
Originally Posted by
stander-j

Originally Posted by
Barbi
I was not implying it was a conspiracy for each entity of the court system that capitalizes off of the many ways to impose fines, counseling service fees, probation fees, etc. How it ends up this way is irrelevant to this conversation since it can't be proven or as Kojax stated that not everything happens on the group level is the result of a conscious choice of the participants that represent all of the parties involved that are contracted by the courts to provide these services with fees.
I have a friend who was drinking at her boyfriend's house and they got into an argument and she went into the driveway and got into her car to avoid any further conflict. The boyfriend called police because she wouldn't leave his home. She was drunk and did not want to drive but her mistake was she put the key into the ignition so she could run the air conditioner since it was in the hottest part of the summer months. She was arrested for DWI but without the driving part and she has paid the system almost $20, 000 so far in fines, a breatherlizer device, counseling fees, etc. and all this because of some stupid technically that if you put your key into the ignition, you are considered a DWI.
It is these loopholes that bring enormous amount of profit to the legal system that is not justified in my opinion.
If she was sitting in the back of the vehicle, or in the passenger seat, it probably would've been dismissed.. As they say, hindsight is 20/20.
To reach as far as claiming they got her because of a 'loophole'?? That's some serious bull. Do you
really think that is a loophole? If it was that easy for it to be dismissed EVERY person getting caught with the keys in the ignition while under the influence would use excuses like that: It's for the a/c, I wanted to listen to the radio, etc.
Of course, if she wasn't in the driver's seat, I would agree. But the problem is the legal system can't say without a doubt your friend was not intending to drive, I'd hardly call that a loop-hole.
The police could have made a judgement call. There is no chance in hell that their actions made the streets even 0.00000001% safer, which is what we tax payers pay them to do for us, not just to make our lives miserable every chance they get. They need to remember the "serve" part of "protect and serve".
It's a wonderfully stupid law in its own right. They not only expect drunk people to call a cab, but now they can't even wait in comfort for the cab to arrive.

Originally Posted by
Harold14370
Let's say that Arizona really does have a law that says you are guilty of drunk driving if you are sitting in the car with the air conditioner running. How do you think this law came about? My guess is that the activist groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving lobbied for crackdowns on drunk driving. The cops were probably complaining about someone who got off on some technicality when the police didn't actually see the driver operating the vehicle. Then a politician somewhere proposed a change to the drunk driving laws. If some other legislator voted against it, they would be accused of being soft on drunk driving. Their opponent, or MADD perhaps, would run a campaign ad saying "look here, this guy voted against the police approved drunk driving law." Presto, the law is passed. No profit motive required.
A very probable explanation. A public that only hears soundbites, because there's just too much information to absorb, so we make idiotic laws, which then undermine our central laws by making it apparent you can end up in trouble without even meaning to get there.
9/10 of what makes a law effective is the perception that
1) - You will be punished if you break the law.
2) - You will not be punished if you make a reasonable attempt to obey the law.
#2 is about a bazillion times more important than #1, because it creates the tipping point between certainty and uncertainty. It's possible to bring #2 very near to a certainty, but totally impossible to bring #1 anywhere close to that.
If a probability exists to be punished by accident (even a mistake of your own) because the police will cart you off on technicalities (valid though they may be), then the punishment's ability to influence behavior is gravely undermined. That's why we have an "innocent until proven guilty" system. It's so people who end up in prison are always people who deliberately chose to roll the dice on it. It's likely the police actually made the streets more dangerous (if only slightly) instead of less dangerous by doing that bull$hit due to its effect on undermining the strength of the deterrent.