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Every day, there’s a new picture being shared online of a police or a municipality officer breaking the law. These officers are either not wearing helmets on their bikes, or running a red light, or talking on the phone instead of facilitating traffic and other countless violations. Unfortunately, barely any actions are ever taken against these cops which is quite frustrating specially for Lebanese citizens who do respect the law. So how should police officers be punished when they break the law? Should they be more severely fined?

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The answer is yes because law enforcement people are entrusted with great power over all of us and should act as role models for others to follow. Police officers should be more afraid of breaking the law and their punishment should be much more severe than ordinary law breakers. Moreover, stiffer fines will force bad cops to either give up their badges or straighten up and will filter out the good cops in the force. That’s how things should ideally work and how we will be able one day to enforce traffic laws in Lebanon.

A week ago, I suggested one way to report bad cops through a platform I called “3layye wou 3leik”. The platform encourages citizens to respect the law and report any violations they see in an attempt to reduce their fines. I’m almost sure such an initiative will never be taken seriously but there’s no harm in sharing the idea and getting some feedback on it.

On a lighter note, few Lebanese came up with a funny list of fines for violations involving police officers or related to ministers. The fines set were outrageous in response to the newly introduced heavy fines in the new traffic law.

Here’s the first list (Don’t know the source):
new traffic law

And a funnier one by Gino:
ginos