Do you understand the importance of knowing your rights?
Are you familiar with the story of Harold Brown?
In case you’re not familiar, Harold Brown, a security guard, was headed home from work at 1:30 a.m. when he was stopped by a police officer because the light above his license plate was out.
“You pulled me over for that? Come on, man,” said Mr. Brown.
Expressing his annoyance was all it took.
The officer also yelled at Mr. Brown and ordered him out of the car and threw him to the pavement.
After a trip to jail that night in 2018, hands cuffed and blood running down his face, Mr. Brown eventually arrived at the crux of the matter: Valley Brook Police wanted $800 in fines and fees.
It was a fraction of the roughly $1 million that the town of about 870 people collects each year from traffic cases!
However, Mr. Brown is just ONE of thousands of stories like this…
The Power of Knowing Your Rights
A hidden scaffolding of financial incentives underpins our policing and also our justice system in the United States, encouraging some communities to essentially repurpose armed officers as revenue agents searching for infractions largely unrelated to public safety.
The New York Times has identified more than 400 others from the past five years in which officers killed unarmed civilians who had been under pursuit for non-violent crimes.
Knowing Your Rights Can Help Change the System…
If you’re wondering what continues to fund all this – it’s the federal government, which issues over $600 million a year in highway safety grants to subsidize ticket writing.
Although federal officials say they do not impose quotas, at least 20 states have evaluated police performance on the number of traffic stops per hour, which critics say contributes to over policing and erosion of public trust, particularly among members of certain racial groups.
Many municipalities across the country rely heavily on ticket revenue and court fees to pay for government services, and some maintain outsize police departments to help generate that money, according to a review of hundreds of municipal audit reports, town budgets, court files and state highway records.
This is, for the most part, not a big-city phenomenon. While Chicago stands out as a large city with a history of collecting millions from motorists, the towns that depend most on such revenue have fewer than 30,000 people.
Over 730 municipalities rely on fines and fees for at least 10 percent of their revenue, enough to pay for an entire police force in some small communities, census data shows.
Oliver, Ga., with about 380 residents, gets more than half its budget from fines, but an investigation last year found that the local police had improperly written more than $40,000 in tickets outside their jurisdiction.
Knowing Your Rights Can Help You Dismiss a Ticket
Whether you live in a small town or large city…
Don’t let the government try and intimidate you into paying that fine or ticket for a victimless crime. Discover the methods that can easily set you free with Beat the Ticket Secrets.
Click to Learn More About Beat the Ticket Secrets
These legal ticket dismissal strategies have been used successfully by thousands of students – we know they’ll continue to work for you as well.
Your friends in finance,
Private Wealth Academy
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