“Restaurant inspectors, for example, do over a million restaurant inspections annually but they don’t investigate murder or drug charges and they are not armed. Perhaps not coincidentally restaurant inspectors are not often accused of inspector brutality.” marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolu…
One issue here is that while most traffic violations are non-criminal, one key function of police traffic safety work is enforcing criminal laws against drunk driving. The restaurant inspector never needs to arrest the chef.
On this “unbundle the police” topic, the NYPD is responsible for issuing not just moving violations but also parking violations and has essentially decided that parking rules do not apply to police officers’ personal vehicles. Parking tickets could instead be issued by DOT.
While the rampant parking abuse is not the most important NYPD misbehavior it is a symbol of police officers considering themselves to be exempt from generally applicable rules.
Actually maybe the MTA should issue parking violations, so it would be a function controlled by the governor, and the mayor would be able to say it’s out of his hands when cops and other public employees are mad about getting parking tickets.
Plus Cuomo gets to bigfoot De Blasio on another issue. Win-win!
