Texas woman arrested for warning drivers of a speed trap.

[tracy]

You know, I always thought the idea behind a speed limit was to get folks to slow down and be safer on the road, not to be a fund raiser for the town coffers.

Texas towns like their little speed traps. Great source of ready fines. 

[ghouck]

Come on, you don't just mess with police operations for no reason then get mad when they come after you.  She over stepped her bounds here and they got her for it.  What she did was stupid and she's lucky she got off as easily as she did.

Seriously? There are several things wrong with this way of thinking, as others have pointed out. I'm no rebel, but I really can't stand the "Don't question the man" mentality. We the people are THEIR bosses, not vive-versa.

[Raffine]

You know, I always thought the idea behind a speed limit was to get folks to slow down and be safer on the road, not to be a fund raiser for the town coffers.

Texas towns like their little speed traps. Great source of ready fines. 

Whenever someone mentions they were recently in Mississippi I ask them if they got a speeding ticket.

The answer is almost always "Yes".

[tracy]

You know, I always thought the idea behind a speed limit was to get folks to slow down and be safer on the road, not to be a fund raiser for the town coffers.

Texas towns like their little speed traps. Great source of ready fines. 

Whenever someone mentions they were recently in Mississippi I ask them if they got a speeding ticket.

The answer is almost always "Yes".

Speeding in the South is not a good idea,looks like.

[alandhopewell]

You know, I always thought the idea behind a speed limit was to get folks to slow down and be safer on the road, not to be a fund raiser for the town coffers.

     Exactly; this sounds kinda like this situation....

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-67750697.html

[AndyC]

What also gets me is the shortsightedness of some cops. Aside from the negative publicity that tends to follow when police overreact to some little thing, there is the question of just what good it does in a case such as this. There's a woman who clearly doesn't respect what the police are doing. Maybe she thinks they're hassling ordinary folks who mostly don't deserve it. Maybe she thinks it's a big cash grab, or that the idea of a speed trap us underhanded. Whatever it is, she's decided to strike this small blow. Or in the case of the grandma feeding parking meters, she naively thought the important thing was that the parking time got paid for, when the cop really wanted to write tickets and fine people.

And what do the cops do? Act in a way that reinforces all of the negative assumptions. Maybe it will deter her from doing it again, and maybe it will just make her less respectful of the police. Respect and fear are, of course, not the same thing. I think it's because people already fear police that they jump at opportunities to stick it to the man in some small way. Maybe people will look at what happened, as we are doing, and draw their own conclusions about the way the cops responded. Maybe others will imitate the behavior in solidarity.

The point is, the police need the respect and trust and help of the public. That's what community policing is about. If somebody is interfering with your ticket writing, there is surely a way to handle the situation that won't perpetuate the attitude that is causing her to do it in the first place.

[Allhallowsday]

You know, I always thought the idea behind a speed limit was to get folks to slow down and be safer on the road, not to be a fund raiser for the town coffers.

I was wondering if such in Texas were as it is here in New Jersey.  In NJ, my understanding is whatever fines are collected go largely to the state, and the percentage netted by any township is negligible.  People speed every day in my neighborhood, I'm one of those big mouth neighbors that yells "slow down!" or "It's 25 here"... and I used to think "why don't they come down on these speeders and make money?"  Only once every few months do I see a speeder stopped; I think 'cause the twp doesn't make any money. 

[AndyC]

You know, I always thought the idea behind a speed limit was to get folks to slow down and be safer on the road, not to be a fund raiser for the town coffers.

I was wondering if such in Texas were as it is here in New Jersey.  In NJ, my understanding is whatever fines are collected go largely to the state, and the percentage netted by any township is negligible.  People speed every day in my neighborhood, I'm one of those big mouth neighbors that yells "slow down!" or "It's 25 here"... and I used to think "why don't they come down on these speeders and make money?"  Only once every few months do I see a speeder stopped; I think 'cause the twp doesn't make any money. 

That's the thing. The cops don't spend a lot of time nailing people speeding down residential streets, where it's most dangerous. Granted, they lack the resources to do that, but it's also about how many tickets they can write in the time they spend somewhere. Where I do see speed traps, I wonder how many people they ticket who really didn't intend to speed. I start to wonder when I see cops set up at the bottom of a big hill, or in places where it's not quite obvious that the speed limit is lower. This is not always the case, but it seems cops do frequently target spots where people are more likely to drive faster without meaning to.