Editorial: Pay-as-you-go police

Maybe it’s not such a bad idea: fining demonstrators $200 for arrests, making crime a pay-as-yo-go proposition.

Pawlenty's proposal would have two immediate effects, as far I can see.
First, it would further radicalize the peace movement. Those who didn't want to pay the fine and saw the police and the military as essentially illegal and immoral would be encouraged to accelerate the level of their acts of civil disobedience and vandalism, and those who committed acts of civil disobedience out of religious conviction would probably conclude they couldn't in good conscience pay the fine and would choose to spend the time in jail, thereby causing further expense to the state.

Second, all residents of Minneapolis pay for police service through their property taxes, but Pawlenty is introducing the very important precedent that police work should be paid for by user fees. The largest expense in the police budget is protecting property and directing traffic downtown. In addition to their property taxes, downtown businesses (according to the Pawlenty Precedent) would be assessed for the police that are protecting their businesses, for the arrests of shoplifters, for the traffic cops directing traffic on the street outside. Visiting dignitaries would be billed for additional police protection. The Metrodome and Target Center would be billed for the extra costs in traffic and security. I wonder if the Federal Government could be billed for the additional costs in security resulting from their Iraq War which has angered more than a billion Muslims.

This is an exciting concept. It will reduce property taxes for the citizens of Minneapolis, and place the costs of police protection on the people who are using them: suburbanites, like people from Eagan, Pawlenty's home town, who own the downtown businesses and can afford tickets to the big games and who come into our city and use our police without paying for them.

Pawlenty, you old hockey puck, I'm on your team on this one!