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"Zealot Eagleton, flawed logic and all, is befuddled by dwindling ticket revenues not covering costly city expenditures. Yet he states, in other words, that 'patrols run entire shifts without citing a single infraction'. It seems loose enforcement is the underlying issue, not officers completely overwhelmed with ticket writing. If the fundamental issue is truely light enforcement, then clearly, throwing costly technology at this problem is not the solution. If the problem is police not writing tickets because they don't have the latest "gadgets & toys", then that's another problem altogether.
Further, a two week trial period of these devices with 'deliberate and aggressive enforcement' provides NO PROOF whatsoever as to the (imaginary) benefits of these devices beside the fact that stepping up enforcement itself is what makes a real difference. It seems quite obvious that near half a million dollars worth of ticket dohickeys (@ ~$8000 a piece!? Are you F'ing kidding me?!?) would be a disastrous waste of money. Bad Zealot, bad!
Additionally, he hasn't even attempted to account for the possibility of lighter traffic, carpools, or more sensible driving due to recent economic circumstances and record high gas prices. And further, just what cash strapped families need right now is additional expense from traffic tickets. Could it be that police have been focusing more recently on real crimes? Case in point, compare the current murder rate to the same time period last year.
Frankly, the only real perceivable danger is motorists running red lights and aggressive highway driving (which is generally accompanied by speeding anyways). Save the speed traps for neighborhoods where there are kids and it's truely dangerous to speed.
As for the t-bone incident, we all have our anecdotal accounts of bad driving. I live in Brady in the 900 block and call it Interstate Denver. The way people fly through here, it's like the Tisdale Parkway. Yet I've only seen one traffic stop near my home in over a year and a half. All across America people generically state, "we have the worst drivers in ___fill_in_blank___".
What the city needs is fair and adequete enforcement with input from the citizens while utilizing reasonably available tools (like the internet and good old pen and paper) . They work just fine and much faster than Zealot's claimed (and overblown) 20 minutes per stop. With my reasonable share of tickets (received the old-fashioned way), it's never taken more than 5-10 minutes with all documents in order. If we need a high tech solution, I recommend a traffic website where citizens can post to the authorities where they regularly see a specific need for concentrated enforcement efforts. Now that makes sense!"
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