Have you ever wondered about the validity of the laws that empower police to pull you over and accuse you of crimes? If you have, you are not alone. Police officers KNOW that very few people ever challenge their tickets, maybe one out of 50; and even those few who do challenge the police are generally so nervous and unprepared that they have a difficult time winning anyway. So traffic cops will occasionally cite motorists for violations knowing in advance that, if challenged in court, the ticket probably wouldn't stand up if the motorist bothers to contest it. In these cases the officer might be particularly belligerent, so that by using fear, the motorist would be deterred from having to encounter the policeman in court. (At times, an exceptionally abusive experience at the hands of a policeman is a sign that he really does not have the evidence he needs to win, and he hopes to avoid all of that by just scaring the wits out of the offender.) In the end, however, it is all very counterproductive, because millions of motorists who otherwise are law-abiding, good citizens, are made to feel as if they are common criminals, and thus another potential dissenter is born.

In the most ancient traditions of all nations, all of a tribe's lands were held in common, and generally, the very of idea of ownership was alien. However, every tribe had what it considered its sacred "homeland," and all the members of the tribe theoretically had equal rights of access to that land, even though actual access was based on the allocation of plots of land by the council of elders, and the paramount chief, or king. But this was not the kind of autocratic arrangement most Americans are familiar with from their school days, where the teachers use every historic event as an opportunity to influence their students with political loyalty for the republic. Instead, the tribal nation was literally an extended family, and conflicts were usually settled through compromises and cooperation by elders and chiefs who only had authority because they were the actual parents of the tribe. Traffic tickets, however, violate the legal principles of free passage of free people in their own country. The basic assumption inherent in the Vehicle Codes is not that individuals have a right to free passage, but that their passage is conditional upon surrendering their basic civil rights that come down through custom and case law. This is the legal underpinning of the notion that "driving is a privilege, not a right." Driving is, in fact, a right, whether or not the courts of the republic accept it, and the only state interest in the operation of motor vehicles by individuals is public safety. Needless to say, the Vehicle Codes of most states do not acknowledge the common law rights of Americans, causing a collision course between the average person -- and his notion of what his rights are -- and the police power of the Republic.

Most traffic tickets come under the category of "infractions," which is covered in the California Penal Code § 16 as "crimes and public offenses." The fact that most infractions are listed under the Vehicle Code, but procedural and technical aspects of general criminal law exist only in the Penal Code, has the end effect of criminalizing traffic errors, so that the state can use its most powerful weapons against the individual who violates the Vehicle Code. In fact, a substantial majority of all the people incarcerated on the county level are there for nothing more than violating that state's Vehicle Code. When reduced to its most basic elements, of course, the traffic ticket racket amounts to little more than a system of legalized extortion, and when people are actually taken into custody and held, the reality is that these people have been "kidnapped" by the authorities of the police state, and are being held for "ransom" (bail). The proof, in the end, is that before the people pay the ticket, they are criminals, and by merely writing a check they are able to buy their freedom. (In case you didn't notice, real, dangerous criminals are generally held in jail no matter how much money they have, especially if they pose a flight risk.)

When a law enforcement officer observes a violation of law, he is obliged by his office to place the suspect "under arrest." (On the other hand, if the officer believes on good cause that a crime may have occurred, he is obliged to "investigate," and therefore "detain" witnesses, and the principals.) This burden is the mandate law enforcement are required to bear, and when an individual has been the victim of a crime, their arrival on the scene can be the best thing that ever happened in the individual's life. On the other hand, there are tens of thousands of policemen in the United States, and they are not all the shining examples of civic duty that they are supposed to be the day they were inducted into public service. Today the police do everything from managing traffic to baby-sitting the neighborhood's delinquent teenagers. This usage of uniformed police for every imaginable public duty relates to the reality that underlying the facade of a civilian system of government propped up in the form of the Republic, is the infrastructure of a police state that claims absolute control over the behavior of the American people.

When a police officer pulls over a motorist with his flashing lights, the motorist has technically been placed "under arrest." While under arrest, the officer fills out the ticket, and then, rather than actually taking the motorist into custody, he simply has his victim sign the ticket saying that he will show up in court. This is, in effect, an OR release; i.e., the motorist is released on his "Own Recognizance." If the motorist declines to sign the ticket, however, then the officer is required to take the motorist to jail. (California Vehicle Code § 40302 [b]). When the officer files his ticket with the court, it is the equivalent of his "complaint," which is what an ordinary lawsuit is initiated by, only in this case the plaintiff is the state, in the person of its agent, the policeman. The policeman, however, is also bound by the same legal principles as the victim, and he can only testify regarding what he actually saw; in cases, such as speeding detected by an aircraft, only the policeman in the airplane can testify, and both policemen must show up in court to make the ticket hold up.

Where the principles of law really take a bath is in the collection of "fines." This is where all the stops come out, because it is upon the fines collected from fundamentally innocent and unwitting citizens that the apparatus of the police state has been financed. Suggested base fines for most traffic violations are listed in the Uniform Traffic Bail Schedule, but in actuality, the judges of each county get together and decide behind closed doors what prices they shall charge county-wide in the form of a Bail Schedule. Then, to add insult to injury, the politicos adopted measures that actually TAX the fines! Although, to throw the more simple-minded off-track, they call this tax a "penalty assessment." These penalty assessments are prima facie evidence that the traffic enforcement system is NOTHING more than a SOURCE OF MONEY for the state government. (Penalty assessments are assessed in California; it is likely that they exist, possibly under another name, in other states too).

In the world of traffic tickets, fines are not actually "fines" at all, in the generally accepted legal sense. Before the politicians discovered the rich source of cash available to them through traffic enforcement by the issuance of traffic tickets, a fine could only be paid after a court appearance in which a bona fide judge sentenced a person who had pleaded, or who was found, guilty of breaking the law based on the testimony of witnesses, and the evidence. This is called "due process." However, to make it easier to separate motorists from their money, but which was made palatable as an efficiency measure, the politicians made up a new meaning for the old legal term "bail." Originally, in most criminal proceedings, bail was a sum of money the defendant deposited with the court to guarantee that he will show up for trial. In its new incarnation as a "fine," the motorist can now pay money directly to the court in lieu of a court appearance. "Bail" is "posted" with the clerk, supposedly to guarantee that the motorist will show up for trial, and then when the motorist does not show up to defend himself (because of a wink and nod from the clerk, in a formalized informal arrangement), the "bail" is forfeited. These bail forfeitures then show up as guilty convictions on the Department of Motor Vehicles' dossier kept on every licensed motorist. (And anyone who has a mind to try to oppose this system of shake-down, soon finds out that a Failure-to-Appear is an even more serious offense, for which the state feels justified using its police power to remedy, often with brutally unjust results).

Over the years, it has become increasingly convenient for those in power - both Democrat and Republican - to "economize" and "streamline" a traffic enforcement system that generates a lot of money. Over the years, our rights have been whittled away, one at a time, as if the Bill of Rights had never been enacted. Of course, if we objectively review history, the Bill of Rights was adopted to curtail the absolute power that had just been invested into the Federal Government, by the very men who had just set up that government, and they certainly had no intention of creating anything common people could use to defend themselves from them, their political leaders.

In the case of People VS. Daggett (1988) 206 Cal. App. 3d Supp. 1, two out of the three judges predictably ruled that in traffic cases, no prosecutor need be present, and that the judge can assist in presenting the government's case. The third judge stated, in his opposing opinion, that this leads to "the inescapable conclusion that the court is, or at least appears to be, both the prosecutor and the court, rather than being impartial… Actually, traffic court is one of our most important venues. To a large part of our population, this will be their only contact with the justice system. They are certainly going to wonder what happened to the blind, impartial Miss Justice and the doctrine of separation of powers." The people know that the separation of powers doesn't help them, they realize that it only comes to the aid of those with political clout and influence. One woman did nothing more than refuse to enter a plea in traffic court, and was ordered by the judge to submit to examination by two psychiatrists. She had to endure 17 hearings and was forced to hire a third psychiatrist at her own expense before she was declared competent. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to compare this with the Stalinist trials wherein the defendants were declared "insane" because they were political dissidents. Ironically, anyone who suggests that the United States should not perpetuate the Federal Republic is also viewed by "pragmatic" politically-active partisans as "insane."

A traffic enforcement system can serve a public function, but is it necessary to use uniformed police to do it? Would not a service-oriented system perform much better, which is not undermined by the greed of a profit motive? The only problem is that such a massive, ossified institution has been built up on the continuation of the police and prison state, that there is no way for the Republic to change without bringing about its own demise. In this way, it parallels the collapse of the Soviet Union, where democratic changes ultimately undermined the very power structure that kept the U.S.S.R. in tact. In time, the Democrats and the Republicans will not be able to stop the inevitable disintegration of their police state, and a new America will rise up from the ashes. In the end, if you love your country you have to have faith in it, instead of the politicians who run it.

SOURCE: Legal information derived from "Fight Your Ticket," by attorney David W. Brown. Published by Nolo Press (Berkeley, CA), © 1992.