Beware Under Cover Police Bunnies This Easter

I am constantly amazed at what taxpayers are willing to pay for in taxes to efficiently tax themselves further.

This latest tactic being used by Florida’s West Palm Beach Police Department is certainly a crowning achievement in this paradox.

Here’s the story from the MSN:

Florida police pose as giant bunnies to catch illegal drivers

“West Palm Beach, Florida, police are going undercover as giant Easter bunnies. As morning commuter traffic slowed to a crawl earlier this week, motorists saw a bunny with a sign reading “Have a safe, hoppy holiday. Buckle up!” And through the large, netted eyes of the bunny costume’s large head, the cop was watching them right back, making note of who had a seatbelt on and who didn’t, so nearby officers could ticket them as part of the state’s “Click it or ticket!” campaign. A similar program in Glendale, Calif. was shut down in 2010 for being “breathtakingly dangerous,” but in Florida, it has been pretty successful so far: In just two hours, 50 motorists were cited.”

Source: http://now.msn.com/now/0329-easter-cops.aspx

Now, besides the cost of the bunny suits, the 50 motorists that were cited for not wearing their seat belts just on the word of the police officer in the bunny suit. This controversial law is already an attack on free will, independence, and liberty. But to spy on drivers through a bunny suit is seriously twisted!

As with all fees and fines, this amounts to nothing more than revenue generation for a private corporation through its enforcement arm – the municipal corporation police. This action by these code enforcement officers will benefit no one except the corrupt municipal city that is sponsoring it, and making it legal…

In essence, one could describe this action by municipal police as legalized-forced-panhandling. A homeless Vet can only hold up a sign and ask for money. But the police have the self-derived authority to force drivers to pay them ridiculous amounts of money without committing any real crime at all. No victim, no crime.

Of course, in no way does this protect or serve the public. In fact, as the story eludes, this action is creating a public disturbance and nuisance. Described as “breathtakingly dangerous” when this was done in California, drivers are distracted from watching the road and other drivers by the innocent looking pink bunny.

From the Huffington Post in 2010:

Undercover Police Bunny Sent To Pasture

GLENDALE, Calif. — Glendale police who used a bunny costume to decoy bad drivers at crosswalks have abandoned the outfit after it made a city councilman hopping mad.

An officer wore the Easter outfit on Wednesday in crosswalks. Drivers who didn’t yield to the furry pedestrian were ticketed.

But City Councilman John Drayman harshly criticized the head-turning costume, calling it “breathtakingly dangerous” and a poor use of city resources.

Glendale police continued the crosswalk sting on Thursday but the officer wore shorts and a T-shirt. A city spokesman says the city is re-evaluating the use of costumes for enforcement campaigns.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/02/undercover-police-bunny-s_n_523409.html

Of course, the City Councilman mentioned in this story doesn’t seem to grasp that the whole point of this effort was to generate resources for the city corporation, not to waste them. At least, not publicly.

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But let’s get more in depth here… What other technologies are we paying for with taxes to further our taxation?

Here’s a wonderful little invention called the E-Plate:

Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) is increasingly used by Governments, enforcement agencies and private sector operators to enhance the policing of roads, identifying and monitoring criminal activity and in counter terrorism…

A highly secure method of vehicle identification uses long range Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) fitted to, or embedded within, the licence plate.

A unique identifier is transmitted from the RFID tag which is compared with what the ANPR camera is seeing. An alert is created where there is a mismatch or no RFID is present. This can then trigger a response either for an enforcement team at the location or a follow up response from the back-office.

Combined ANPR and RFID technology from e-Plate provides the most secure and validated vehicle identification system.

Source: http://www.e-plate.com/anpr-rfid.html

This RFID technology can be used in a plethora of different ways, of course.

A patent filed for this technology states:

[0010] The emergence of passive, sticker tag technology has also greatly reduced the cost of implementing an RFID system. As a result, new applications, such as Electronic Vehicle Registration (EVR) using RFID, have emerged. Currently, e.g., in the United States, a vehicle owner registers their vehicle with the State government and pays a fee. The owner is then provider a sticker, which is applied to the vehicle license plate, to evidence the valid registration of the vehicle; however, these stickers can easily be counterfeited or stolen, i.e., removed and applied to another vehicle. Such activity is difficult to detect, because the only way to determine that a registration sticker does not belong on a certain vehicle is to access a database and check the corresponding information.

[0011] For example, in the United States, an estimated five to ten percent of motorists fail to legally register their vehicles, resulting in lost annual state revenues of between $720 million and $1.44 billion. Outside of the United States, some government agencies report the problem at 30-40% of the vehicles.

[0012] Deploying an Electronic Vehicle Registration system can help Motor Vehicle Administrators achieve increases in vehicle compliance and associated revenues by eliminating the need to rely on inefficient, manual, visual-based compliance monitoring techniques. EVR uses RFID technology to electronically identify vehicles and validate identity, status, and authenticity of vehicle data through the use of interrogators and tags that include data written into the tag memory that matches the vehicle registration data. Fixed, e.g., roadside, or handheld interrogators can then be used to read the data out when required. Thus, RFID technology can enable automated monitoring of vehicle compliance with all roadway usage regulations, e.g., vehicle registration, tolling, etc., through a single tag.

[0013] There are two common ways of attaching a RFID tag to a vehicle, one is using an RFID label tag attached to the windshield of the vehicle. The tag can then be read by a roadside or handheld reader. A second method of attaching the tag to a vehicle is to embed the RFID tag into the license plate. This has the convenience an continuity of replicating the application of current registration stickers; however, such a solution can also suffer from reduced transmission, i.e., communication distance due to the effects the metal license plate has on the performance of the tag antenna.

Source: http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20090021379

Or how about the use of unmanned drones to catch speeders (again, no victim – no crime)…

From TheNewspaper.com:

Houston, Texas to Deploy UAV Speeding Ticket Drones
Unmanned spy planes could issue speeding tickets in Houston, Texas by June 2008.

By June 2008, the city of Houston will use the same military drone aircraft currently used to hunt down terrorists overseas to write speeding citations on Texas freeways. Local television station KPRC exposed the Houston Police Department’s plan by using the station’s news helicopter to spy on what was supposed to be a confidential gathering of area law enforcement personnel where the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) capabilities were demonstrated. The test took place seventy miles northwest of Houston in Waller County.

While police have used aircraft to issue speeding tickets for years, the practice can be quite expensive. The cost to operate an aircraft such as a Cessna 182 can run beyond $200 an hour, which cuts into ticketing revenue. The UAV manufactured by Insitu, however, can stay aloft for up to twenty hours using just over a gallon of gasoline. While it only cruises at 55 MPH with a top speed of 86 MPH, its powerful onboard camera can zoom in on a vehicle from a distance of 60 miles with full night-vision capabilities.

Although Houston Police Executive Assistant Police Chief Martha Montalvo told reporters that the main mission of the device would be homeland security, KPRC confirmed that the department’s traffic unit played the lead role in the demonstration.

The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association has opposed unrestricted police use of UAVs in navigable airspace at altitudes including the 1500 feet level used in the Houston test.

“The prospect of small UAVs flitting around in the same airspace we use is frightening,” AOPA vice president of regulatory affairs Melissa Rudinger said in a statement last year. “What do you think your chances are of seeing this thing before you hit it? And it can’t sense you or get out of the way.”

Depending on options, each UAV can cost up to $1 million.

Source: Police Secrecy Behind Unmanned Aircraft Test (KPRC-TV (TX), 11/21/2007)

At a million dollars a drone, you can bet that many, many expensive tickets must be digitally produced to pay for each and every one of these flying robot policemen.

And let’s not forget the stationary cameras that are appearing at every major intersection. These “red-light cameras” have quickly been turned into a national surveillance network, enhanced by the above mentioned RFID license plates. Of course, there is still no victim. And in the case of these cameras, there isn’t even an accuser that the taxpayer can face in a court of law! Perhaps that’s because there are no courts of law anymore, only courts of municipal code, where the police, the prosecuting/city attorney, and the judge all work for the municipality (city) who issued the ticket to collect the revenue. –>That means no fair trial, by the way…

In this story, Newspaper.com reports on this national database:

Photo Ticket Cameras to Track Drivers Nationwide
Vendors plan to add spy technology to existing red light camera and speed camera installations.

Private companies in the US are hoping to use red light cameras and speed cameras as the basis for a nationwide surveillance network similar to one that will be active next year in the UK. Redflex and American Traffic Solutions (ATS), the top two photo enforcement providers in the US, are quietly shopping new motorist tracking options to prospective state and local government clients. Redflex explained the company’s latest developments in an August 7 meeting with Homestead, Florida officials.

“We are moving into areas such as homeland security on a national level and on a local level,” Redflex regional director Cherif Elsadek said. “Optical character recognition is our next roll out which will be coming out in a few months — probably about five months or so.”

The technology would be integrated with the Australian company’s existing red light camera and speed camera systems. It allows officials to keep full video records of passing motorists and their passengers, limited only by available hard drive space and the types of cameras installed. To gain public acceptance, the surveillance program is being initially sold as an aid for police looking to solve Amber Alert cases and locate stolen cars.

“Imagine if you had 1500 or 2000 cameras out there that could look out for the partial plate or full plate number across the 21 states where we do business today,” Elsadek said. “This is the next step for our technology.”

ATS likewise is promoting motorist tracking technologies. In a recent proposal to operate 200 speed cameras for the Arizona state police, the company explained that its ticketing cameras could be integrated into a national vehicle tracking database. This would allow a police officer to simply enter a license plate number into a laptop computer and receive an email as soon as a speed camera anywhere in the state recognized that plate.

Such programs would be fully consistent with existing law on searches and seizures… No warrant would be needed or restrictions applied to license plate tracking systems which do not require any physical contact. Instead, individual police officers could monitor the movements of suspected criminals or even their (non-criminal) wives and neighbors at any time.

In the past, police databases have been used to intimidate innocent motorists. An Edmonton, Canada police sergeant, for example, found himself outraged after he read columnist Kerry Diotte criticize his city’s photo radar operation in the Edmonton Sun newspaper. The sergeant looked up Diotte’s personal information, and, without the assistance of electronic scanners, ordered his subordinates to “be on the lookout” for Diotte’s BMW. Eventually a team of officers followed Diotte to a local bar where they hoped to trap the journalist and accuse him of driving under the influence of alcohol. Diotte took a cab home and the officers’ plan was exposed after tapes of radio traffic were leaked to the press. Police later cleared themselves of any serious wrong-doing following an extensive investigation.

Source: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/25/2537.asp

Eventually, one can only come to the conclusion that people enjoy this complete surveillance and revenue generation grid that eventually ensnares all drivers – who can’t help but break some legal code due the the sheer number of codes created every year! And this is what taxpayers continue to call a free country.

And as ironic proof of this inherent love of servitude and tax slavery, here are a few comments that were left on the first bunny story holding up a sign to “buckle-up” for safety while spying on drivers through the mesh false-bunny-eyes:

— HEY! Just put the stupid seat belt on and maybe the bunny well get off the street and you won’t get a ticket.

— For God sake people that are posting here. THERE IS NO ENTRAPMENT HERE. FACT!

— Note to angry people; just buckle up and you have nothing to worry about.

— It’s not entrapment if your a dumba$$ and don’t wear a seatbelt.  hahaha… I think this is a great idea.

— If it works, why not. Know someone who got a ticket for not wearing his seat belt. He does now.

— Folks try to remember that it wasn’t the officers idea to do this.  This clearly came down from some higher up maybe a mayor or police chief. I’m sure these cops hate doing this as much as we hate them doing it. (No, they thrive on this!)

— In defense of the many honest and hard working law enforcements officers: cops are like lawyers and prostitutes, many badmouth them until they need one. all of you ****ers, go pull YOUR mother out of a car wreck don’t expect a “pig” to do it for you! (Actually, that’s firefighters. And they don’t kill you with Tazors)

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And so, there you have it – a public in love with its own enslavement. A nation that obeys robots and digital requests for payment of fines for committing no offense against any other people, and for not damaging anyone’s property.

Just where did this new American dream of taxes and incarceration come from anyway?

Is natural law and the responsibility it takes to be free men and women truly dead?

Welcome to the Corporation of the United States!

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–Clint Richardson (realitybloger.wordpress.com)
–Thursday, March 29th, 2012

Posted by realitybloger on March 29, 2012

https://realitybloger.wordpress.com/2012/03/29/beware-under-cover-bunnies-this-easter/