The Police Chief Magazine - Generating New Revenue Streams - Coming for your money!

Or, The Badge of Extortion, Coming to a town near you!

Oh my, Some ideas are interesting and could provide a public service but many are going directly after the public in the form of fines, resident tax fees, public safety fee (really)? a tax on booze and ammunition!

Look out, they are coming for your wallet!



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• fees for sex offenders registering in a given jurisdiction,
• city tow companies,
• fine increases by 50 percent,
• pay-per-call policing,
• vacation house check fees,
• public hours at police firing range for a fee,
• police department-run online traffic school for minor traffic infractions,
• department-based security service including home checks and monitoring of security cameras by police department,
• a designated business to clean biological crime scenes,
• state and court fees for all convicted felons returning to the community,
• allowing agency name to be used for advertisement and branding,
• triple driving-under-the-influence fines by the court,
• resident fee similar to a utility tax,
• tax or fee on all alcohol sold in the city,
• tax or fee on all ammunition sold in, the city,
• public safety fees on all new development in the city,
• 9-1-1 fee per use,
• police department website with business advertisement for support,
• selling ride-a-longs to the public, and
• police department–run firearm safety classes.

• An administrative citation process for party noise. Modeled after other California agencies, the party ordinance allows an administrative citation to be issued at loud parties where the music is plainly audible 50 feet from the property line. The first citation is $100, a second $200, and a third or subsequent citation within 12 consecutive months is $500. The goal of the ordinance is to reduce repeat party calls, improve the quality of life for surrounding residents, and generate a revenue stream to offset the cost of response and enforcement.

• An ordinance fining parents for child’s graffiti. The graffiti ordinance imposes a $1,000 administrative fine to the parents of juveniles arrested for graffiti crimes. The juvenile is still processed independently through the criminal justice system. The goal of this new ordinance is to promote greater responsibility from parents, reduce the number of repeat offenders, and generate a revenue stream to compensate the city for enforcement efforts.

a reply to: infolurker

Just what we need- more money in the hands of organized, law-backed criminals.

a reply to: infolurker

What a croc.

We already pay too much for them to buy newer more expensive toys to abuse us with.

This should be criminal conspiracy to fleece the public.

Some of these are surprisingly reasonable, like the biological cleanup business, fining parents for the illegal behaviour of their kids, and taxing alcohol (not going to be popular, but frankly it represents such a societal problem that I view any tax on it as a good thing [please note that I'm not advocating alcohol prohibition, but a sin tax? Hells yeah.]). Others are just as absurd as I expected.

Then maybe they should take back the running of jails and prisons, but too late the guys who pull the strings have already privatized corrections and now it is a $3 Billion year cottage industry. How to tell if Your County Jail is being run by a private company like CCA™ (Corrections Corp of America) is to read Your local newspaper and if folks are now being "booked" into the County Jail, You the taxpayer are paying the "booking fee" When I was retired from a Ca. police dept. 11 years ago the booking fee was $154 a copy. Instead of being given a Promise To Appear (PTA) and released 'in the field' these folks are booked. Remember all those folks incarcerated during the Crack War and just now being released after serving their 20-25 yr. bit..

Nuisance alarms back then went 3 for FREE per month and then $100/call after that..

•department- based security including home checks... Isn't that what My taxes are for? Doesn't it go way back to the Constable On Patrol that if I call the police they come?

The Criminal Justice system makes enough $$$ on the aforementioned disenfranchised that make up their numbers, over 93% of those incarcerated are there under a "plea agreement"...

Between You and Me the system is wrecked and this smells of a last ditch effort to grab some numbers.. numbers = $$$..

They need folks to print the license plates and grow the "organic vegetables" that they then sell to companies at inflated prices that they also own.. They turn a profit at each turn of the screw...

Proud Member of LEAP.org

a reply to: Monger

States already tax alcohol. Sin tax? Why not charge for every time some one has sex too? Or a swear jar?

a reply to: DAVID64

There is a direct correlation between alcohol and violence, not to mention everything else that it plays a factor in, from sexual assaults to drunk driving deaths. It takes reasonable, level-headed people and renders them uncontrollable. No other drug, except for maybe meth or PCP changes a person as fundamentally as alcohol. Alcohol is too cheap in the US as it is. Taxing it as much as humanly possible is the best solution to the problem that alcohol presents. Build all the straw men you want, but I'll never be convinced that heavy taxes on alcohol isn't a good thing.

a reply to: infolurker

911 fee??? That is going to cause loss of lives.

Typically if a kid is caught doing graffitti in america his parents will be the one paying the fine until they are 18 years old...This is the exact opposite of reasonable as are all the other suggested ways to generate revenue listed above....The problem is that all of the governemnt agencies are either broke or just not satisfied with what they have already....I will go with a little of both I think /post]

Heres another one already being done:

Offer deferred sentence for a moving traffic violation and then within one year if the subject gets a non-moving violation cancel the deferred status even though you told them in court that only a new moving violation can affect the deferred status.

a reply to: infolurker

You know there's a lot I feel is a useless push, typically you can just walk the other way, make your own by your own, true grit type stuff. But when you have a institution that is actively finding ways to # you and inflate said institution's bottom line, well you have no choice but to push.Even the most passive peaceful push is a step in the right direction so,?please without any wait push on my friends. As the most interesting man in the world says," I never like to bitch, but when I do, I bitch about police".

originally posted by: Ultralight
a reply to: infolurker

911 fee??? That is going to cause loss of lives.

Just more of an incentive to never call the police. If they show up, someone is probably dying anyways.... why would you ever call the grim reaper?

a reply to: infolurker

Maybe we should get rid of the police service all together. What we save on the taxes and monies we save we can pay to a private security agency. If we are paying fees for community services then they are double dipping. This way we would only pay once.

Having the police monitoring your home security systems is like paying Big Brother to spy on you and collect information on you that they can use against you at their benefit. A lot of what they are proposing sounds very risky and downright dangerous to me.

Talk about military police system. This sounds more like a prison State.

If we don't stop this in it's tracks we can kiss all freedoms goodbye.

As far as the sin tax is concerned, why should the innocent pay for the crimes of the guilty? A person should be allowed to drink or celebrate with others without being fined or punished. This was even allowed during the biblical days. Punish the guilty. Don't fine and punish the innocent for what they "might" do.

People always argue over what is wrong with police departments today, but I've been saying it for years. The root cause is “for profit” policing. Justice for profit isn't blind justice, and has a vested interest in trumping up business where there isn't any. Making criminals out of whomever just happens to be unlucky enough to fall under the officers cross-hairs at any given moment. Of course because its all logged, it artificially increases the crime statistics, and justifies increasing the police departments increasing budgets, equipment, and number of officers. Florida leads the way in this problem, BTW, we've been a test bed for years in the realm of “For profit Policing”. We have sooo many officer down here that you can't drive a block and not pass one. I drive 5 miles to/form work, all back roads, and its still not uncommon for me to see 3 or 4 in that trip. Florida averages about 30billion a year on law enforcement revenue, and has admitted that they created “Collections Courts” (debtors prisons) because the state is so dependent on their revenue from fines.

Just like this guy the other day, why was he initially pulled over and shot?
$100 fine for a broken tail light.
Why did the Ferguson city councilman set down after that shooting?
Because the DOJ report showed how hard he was pressing the police to fine the black community.

Ultimately, almost all these bad interactions we see here with police beating and killing people start off due to "for profit Policing".