Limited government advocates are raising alarms over a New York man’s profitable business, of getting drivers fined for running their engines too long.
“What you’re seeing here is weaponization of government by turning individuals into government agents for profit,” warned Andrea Widburg with American Thinker.
The man calls himself “Streeter” and he reports spending up to 9 hours a day bicycling around the city looking for idling vehicles, frequently trucks stopped while making deliveries. In New York City, it’s illegal to idle more than three minutes but that rule is rarely enforced, until “Streeter” comes along to report them.
A citation for idling can run into the thousands of dollars for a truck driver or delivery company. “Streeter” gets a 25% cut of the fines for reporting them. Two years ago, he left his marketing job to go hunting for idlers full time and he now reports making over six figures doing it.
Widburg says offering rewards for tipsters for serious crimes is one thing, but this is a step too far.
“To make it profitable to tattle on people is unconscionable and unAmerican,” she declared.
Trucking advocates call the entire rewards system a “bounty hunter program.”
Widburg sees something even more disturbing in the self righteous attitude of environmental vigilantes like “Streeter.”
“It’s virtue signaling,” she said, “When they think they are saving the environment, it makes them very unforgiving of their fellow citizens, abusive, even fascist.”
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