Helping identify speeders(Volunteers needed to help scare them)

Baltimore Sun ^ | November 23, 2005 | Ruth L. Tisdale

[sickoflibs]

To combat the high volume of speeders through residential areas, Howard County police are sharing some of the responsibility for identifying those speeders with the people they believe know those areas best: the residents. Through the department's Speed Monitoring and Radar Team (SMART) program, citizens are getting the opportunity to wield radar guns and record tag numbers in an effort to slow speeders and make their neighborhoods safer.

Howard County police officials began the program in 1998, after seeing the success of the SMART program in Montgomery County.

Community action "It is a community response to a community program so that they can address the problem before the police are involved," said Howard County police Officer Brandon Justice who taught the program two years ago. According to an analysis released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in June, 32 percent of all traffic-related fatalities were caused by speeding, and fatalities on local roads and in rural communities have significantly increased.

The purpose of the SMART program "is to use peer pressure to solve the problem," Justice said. "If you are driving down the road and you see your neighbor holding a [radar] unit you are less likely to go over the speed limit."

Justice said that participating residents stand near speed-limit signs with the radar guns.

"It takes about an hour and a half to learn how to use the radar unit," Justice said. "We have set classes where people can come and learn how to use it and what they should do."

Letters written Participants turn in tag numbers of speeders to police, who write letters to car owners alerting them to the violation

[sarasmom]

I consistently see a more egalitarian "refusal to abide by civilized societal laws" in my neighborhood.
It's about half and half: female/male, SUV/Econo car, older/younger driver.
Have not had an opportunity to gather political/religious affiliations yet...

[sarasmom]

I once lived on a privately maintained, way out in the country, dirt road in Florida.
Nobody shot "at" the speeding drivers, just their tires.
Since it was an obvious civilian gauntlent, kind of a neighborhood watch meets private speed trap, on steroids,it was not neccessary to actually shoot very often.
Surprisingly, there were also never any witnesses, and no dead kids, on that particular stretch of road.
No burglaries either.
Actually the neighborhood had no reported crime at all.
Wonder why?

[Time4Atlas2Shrug]

That is not the case. Read the story.

[VaGunGuy]

I did read the story, and based my response upon the facts included in the story.

[Time4Atlas2Shrug]

Then you can clearly see that citizens were not being given the power to write tickets or warnings as you claim. They were recording tag numbers and giving that information to the police. They are radaring and it is apparently working as a deterrent. The police do not even write tickets based on the info. they receive.

Again, read the article.

[VaGunGuy]

Once again, I DID read the article, and actually understand what the article says. They are allowing private individuals to check out radar guns. The private individuals run radar on their own. They record license plate numbers of the people they claim are speeding (remember, there's absolutely no evidence except for what the individual says, it's not like the radar guns are attached to a video recording system), and then turn the plate numbers over to the police. The police then, based only upon the word of the non-sworn non-LEO, issue "warnings" to the owner of the vehicle. If you can't understand the dangers inherent in such a completely lax system, you've got "issues".