When governments refuse to enforce laws, it's not just a miscarriage of justice — it can and usually does lead to actual innocent people getting hurt:
From that WaPo link:
On Sept. 9, the call came when Deirdre Allen expected it, but her 12-year-old daughter was crying. "Mommy," she said, "I just got hit by a car." ...
A witness told police, and later The Washington Post, that the driver did not stop in time for the red light. After he hit Paisley, witnesses said, the man berated her for being in the crosswalk, claiming she had a red signal. Paisley, unable to walk, was taken to Children's National Hospital. The driver left with a citation for colliding with a pedestrian, which can lead to up to 30 days in jail.
Ah, yes, sending a child to the hospital after hitting her with your car gets you (checks notes) 30 days in jail.
Incredibly, though, 30 days in jail would be an improvement over what this guy's got on his rap sheet so far:
It wasn't the first ticket or even the 50th tied to the car. Allen, who was given a photo of the license plate by a witness, learned that the Land Rover has 94 unpaid tickets worth $19,770 from D.C. traffic cameras, six for speeding just this month and four for running red lights since July.
Dude has been driving through D.C. like it's a Mad Max salt flat.
Oh, but the Washington Post is really hedging its bets here hoping you don't notice that the D.C. government is letting a reckless driver just roam freely around the city:
It's not clear who was driving each time; the cameras capture only the license plate.
Oookay. Sure.
The Land Rover is among roughly 2,100 vehicles with 40 or more unpaid tickets in the city, according to the government. And this isn't the only potentially deadly incident there:
In a separate incident in May, Nathan Barbour was biking into Rock Creek Park from Virginia Avenue when he was hit by a driver running a stop sign. As soon as Barbour picked himself up and got out of the road, he said, the driver sped off. But Barbour got a picture of the car, a white Mercedes SUV with a Virginia license plate. He picked the driver out of a lineup. Nevertheless, more than four months later, he has heard nothing from police and assumes the case was dropped...
Meanwhile:
[T]he car that hit Barbour is still racking up violations — it currently has 46 unpaid tickets totaling almost $10,000, according to D.C.'s DMV website. In August alone, it was snapped four times going more than 15 miles per hour over the speed limit.
Law enforcement in D.C. like:
Bottom line: Watch out at the crosswalks in D.C.
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