Posted on 06/25/2002 9:54:20 AM PDT by Sir Gawain
Zipping along South Holly Street on May 28 in his white Pontiac, Tim George didn’t see the little orange sign warning that he was headed for a new kind of Medford speed trap.
George noticed the white van with the radar gun and the large speed sign just as he drove into range of Medford police’s newest traffic-enforcement device — the roving photo-radar van.
"I saw them take my picture, said George, 46, of Medford. "I knew they had me."
Just 15 minutes into its first shift nabbing speeders, the radar van had its first victim — Lt. Tim George, commander of the Medford Police Department’s patrol division.
One of Medford’s tops cops will get his citation this week for traveling 38 mph in a 25-mph zone, proving not only that the van works but also that it doesn’t look the other way for the men in blue.
"I should have slowed down, but hey, you get caught, you get caught," George said. "But the worst part now is that everybody knows."
The van and red-light cameras at two busy intersections anchor a new $200,000 program to get Medford drivers to slow down.
The van, with an officer inside, parks on a residential street and signs are placed 100 feet on each side. A radar gun logs speeds of passing vehicles, and the speeds are listed on a read-out board.
Those traveling over a pre-set limit have their pictures snapped, and $109 tickets are sent to registered owners.
In George’s case, the camera caught him at 3:45 p.m. in his unmarked patrol car but not responding to a call, he said.
The ticket was sent to the city of Medford, which notified George.
"I haven’t seen my citation yet, but I hear it’s coming my way," George said.
George said this will be his first traffic ticket in 30 years of driving, and a check of state crime records shows he has a clean record.
"If our people go through, they get a citation," Deputy Chief Ron Norris said. "Nobody’s exempt from this."
And that includes a worried Norris himself.
"I haven’t gotten one — yet," Norris said. "I started this program, and you watch. I’ll get one."
Norris said he intends to ask the Medford City Council on July 3 to extend the program from low-volume residential streets to busy thoroughfares plagued with speeders. Streets such as Central Avenue, Court Street and Riverside Avenue could be next for the radar truck, Norris said.
As for George, he pledges to pay his fine and complete traffic school to clear his record. He intends to keep it that way.
"I have learned my lesson — slow down," George said. "I don’t hurry anymore."
Years ago, I went through a particularly bad divorce. I was working in another city, four hours from my kids. That fact, plus the fact that I was in a reckless frame of mind in general, prompted me to begin speeding as a rule--which I had never really been in the habit of doing before.
I got my first three speeding tickets (one of them, as it happens, was "doing 38 in a 25") and then decided to get a radar detector. After three MORE tickets (including one where I wasn't even speeding; it was the dead of night on a dark road, I "saw" the cop coming a full five minutes before he caught up with me, and then as he started to pass he saw the lights ont he detector and pulled me over) I decided speeding wasn't really worth the hassle, the money and the increased insurance premiums.
Since then, I just don't speed, and somehow I've managed to survive (no thanks owing to the leadfoots that infest my community, though; some of these people are DANGEROUS).
I go the speed that I think is safe, and if you do that and pay attention to the road (and the sneaky hiding cops) you won't get tickets, most likely.
No, it's called "deliberately setting the speed limit too low to generate traffic ticket revenue."
England, home of Big Brother, is ahead of the curve when it comes to spying and prying upon its subjects.
And we're always right behind them. If you want to see what the US will look like in a few years, go to London, and see the millionS of surveillence cameras.
When they were first sold to our community by Mark Begich, an ambitious, 2nd generation, 'Stage-Struck' DemocRAT politician, he said they would only be enforcing/writing tickets during school hours, and in school zones. 6 mos later I'd pass one set up on a very hard working, blue-collar family neighborhood street at 7:30AM, every Sunday morning.
I'd always creep by at 5-10mph and yell out the window at the guy, "Hey Mr Photo-Nazi ... why don't you get yourself a real, honest job ... one you don't have to be ashamed of". After about a month of this, he installed a little pull down shade for his window, so folks couldn't see him sitting in there hiding behind the paper and monitoring his little TV screen. It became a game for me to come up with another truthful and shaming comment to leave him with each week.
I can't even begin to tell you how good everyone in the community felt after our grass-roots campaign forced 'Photo-Radar' onto the ballot, they were SOUNDLY defeated, and summarily driven from our town.
It was a BIG defeat for the liberal-socialists around here, and a HUGE victory for citizen-activism and a much needed spiritual boost in the middle of 1994 and the oh so dark and troublesome days of another real NAZI ... Herr Krington.
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