profit centered enforcement of laws affects our perception of the law.   How can we respect laws and law officers when so many of us believe that law enforcement is more about money than it is about public safety?   What message are we sending to our children when they see us painting our license plates to escape being scalped by cops and judges who engage in highway robbery in the name of public safety?   Why should we respect the law when the entire system is so hypocritical?

I’m CAVE MANager Paul Lotsof and you opinions you’ve just heard are mine and not necessarily anyone else’s. If you’d like a copy of this editorial or you’d like to express your opinion, visit the CAVE Web site at www.cavefm.com.   That’s cavefm. com