This idea always makes me angry. As a doctor and as a member of a community I am always kind and affectionate to children. Anyone who says I shouldn't be can fuck off back to paranoid lala land.
HalfEarthMedic
After all this time I'm still undecided on Rudd but I'm sympathetic to this argument. He's cautious to a fault but moves where he can and does make real progress, not always where it's most needed but where it's achievable.
TBH I think the pattern is more that he can move quickly when Murdoch agrees work him.
No, it is of course a shitty thing to do to steal a scooter. What I am saying is that this is an unreasonable way for police to behave. See my other comment in this thread.
With regards to this being a deterrent to other thieves, how? The police didn't let anyone know they were doing it and didn't let anyone know after the fact, the only reason anyone knows about it is that an investigative reporter dug it up.
Yep, turns out not everyone with a disability is missing an arm. This is what the NDIS is for. Certain types of politicians can't stand that we are spending a large amount of money on helping people but don't blink at spending even larger sums on phallic underwater machines of death.
There are ways of doing this without entrapment. If they want to catch bike and scooter thieves they can stake out the bike racks. I suspect no sane person leaves their bike unlocked there so they have to contrive an artificial situation to entice someone to commit a crime. How is this valuable policing? Had the police not bought a scooter and left it unlocked no crime would've been committed.
I have no illusions that the young fellow in question is an upstanding citizen but how is public interest served here? One kid gets a fine and arguably may hesitate before doing the same thing again but the problem is not this one kid, it is systemic and were it not for this news article no-one would even know about it meaning it is useless even for deterrence.
It is a waste of everyone's time, drags a kid who likely already has a shit life through the courts further alienating him, and did not even protect the property of a real person.
The police deliberately created an opportunity for a crime to be committed, had they not created that situation the crime would not have been committed. It is a textbook case of entrapment. You may think it's valid, but it is entrapment.
Dr Monterosso said it was difficult to find statistics to show whether this method of proactive policing reduced crime.
In order for it to be plausible that it would reduce crime the police would need to be open about the fact that they are using this tactic. The only reason more than a handful of people actually know about this is the sound journalism by Mya Kordic
It may be legal but it is thoroughly immoral and one suspects if it was a white kid with wealthy parents it would've been chucked out.
Its absurd to think that traffic fines are any substantial part of the budget but here you go, I did 2-3 minutes of research for you.
In the 2023-24 financial year, fines issued from road safety cameras amounted to $473 million. This figure represents a fraction of the overall cost of speed and distracted driving and seatbelt-related crashes. Link
The total state budget is 111.7 billion. Link
ie. Around half of 1%
I used victoria just because when i typed "traffic camera revenue" into DDG it was the second result.
I wondered about this also, FWIW my solution would be self reporting verified at the time of vehicle sale or end of vehicle life. I believe some states require periodic roadworthy checks which would also be an opportunity for verification.
Real time vehicle tracking is obviously unacceptable.
Idealistic teachers don't last because they aren't treated like professionals with judgement and autonomy. In my opinion this is a bigger problem than pay, although better pay would help and be the morally correct thing to do for such a vital profession.