The Highway Patrol doesn’t do squat on my city streets. Neither does the sheriff. And yes, I am aware of large departments that have traffic divisions. But I don’t live in New York City.
Me neither. But even smaller cities have such units.
I can’t believe that the regular patrolmen are so busy with crime and other calls the traffic violations have gone crazy.
I have no access to our local statistics so any comment would be fruitless. Let’s not forget that local politics often plays a role in law enforcement priorities which can be outside of the realities perceived by the public.
On the other hand, I have anecdotal observations that my local police are adrenalin junkies. If they can’t draw their weapons and act macho it ain’t worth a damn to them. Traffic enforcement is beneath them, unless, of course, they are chasing really bad guys, or their ticket quota is too low at the end of the month. And that’s sad because they could be bringing in several thousand a day just in disabled parking violations alone!
Good enough for what? To show it’s too easy to get a driver’s license in America? To show that lack of high-speed rail service America forces inexperienced or impaired drivers to drive?
And those who think it’s impossible to enforce a 55 mph speed limit, just try driving in a US Army base. Nobody speeds, not because the roads are narrow and curved, but because the consequences of being caught are more serious. We don’t need more police officers to enforce the speed limit strictly. Increase the speeding fines by a factor of 10, suspend the license after 3rd offense, and confiscate the car if found driving on a suspended license. I guarantee you’ll see a noticeable reduction in speeding.
That’s a pretty juvi observation. Some cop gave you a ticket you weren’t to happy with, huh?
Maybe they’re like the cops where I grew up. The cops who broke up a keg party by storming in and shooting the keg several times. They burst in through the door and just blew away that keg. It must’ve made a sudden move.
No, it couldn’t be. Cops are always responsible and anyone who thinks that there might be a town where the police force acts like a bunch of overgrown jock thugs is a ‘juvenile’ who got a ticket they weren’t too happy with. Just like I’m sure those cops couldn’t have found any other way to break up a party of high school kids than firing at the keg in a crowded room.
:eek:
Somebody should have been disiplined or even terminated for that! What department was it?
That would be the Chief of Police and his sole deputy in the town where I grew up (small enough that identifying the name gets a little too close to identifying me in RL). It took years after that for the town to finally get rid of Police Chief Buford T. Rambo, but they finally did it by disbanding the police department.
Last I heard, he (PCBTR) is a cop in some other tiny jurisdiction in PA, and his deputy now has a non-law enforcement job.
These macho savage bullies with badges do exist…and maybe Duckster had a run in with one of those.
Nope, no ticket. Just direct observations with quite a few police incidents, in and out of work.
Okay, how about the guy who made this assertion (in post #4)?
My point would be that there are often other factors contributing to accidents. This site says that in 2005 39% of traffic fatalities were in accidents related to drunk driving (and it implies that some substantial additional percentage were related to drugs). No doubt speeding was involved in many of those, but when a drunk driver is speeding, is the drink or the speed the #1 cause of the problem? Are drunk drivers good about obeying speed limits?
In other words, if we could keep all those damned sober drivers off the road, we could reduce traffic fatalities by 61 percent!