
Citizens on Patrol: What If Your Neighbor Could Give You a Parking Ticket? - danso
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/20/us/citizen-police.html
======
40acres
As a minority I'm conflicted. Many urban areas have tensions between
minorities and police, thousands of people face police harassment every year
over minor infractions.

On the other hand, as services like Nextdoor illustrate, many neighbors have
an inherent fear and discrimination against their minority neighbors, and can
show the same type of overreacting behavior as the police.. I guess I'd rather
have enforcement from individuals without license to kill.

~~~
JudgeWapner
> police harassment every year over minor infractions.

I'm confused by this phrase. do you think that minor infractions shouldn't be
enforced at all? is it "harassment" anytime someone faces a consequence for
violating the law?

~~~
40acres
When looking at the major police brutality cases over the past few years you
will notice that there is a disproportionate amount of force used by police
relative to the threat.

Eric Garner was accused of selling illegal cigarettes, was this a crime? Yes.
Should he been put in a choke hold and held down by multiple officers despite
being clearly subdued and repeatedly saying that he could not breathe? No.
Sandra Bland was killed over a parking ticket. Recently, in Phoenix, a young
family was threaten horribly because the daughter "shoplifted" a doll without
the parents knowledge.

There is a clear pattern of disproportionate force used in relation to the
actual activity being prosecuted.

~~~
JudgeWapner
The cases you cited aren't harassment, they are brutality and excessive force.
I'm asking how minor infractions should be enforced, if at all, so that they
are simply enforcement and not harassment.

------
United857
Many condos/townhome developments in the US have "homeowners associations"
(HOAs) which often empower your neighbors to do precisely that -- enforce
parking and other rules within the bounds of the development.

Speaking from personal experience, while it's private property and legally
allowed, and despite the HOA having good intentions in theory, this leads to
an attitude of distrust amongst neighbors, people weaponizing petty complaints
or viewing their neighbors as "informers", and/or a cabal being vocal,
passive-aggressive complainers about everything.

A better solution would be farming this out to a private unaffiliated company
-- although by no means perfect, would prevent the detrimental effects on
quality of community.

~~~
droithomme
On the HOA note I lived in a couple. Both times a small club of elderly women
with nothing to do during the day would walk the neighborhood multiple times
per day and enforce every single rule for every neighbor that they didn't
like, which was nearly everyone. Car 13" from the curb? Citation. Shrubbery
not trimmed? Citation. Visiting relative's car parked in driveway more than 3
nights in a row? Citation. Guest parking on street overnight? Citation.
Watering your lawn not enough, too much, or during the wrong hours? Citation,
citation, citation. Some tomcat or stray dog in the neighborhood pooped in
your flowerbed and you didn't even notice it and thus didn't remove it?
Citation. Fence paint peeling? Citation. Repainted the fence the same color as
before without getting written approval from the HOA architectural committee,
which was never even established? Citation. Got the committee established and
got written permission to paint the same color as before but painted your
fence a slightly different color of grey from the neighbors' since theirs have
faded over the years? Citation. Unapproved lawn buddha statue in the backyard
where no one can see it? Citation. American flag in a flag holder on the post
next to the front door? Citation.

These types see themselves as defenders of law and order, protectors of good,
and take pride in that not a single infraction on any day anywhere goes
without a citation. They know all, and see all, and disapprove of all.

And the HOA management association loves them because they bring in tens of
thousands of additional revenue per month, and even enables them to confiscate
a few houses now and then should the homeowner contest the charges and refuse.

I would never ever ever ever live in an HOA controlled area again.

~~~
HillaryBriss
maybe I've lived in the wild west of Los Angeles's chaos and deterioration for
too long because what you've just described sounds refreshing

------
RandomBacon
Houston has this:
[https://www.houstontx.gov/parking/volunteer.html](https://www.houstontx.gov/parking/volunteer.html)

Take a 4 hour class, and you can write tickets for cars parked illegally in
handicap spots.

~~~
flyGuyOnTheSly
Only handicap spots?

If so, why?

Just the easiest thing to spot and not misdiagnose, I guess?

~~~
sokoloff
Probably has the most sympathetic victims and has near-zero chance for self-
dealing.

~~~
m463
Would be interesting to see if there's a backlash if they could do:

\- non-EV cars in EV charging spots

\- EVs not hooked up to charge in EV charging spots

~~~
sokoloff
I'm not sure I'd support that and I daily drive a short-range pure EV (Nissan
LEAF).

~~~
ceejayoz
Can you elaborate on why you're not sure you'd support it?

"Charging spots are for charging" seems very reasonable.

~~~
sokoloff
There's already significant (and hard to fathom) backlash against electric car
owners "getting free gas" at some of these charging stations. Electric car
owners aren't nearly as sympathetic a victim set as handicapped.

Couple that with gpm's sibling comment and I think it's too ripe for abuse. (I
hate getting ICEd out of a charging spot as much as anyone, but I'm not sure
that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks here.)

~~~
m463
I don't know the right terminology, but maybe it's a "power" thing.

For instance, if it's two people at the same power level, it gets complicated.
If it's someone at a high power level defending someone at a lower power
level, it's ok.

So defending handicapped people, or kids, or puppies is ok.

I've heard stories of people breaking a car window to get a kid or puppy out,
and that's pretty much universally accepted.

But defending other people at the same level as yourself might be a harder
sell.

I remember reading that the difference between police and citizens is that
police can give out misdemeanor tickets.

------
TulliusCicero
There's a part of me that would love to see this for cars parked in bike
lanes. Bikes already get almost no infrastructure compared to driving or
walking, having what little there is so often blocked by the more privileged
party adds insult to injury. Not to mention the danger it puts cyclists into
where they have to move onto the road where drivers may not be expecting bikes
(because, y'know, there's a bike lane on the street).

Of course I realize that this could easily be abused, and you'd instantly get
a lot of irate drivers calling for volunteers giving tickets to cyclists who
blow through red lights, and it's tricky where exactly you'd want to draw a
line there on citizen enforcement.

It seems like a sociologically simpler option may be soon within reach,
though: once we have fully self-driving cars, you could commission a few
parking enforcement bots that would tirelessly hand out tickets, in a more or
less unbiased manner, all day and night long!

~~~
ydj
Why is it abuse to ticket cyclists that don’t stop at red lights?

~~~
toast0
Parking tickets are much more reasonable to delegate than a moving violation.

You don't have to stop the violator, because they're usually not present, and
you can leave the ticket on the vehicle.

The circumstances that lead to a finding of violation are subject to less
dispute. Cyclist claims light was green, citizen enforcer claims light was
red, is harder to prove vs parker says time was 5:30 and citizen enforcer says
time was 4:30. Some parking tickets are more sensitive to location -- if the
vehicle is very near the boundary between acceptable and not acceptable,
perhaps an escalation to a sworn officer is in order, but parking in a red
zone / parking in a bike lane / parking in disabled without a visible permit
is usually clear cut.

------
Aspos
Similar program is in use in UAE for years. Anyone can use police app to snap
a photo of illegally parked car. Specially trained police staff review
hundreds of photos per day and issue tickets in one click. Far quicker, safer,
easier approach.

~~~
Balgair
Oh wow! Yeah, now this could work actually. Great comment, thanks for bringing
this up!

------
bluedino
I’d love this. We have people parking in the fire lanes of stores, anywhere
they feel in a parking lot (make up your own spot, the lines are just
suggestions), parking on sidewalks and in front yards. Even parking in the
streets when parking is not allowed, backing up traffic.

It’s just chaos. Local police are underfunded so they are understaffed and are
too busy to enforce code or parking violations. And nobody pays their parking
tickets anymore anyway. You have to rack up 20+ before they will put a boot on
your car.

~~~
hawaiianbrah
What’s wrong with parking in front yards assuming the owner is OK with it?

~~~
danso
Many cities have laws against parking on lawns. Even if the owner is OK with
it (or is parking on their own lawn), the neighbors might not be for property
value reasons. There's also the problem of vehicle oil leeching into the soil:

[https://www.ksla.com/story/7065953/shreveport-council-
approv...](https://www.ksla.com/story/7065953/shreveport-council-approves-ban-
on-parking-in-front-lawn/)

[https://www.modbee.com/news/article108667517.html](https://www.modbee.com/news/article108667517.html)

------
joshe
All the horrors of Nextdoor, brought into meatspace.

~~~
Balgair
For other HNers out there that are not so up to date with Nextdoor:
[https://mobile.twitter.com/bestofnextdoor?lang=en](https://mobile.twitter.com/bestofnextdoor?lang=en)

------
arcticfox
This reminds me of the 1990 novel 'Earth' by Dan Brin, which featured a near-
future populace that all wear the equivalent of Google Glass, and use it to
self-police _everything_ they see. Like an open source version of a police
state.

Not saying it's a good thing, but I feel like it's inevitable with the
ubiquity of cameras.

~~~
bilbo0s
Yep.

Just imagine how effective boycotts will be. You just look at the grocery
store shelf, and you automagically see which foods you can buy. They'll be
able to give tickets on cars much easier as well. Just have AI's pour over
everyone's monday video after hours, and get that ticket for parking in the
handicapped spot in your mail on wednesday.

Most of the impact will be far more intimate though. Bartenders' glasses will
just say: "Do Not Serve" when they look at a person. (Automatically keeping
track of how many drinks each person is getting.) Women and men at bars will
be able to just look at each other, and it will say "Sex Assault Risk", "Has
Kids" or "Violent Crime Conviction" or whatever.

And that's just connecting the glasses to the public databases. They would
also be connected to the small private data repositories updated by a person's
close friend group. Imagine the information overlays there. Everything from
"Has Girlfriend", to "STD Reported", to "Puts Out", to "Small Penis".

I can imagine life becoming almost an open book in the far future.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>and get that ticket for parking in the handicapped spot in your mail on
wednesday. //

Lol, I think your age might be showing? Surely you get the charge auto-
deducted from your account.

That way you can get auto-fined by the bank for having insufficient
'ShelbyvilleCryptoCoin' to pay. Then get auto-fined for getting an
unauthorised over-draft, then auto-charged by the government for financial
irregularity, then auto-fired by work for "bringing disrepute on the company".
Then your 'worker car privelege' gets rescinded and you get picked up by a
robocop, citizen, before you even finish your commute.

First your wife knows is an automated message saying she no longer owns the
house as it's been sold to fund your trip to a prison colony on Rigel Prime
...

Or, maybe I watched too much dystopian sci-fi.

~~~
bilbo0s
Wow.

I thought I was using as much imagination as possible coming up with just my
likely scenarios. Yours are more Sci-Fi, but there is an uneasy feeling that
maybe some of these "auto reporting" type things could actually happen. Likely
not to the extent you indicate in your post, but I wonder if they may in the
future just auto deduct tickets and such from your bank accounts?

~~~
exo-pla-net
Precisely this is being done, today, in China. A facial recognition AI keeps
track of your location and activities. If you jaywalk, it immediately deducts
money from your bank account.

~~~
nitrogen
How much money? Are there people who just pay for the privilege of jaywalking
and don't care about the money or their faces on the shame displays?

------
robocat
If enough people had driving cameras, and if insurance is mandatory, I guess
individuals could report dangerous driving to insurance companies, and cause
increased insurance premiums for dangerous or reckless drivers. Which is weird
because then insurance companies become the police.

I wish we could report video to the police for dangerous driving... The police
waste money enforcing rules that are only loosely correlated with preventing
danger. Why not use the strongest signal possible - actual dangerous driving
or near misses etc.

To avoid the "granny reporting everything" problem and avoid the "anti-social"
problem, only allow three submissions per year?

------
t_akosuke
mobike and other bike/scooter/whatever sharing apps already turn users into
police already. One is encouraged to report a bike that has been parked in an
out of reach place, such as in someone's private backyard. I'm quite upset
myself when I'm following the map for the only available bike nearby only to
find out that it's obviously inside someone's apartment, so I'm torn about my
feelings - i don't want to turn into an unpaid vigilante for some Chinese
company, but I'm also pretty mad at the assholes who do this and would rather
they not get away with it so easily!

------
UweSchmidt
Having the citizens police each other, spy on each other is a characteristic
of totalitarian regimes, notably present in both communist Eastern Germany and
Nazi Germany. A fundamental part of democracy is to trust a citizen by default
- not just with voting, but with behaving in general. Before police and courts
come into play there needs to be a little leeway, for people to act, make
mistakes, see their actions conflicting with the interest of others, to
correct themselves etc.

Fundamentally, people should be put in a cooperative environment; having a
significant part of the population be in "cop mode", looking for offenses,
would be very harmful for society.

~~~
HillaryBriss
> people should be put in a cooperative environment

yes. but, a case can be made that someone who parks in a spot reserved for
people with disabilities, or parks their car in the middle of a bike lane is
disrupting and damaging the cooperative environment. furthermore, in the US
the presence of guns and people willing to use guns means that confronting
such a person directly is significantly riskier than it would be in some
other, truly civilized, country.

------
eternauta3k
You can do this in Buenos Aires. It's great for reporting cars parked in the
bike lane or blocking your garage.

------
HillaryBriss
They wouldn't. We're on pretty good terms.

------
olivermarks
people aren't rational and hold grudges and prejudices. Empowering random
people to make life hell for their neighbors isn't smart

~~~
bilbo0s
In fairness, we already do this when we allow police to enforce the law. To be
honest, police are people too. They are every bit as irrational as the rest of
us. I'm sure they hold just as many prejudices as I do. (Maybe even the same
prejudices that I do?)

Police would, at least, have more training though. So there's that.

~~~
olivermarks
Police have to adhere to well defined law enforcement

~~~
bilbo0s
And people have to adhere to the law, but sometimes they don't.

Again, police are people. Sure they're supposed to follow the rules. But
sometimes they don't.

What makes police better is that they at least have the training. So they have
the knowledge of how to do it right. Whether or not they do it right in fact
is an entirely separate issue.

------
inflatableDodo
Police are supposed to be citizens on patrol. How about having the existing
police follow this short list, while we are being innovative;

> _To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by
> military force and severity of legal punishment.

>To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions
and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and
behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.

>To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of
the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public
in the task of securing observance of laws.

>To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public
can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical
force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.

>To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but
by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete
independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the
substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and
friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or
social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and
by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.

>To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and
warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent
necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the
minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion
for achieving a police objective.

>To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to
the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are
the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give
full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the
interests of community welfare and existence.

>To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive
functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the
judiciary, of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively
judging guilt and punishing the guilty.

>To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of
crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing
with them._

