Mike, I agree, but it's more than the penalties being too light. It's an attitude that one has "the right" to do pretty much whatever the hell one wants to do. "The Government" is out of line to try to interfere with those rights: the cops don't stop you for safety violations now, they stop you to make their quota, or because they're doing a little racial profiling, or they have a personal grudge against you and are using their badges to carry out their personal vendettas, or they're all crooked and are lying about you because they can, or to generate revenue. You don't deserve to be punished for running that red light, because nobody got hurt.
We have legions of defense prostitutes who get rich off the system -- look at what happens in a DWI arrest. Your license gets confiscated and you are subsequently placed under ALR suspension. You have fifteen days to appeal the suspension (prior to it going into effect), but you do not need specific grounds to appeal it. Chances are your prostitute will tell you something like "They didn't have probable cause to stop you, so for $ $$$ I will handle your appeal and you won't lose your license." Then your prostitute will subpoena everybody involved in the case; the arresting officer(s), the Intoxilyzer operator, and the technical supervisor for that Intoxilyzer area. The prostitute will then do one or both of the following: It will obtain last-minute resets, but not let the people it subpoenaed know, so they all show up (and get paid, often overtime, by the taxpayers) for doing nothing. After several such resets, many officers just refuse to honor the notice to appear any more. The other thing they love to do -- go sit around a facility where ALR hearings are conducted if you don't believe it -- is have another prostitute (or legal assistant, clerk, etc.) watching. If you pay attention, you'll see this designee on his/her cell phone, with the conversation going something like, "Okay, there's two cops here from XXX PD, and yours is the only case on the docket with that PD." A few minutes later the judge gets a call -- the prostitute has been unavoidably detained in court, so the hearing is reset. Then we've had several prostitutes who figured out that most DWI arrests are made by night shift officers. They send letters to the ALR courts advising that they will accept ONLY afternoon hearings; no more morning hearings. The night shift cops, instead of going straight to the hearing when they get off work, go home and get a short nap. Then they have to get up, shower, put on a clean uniform, and go to the hearing. Often only to find out it was reset. Now, go back home and try to go back to sleep. Naturally, a lot of them get fed up and ignore the notice to appear. Of course, if the defendant and his/her prostitute were told to appear in court at 2am on a work night (basically what the cop is being told to do), you'd never hear the end of the howling about what an egregious violation of the defendant's rights that would be. And when all of the resets are used up and the ALR court says, "Now or never" to the prostitute, and everyone is there, you have what is known as the "showup showdown." More often than not, after all of those resets and stall tactics, and all of that overtime pay (that you, the taxpayer, cover), the prostitute says, "No questions." If the prostitute is too embarrassed to let the court see what a sham he/she is, he/she may pull the old, "Officer, the Standardized Field Sobriety Test course of instruction calls for a four-second pass when conducting a check for Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus. Yet I timed your passes on the videotaped arrest, and one of your passes was only three and three quarters of a second. How can you stand here and testify that you are certified by the State of Texas to administer these tests when you did them incorrectly on the videotaped traffic stop. How many innocent people have you sent to jail because you cheated on the SFSTs?" (For those of you who don't know, that alleged quarter second means less than nothing). One I really enjoyed recently had a prostitute who had used up all of his resets, and everybody showd up on the final day of reckoning. He attacked the paperwork because the officer's signature on several forms did not have the words "peace officer" accompanying it. This prostitute claimed that because the law requires that the person signing the document be a peace officer, and the signatures did not state "peace officer" in the signature block, that the paperwork, and therefore the arrest, was invalid. Never mind that the offense report identifies the arresting officer as a peace officer. Never mind that he's standing right there, with his uniform on and his state-issued peace officer's license in his pocket, and his agency-issued ID in his pocket, we have to waste billions (and yes, that's accurate) of dollars -- taxpayer dollars -- a year on such nonsense. Our legal system -- driven and operated by prostitutes -- demands that the prostitutes receive exalted status, and that they be permitted to strip the dignity and the respect and the sanctity of the truth from our justice system. These games the prostitutes play are why we can't rid our system of the problem cops, and the problem prosecutors, and the problem judges; they claim foul every time it will benefit their client.
In this county, if the defendant prevails at the ALR hearing, the DA will not prosecute the DWI -- "The ALR court said there was no PC for the stop, or no PC for the arrest, or the officer committed a procedural error" -- and the whole thing gets dumped. But all too often the public perceives that as a victory for justice -- because they listen to the hype from the prostitutes. How many of you have heard that you can get a DWI after one drink? I hear it just about daily. Wanna know who spreads that BS? The prostitutes -- they want your money to protect you from being accountable for your own actions. And all of the shenanigans that go on over a DWI arrest also go on over speeding tickets, red light tickets, stop sign tickets, right-of-way tickets, and just about any other enforcement action taken by the government. This is the new America. You disregard all of the rules and regulations, because if you don't like them, they are a violation of you rights. Your prostitute will make it the other guy's fault if you actually hurt someone, because, after all, you didn't really mean to hurt anyone. Who'da thought running a red light at three and a half times the speed limit would kill somebody? They should look before they cross. That guy on the motorcycle my client hit when he pulled out of his driveway in front of the motorcycle? His inspection sticker expired seven months ago. His brakes COULD have been defective - you can't prove they weren't - I have a witness the biker told his brakes were bad at a beer joint three weeks before the wreck - so my client's not at fault.
The new America is based on people NOT being held accountable for their actions, or their stupidity, or their carelessness. We have legions of prostitutes dedicated to advancing that concept (and getting rich off the taxpayers in the process). THAT'S WHY THE MOTORING PUBLIC DOESN'T PAY ATTENTION AS THEY SHOULD WHEN THEY ARE DRIVING. IT'S ABOUT BEATING THE SYSTEM, NOT ABOUT WORKING WITHIN IT. It's only going to get worse until the voting public commits to doing it right rather than taking the easy way out. It's about contributing to the greater good, not demanding the greater goodies. It's about admitting that it's f^@*ing insane to be texting while driving, rather that denying that you were doing it, then insisting it's your right when you get caught in the lie. I believe that it was cybrchick who had in her sig line something to the effect that what really matters is not what you do when folks are watching, but what you do when you think no one's watching. That's the true measure of integrity. We're all human; none of us is perfect. But we still need to try..........................
