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Wrong. Red light camera use is declining every year. Your link says 438 communities as of March 2016. The same site said 469 for March 2015, and 495 for Dec. 2014. The peak was 540 in 2012.
I've only seen this in really up-scale neighborhoods, but yeah. I could imagine it'd be a nice stream of revenue for the HOA.
Its not revenue to the HOA, the cop is legally writing tickets enforced by the County. The funds go to the County just like any other ticket. Now if they have a "rent a cop" like some gated communities do then yes they get to pocket the ticket revenue.
The question of whether they 'can' do it, depends on local laws and police department policies regarding hiring off-duty policemen ... and probably also the HOA bylaws regarding approval of spending funds that way.
In regards to the police, my bet is that a substantial number of jurisdictions allow it. In my city, hiring off duty police for a variety of events is common.
San Diego once ended the practice after a series of incidents involving off duty police on dubious after hours assignments. But... a lot of police had grown accustomed to the extra income. After loud complaints from the men in blue, it was re-instated.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thatguydownsouth
Depends on who owns the roads. You cant install speed bumps on city streets, the city has to. Good luck getting that done.
Tell me about that. We tried to do that once on a outlying street where a hill followed by a curve mixed with speeding had a big risk of a head on collision. The city informed us that there would need to be a series of accidents first- followed by an extensive study.
Its not revenue to the HOA, the cop is legally writing tickets enforced by the County. The funds go to the County just like any other ticket. Now if they have a "rent a cop" like some gated communities do then yes they get to pocket the ticket revenue.
And in some states like Maryland, the fines go to the State no matter whether a State Police Trooper, a County Sheriff's Deputy, a County Police officer or a municipality officer writes the ticket.
It does, or is supposed to, get shared back out to the local jurisdictions through State Aid for Police Services but that got cut by 97% by our last Governor.
This should be obvious. Most (if not all) jurisdictions effectively have no such thing as fully off-duty police officers, just on shift or off shift. If a police officer sees a crime occurring, he should respond officially to it, whether he is on-shift or not. That's why most of them are also required to be armed even off-shift.
Many of the churches in our area, including mine, hire off-shift cops on Sundays. They wear uniforms and guns and operate fully as police officers. They are essentially being paid for their time to be present in a particular area for a particular time. If a crime happens to occur in while they're present, they react as they would if their presence were merely a coincidence.
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