"Staggering Numbers" Are Really Tip Of The Iceberg

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In yet another example of poor description, The Sun Star calls the 50,000 traffic citations issued in 2008 in Cagayan De Oro a "staggering number."

I will say without hesitation (and I can't imagine that anybody would disagree with me) that for every ticket that was handed out in CDO in 2008, another 199 traffic violations went unpunished.

Get this: From those 50,000 traffic citations, the police department collected 2.4 million in fines. In case you're a little slow in math, that is 50 pisos... $1... per violation. Holy shit!

I talked with Mike Turner about this very subject. You could solve police corruption, bad traffic, and the city's empty coffers in the simplest way possible: The same thing they do in Pattaya, Thailand. Give every police officer in Cagayan De Oro a ticket book of 50 tickets, and send him out to a street corner for the day and have him write tickets on any traffic violations he sees. Have that police officer take the keys to the vehicle of the driver that broke the law, and keep those keys until the driver returns with a receipt from the police station saying that the fine is paid. Let the police officer keep 20% of every fine paid on tickets he writes.

One police officer writing fifty 200-piso tickets per day, 5 days per week, would make an extra 50,000 pisos per month.

If, instead of 1-in-200 traffic violations were cited in the city, that level rose up to 1-in-20, and every ticket fine was an average of 200 pisos, instead of 2.4 million, the police department (and the city) would write 500,000 tickets for a total of 80 million pisos (after the citing officer gets his 20%)... a 40-fold increase... definitely an amount of money that would probably do some good in CDO.

And, of course, all of those shitty drivers would instantly clean up their act, and traffic would flow better.

So, to my friends at The Sun Star: 50,000 tickets written is not staggering. What would be staggering is to implement my plan: Enforce the law for real, give every police officer in Cagayan De Oro an extra 50,000 pisos per month (earned legally), put an extra 80 million pisos in city coffers for civic programs, and clean up the godawful traffic snarls and dangerous driving of Cagayan de Oro caused by the other 199 drivers who didn't also get tickets.