Day after day in Warren, Mich., people wait in a long line to pay traffic fines. Many are there because police say they didn't come to a full stop at a stop sign. Often the policeman saying that is Officer David Kanapsky.
On last week's "20/20," you heard a motorist in court insist that she did come to a complete stop. The judge replied, as judges there often do: "I find Officer Kanapsky's testimony to be credible. He is an unbiased witness."
But the officer is not really unbiased. The more tickets he writes, the more overtime he gets. Last year, Kanapsky spent so much time in court he increased his pay by $21,000.
Rolling through a stop sign in Michigan puts two points on your driving record. That hikes your car insurance premium. Fighting the ticket could cost even more. So to avoid the points and legal fees, most people plead guilty to a lesser offense: impeding traffic. The court sounds like an assembly line, " ... no points ... $135 ... "
Last year, the town made half a million dollars from such fines. Some drivers told us it "seems like a moneymaking scam.
I don't know if that's true, but when some angry motorists complained to Heather Catallo, reporter for Detroit's ABC affiliate, she took her cameras out to see if the cops themselves stopped at the stop signs. Most didn't.
Her expose caused a ruckus in town. The mayor hired a new police commissioner, who told me the cops might have been on emergency calls. "They don't necessarily have to have their lights and sirens on," Commissioner William Dwyer said.
I told him the tape showed police cars rolling through stop signs on the way back to the police station.
"Did some officers make mistakes? Perhaps so," he said.
Dwyer denied the tickets were a moneymaking scam. He said he didn't think it odd that Kanapsky wrote thousands of tickets. "It's not unusual for a traffic officer to write 10 to 20 traffic violations a day, if not more."
Please. I'm all for highway safety, but I suspect that America's roads have too many rules, and that gives cops too much arbitrary power to harass people or profit off them. As the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao-Tse said, "The more laws that are written, the more criminals are produced".
I bet most Americans roll through stop signs. I do. It makes for a smoother ride, and it saves gas.
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