Zero-tolerance plan only gives a perception of fighting crime

Zero-tolerance plan only gives a perception of fighting crime

I must say that the recent zero-tolerance blitz was nothing but a joke in issuing citations to minor traffic offenders. Seriously, in all my years living in Youngstown, I’ve never been pulled over by a Youngstown police officer and never had any past driving issues until recently.

As I was being pulled over, I wondered, what did I do? When the officer came to my car and asked for my license and registration without telling me why he pulled me over, I asked him “aren’t you supposed to tell me what you pulled me over for first?” Supposedly, I “rolled” a stop sign, which basically means I didn’t come to a complete stop. Now, this particular stop sign is not near the corner so it’s hard to realize it‘s there; it’s not like I ran it and just kept going. Later, I came back to this area and watched how other drivers approached this stop sign, and surprisingly they all did the same thing. Therefore, this tells me that this officer could’ve stayed in that spot all day and literally wrote citations for “rolling” a stop sign all day, instead of spending time doing real police work.

This type of policing is a reason why a lot of people dislike police, especially when you live in a high-crime area where some people feel there are more important issues to focus on. I mean, is Youngstown really known for having the highest minor traffic offenses in the country? This type of policing is more what I would expect from Poland, Boardman, Canfield, Austintown, Liberty and Coitsville but not the YPD. These other township police don’t have the challenge of dealing with major crime problems as the YPD does because they are simply not high crime areas. If focusing on minor traffic offenses is to help deter major criminal offenses, I would really like to know where this has worked.

All in all, it seems that right now the YPD is more concerned about minor offenses just to show stats that they are doing something instead of dealing with more major crime issues. They’re building a perception that they are doing everything they can do to deter more violent crimes, when in reality this is not the case.

Matthew Livingston, Youngstown