talltex wrote:Liberty wrote:Revenue enhancing is Revenue enhancing by any other name.As a business owner and a City Councilman, I have had our department officers parking on my commercial properties on the main highway through town on the weekends, running radar without asking permission. Under a previous Police Chief, he was encouraging officers to write tickets and generate revenue. I was at office catching up on paperwork early one Easter Sunday morning around 8:30am, and noticed a squad car pull into my property across the highway from my office and park up under a canopied area which hid the car from view pretty effectively. A few minutes later I observed him pull out rapidly with lights flashing and he stopped a vehicle about 2 blocks up the highway. I got in my truck and drove past them as he was writing out a citation and saw it was young family in "Sunday dress", probably on their way to church or family get together. When he pulled back into my property I walked over and asked him how fast they were going (it's a 30mph limit in that 5 block area then changes to 40), and he said they were going 37mph. I asked him if he issued a warning or citation and he said it was a speeding ticket. I asked him to put himself in their position and how it would make him feel if he was driving through a town, with his wife and kids, going to meet their family for church or a family gathering and got a speeding ticket like that. He replied "probably not very good I guess". I told him considering the fact that they weren't endangering anyone and there was light traffic, he could have created a positive impression for our town, by giving them a written or verbal warning and wishing them "Happy Easter", and they would have told their family and friends about how nicely he was treated in our town. Instead, he will be talking about us running a "speed trap" for out of town travelers on Easter Sunday, and that will hurt our town much more than the $75 revenue will help it. I told him to tell the rest of the officers and the Chief, that they were not to use any of my property to run radar unless they asked my permission in the future. The Mayor and the Council discussed the volume of tickets being written with the Chief and told him we did NOT want to get a reputation as a "speed trap" and to tone it down. We had the same discussion the following month, when the report showed even more tickets written that month. He argued with us that he was the Chief, and how the department operated was his decision to make. At the next council meeting, we terminated him and got a new Chief.
There are definitely some police chiefs, and even some city officials who like to use traffic enforcement as a source of revenue. Studies have shown, that by factoring in the cost of training and paying officers, the cost of the equipment, etc., that it was a very poor source for revenue. There "was" a police chief in my home town, a few years ago that decided he was going to crack down, on speeders on the interstate highway, and postulated the revenue they could generate, would be substantial. This lasted until they wrecked two patrol cars, and had an officer in the hospital, that they decided, that it was not in the city's best interest to commit that much time and effort into the plan. He was subsequently replaced, with one who is more interested in reducing crime, than catching someone going a few miles an hour over the speed limits. This was addressed in the Texas Legislature when "quotas" were being imposed on officers in some locations, and the practice was outlawed.
