Automatic Deference: A Step Toward Totalitarianism
by Steven Thomas Druckenmiller
Back in 2003, I contested an unfairly written parking ticket. Despite the fact that I had a reliable witness, an excellent case, and evidence to suggest that the given ticket may have been written in error, I lost the case.
How, with two backers for my case (myself and the witness), could I have possibly lost?
"Automatic deference," that’s how.
Automatic deference is the term that the local magistrate (and other local and state justices) used to describe the governmental concept that the word of a “trusted” law enforcement official is to be trusted above not only one citizen’s word, but two.
First, any average citizen’s word should be trusted against the word of the law officer writing a citation or making an arrest. The official has a vested interest in making his own case: he does not want to be deemed wrong or in error in front of his colleagues and superiors in the criminal justice system. Second, it is common knowledge that police forces and state police have a serious economic interest in defending citations successfully: the majority of law enforcement's operating funds are obtained by fining citizens.
Let us not be fooled here: speeding tickets, in particular, are nothing more than a driving tax. Speeding, per se, is a victimless crime: the mere act does not presuppose harm to anyone or anything, much like drug use. It is only when the speeding is shown to cause harm to another individual(s) that any sort of civil and/or criminal penalty should be incurred -- again, akin to drug use or excessive alcohol use. This is why the principled Objectivist should be opposed to drunk-driving laws: because the mere act of drunk driving, while raising impairment when operating vehicles, does not mean that the individual driving while impaired is necessarily causing harm. Therefore, the idea that speeding should be fined (with fines being assessed haphazardly and without consistent basis) is foolish. It is well proven that police officers and state officials are more likely to ticket out-of-state or out-of-county drivers, because of the decreased likelihood that they will contest the (likely) unfair and immoral so-called “violation.”
Back to my earlier point: the merging of the law with the local or state police’s economic considerations makes for a dangerous combination. The idea of automatic deference means that a police officer can, at any time and at his own whim, pull you over and detain and fine you with no evidence other than his own say-so. Imagine this scenario: you legally go through a yellow (or even green!) light, and are subsequently pulled over. The officer who pulled you over can now (with no check on his authority, because of automatic deference) fine you or imprison you, and you have zero legal recourse, because -- if you are like me -- you are frequently alone, and therefore have no witnesses to the fact that you have acted legally. (And most of the time, even having a witness doesn't help, anyway.) Automatic deference is especially onerous because of the simple fact that (and again, statistics bear this out) officers will enforce traffic laws more often during the end of the month, when the economic “quota” is due.
There are two solutions to the problem of automatic deference. One is to require that all officers who enforce violations have a back-up witness -- either an additional officer, or a citizen who witnessed the violation. The second solution is to divorce the economic interest from the enforcement of the law: Make all traffic tickets tax-deductible (a few cents saved should not reduce the effectiveness of fines) and make sure they do not add to the operating budgets of law enforcement. The idea of automatic deference, along with the salary hikes paid to officers who make more “busts,” is a step toward the repeal of civil liberties, and toward totalitarianism, made in the name of “safety” and “the law.”
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