The Cincinnati Beacon - We Demand a Vote: Down with the red-light cameras! - Cincinnati blog, Cincinnati news, Cincinnati politics

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

We Demand a Vote: Down with the red-light cameras!

Law enforcement officers are charged with a simple, but noble, assignment: protect and serve. And while people may debate the degree to which red-light cameras protect motorists, the fact remains that City Hall wishes to implement these cameras downtown—not because they hope to make our streets more safe, but because they hope to generate revenue for the struggling budget. This is a violation of that simple assignment with which our law enforcement officers are charged. Instead of protecting, and serving, the red-light cameras are just a scam for ticketing people at a distance for profit.

That’s why The Cincinnati Beacon proudly endorses the NAACP petition drive and the “We Demand a Vote” coalition.

What happens when law enforcement becomes a means for making money?

I wholeheartedly reject the premise, because that same premise logically supports absurdities—like a “jay walking vortex.”

I remember, at the victory party to defeat the jail tax, talking with Christopher Finney (who had been a long-time political adversary). He said he had learned, through collaborating with “liberal” groups like the Green Party and the NAACP that there was actually a shocking philosophical overlap with his own “conservative” group COAST. He said COAST opposed government spending because it viewed taxation as a means of government oppression. Then he said he realized that groups like the NAACP also oppose government oppression—and that such oppression can manifest in a variety of ways. That touchstone, he hypothesized, could serve as a starting-point for future collaboration.

And it seems, to me anyway, that the idea of “oppression” is a great lens through which to interpret the red-light camera proposal. By altering the basic premise of law enforcement—from protecting and serving to making money for government—City Hall has taken a small step towards implementing an oppressive police state where the interests of government take precedent over the interests of the people they are supposed to serve.

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