I'm not trying to defend my home state but I had the same thing happen to me on the Outer Banks of NC. Of course I had VA tags and I was sure I was not speeding but the cost to take two days off from work, hotel etc. was more than the $500 attorney fee to make it go away...

Oh, another new law that Virginia enacted effective 7/1/2017 is that you can be ticketed for driving too slow in the left lane... Now that's one I wish they would enforce...

Make it where the local courts and agencies don't get to keep the traffic ticket money and watch this problem vanish immediately.

quote:

Originally posted by Monk:
Make it where the local courts and agencies don't get to keep the traffic ticket money and watch this problem vanish immediately.

That's how it is in NC. Speeding ticket is a state-level charge, not local. Court is state district court at the county seat. Anything paid goes into the state's general fund. The rare things that do go local go to the local school board, not the police department.

Which makes it even worse...in NC if you have a Trooper/Deputy/Officer writing a lot of BS tickets, it's not because their agency or town is making a lot of money...it's simply because they are an asshole.

all y'all need to come to north central florida for some edjamukashun on how to run a corrupt city funded with traffic revenue...

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/09/...orruption/index.html


Speed trap city accused of corruption, threatened with extinction
By Ann O'Neill, CNN
updated 9:52 AM EDT, Sun March 9, 2014


Hampton, Florida (CNN) -- How off-the-charts corrupt do you have to be to capture somebody's attention in the Sunshine State?

You can lay claim to a 1,260-foot stretch of busy highway a mile outside of town and set up one of the nation's most notorious speed traps.

You can use the ticket money to build up a mighty police force -- an officer for every 25 people in town -- and, residents say, let drugs run rampant while your cops sit out by the highway on lawn chairs, pointing radar guns at everybody who passes by.

Of course, none of those things are illegal.
But when you lose track of the money and the mayor gets caught up in an oxy-dealing sting, that's when the politicians at the state Capitol in Tallahassee take notice.

Now they want this city gone, and the sooner the better.

A state audit of Hampton's books, released last month, reads like a primer on municipal malfeasance. It found 31 instances in which local rules or state or federal laws were violated in ways large and small.

Read the audit (PDF)

Somewhere along the way, the place became more than just a speed trap. Some say the ticket money corrupted Hampton, making it the dirtiest little town in Florida.

That's saying something, because Florida has seen enough civic shenanigans to lead the nation in federal corruption prosecutions and convictions, according to a watchdog organization called Integrity Florida. The group's 2012 study revealed that more than 1,760 of Florida's public officials had been convicted of corruption since 1976.

"It's a mess," Dan Krassner, the group's co-founder, said of the situation in Hampton.

"Clearly, there has been misuse of public funds and lack of oversight. The cronyism and nepotism is out of control."

As for the city's prospects, "They don't look good."

Sure enough, a criminal investigation is gaining steam. On Friday, Florida Department of
Law Enforcement investigators and the Bradford County Sheriff's detectives searched Hampton City Hall. The door of the police chief's office was removed from its hinges as investigators combed the tin-roofed building for documents and other evidence.

How did things get so bad that lawmakers now think the the dirtiest little town in America has forfeited its right to govern itself?

The local sheriff, never at a loss for a colorful turn of phrase, has a theory: The speeding tickets were such a cash cow, they proved to be Hampton's undoing.

"It became 'serve and collect' instead of 'serve and protect.' Cash register justice," said Sheriff Gordon Smith. "Do y'all remember the old 'Dukes of Hazzard'? Boss Hogg? They make Boss Hogg look like a Sunday school teacher."

Whom did the pipeline of easy money corrupt in this postage stamp-size town with fewer than 500 people? And if money is missing, how much are we talking about, anyway: $200,000, $600,000? One lawmaker has suggested it's as much as $1 million.

And where did it all go? There aren't any McMansions rising up out of the swamp, no country clubs, no casinos, no swimming pools, no stadium, not even a new City Hall, although the old one got a fresh coat of paint when the auditors came to town.

There are some nicer homes with fishing boats tied to docks along Lake Hampton, but they sit outside the city limits. Hampton proper -- several blocks on either side of City Hall -- consists of ramshackle homes with sagging tin roofs. Yards are filled with junk, high grass and overgrown trees and bushes. The proliferation of No Trespassing signs is disconcerting. People here seem to have so little and yet fear losing it so much.

Some old-timers remember when it used to be much grander, the Bradford County seat, with a hotel and a railroad station and large homes with sweeping lawns. Then the fancy folks packed up and moved 10 miles up the road to Starke, taking Hampton's dreams (and the county seat) with them.

The Florida Legislature convened last week, and by the time the session closes at the end of April, Hampton could be history.

Some residents think that would be a crying shame.

Other people say that dissolving Hampton would be more like a mercy killing.

'Crooks or stupid people'

Despite its polite audit-speak and dry title -- "Operational Audit: City of Hampton" -- the 42-page report from the state auditor general makes for riveting reading. Nepotism is rampant. City cars, cell phones and credit cards were misused. The city clerk was overpaid by some $9,000, and employees ran up $27,000 on the city's credit card and charged another $132,000 on an account at the convenience store at the BP station next door to City Hall.

"What's wrong with that picture? That's a lot of cigarettes and beer and what-have-you. That's corrupt as heck," said Jim Mitzel, who was mayor of Hampton from 2000 to 2008. He's sitting on the bleachers of a baseball field at a city park, one of the few things Hampton has done to improve the lives of its 477 residents.
(Not with speeding ticket money, though. Hampton received a grant.)

Mitzel, who is in his early 50s, acknowledges his role in greasing the revenue pipeline from the speed trap out on U.S. 301. But he says he always intended for the money to come back to the city. All he ever saw was shiny new police cars in a place where old cars rust in front yards because there's no code enforcement.

"Where did all the money go?" he asked. "I hate to say it, but in somebody's pocket."

Mitzel's daddy served on the City Council for years. He said the way Hampton's government is set up, the employees had the run of City Hall and they didn't cotton to dissent.

"If you start questioning, they turn things on you. I got out when the getting was good." His salary as mayor -- $125 a month -- wasn't worth the hassle, he said.

The last mayor, Barry Layne Moore, was in office for just a few weeks when he was locked up and accused of being a drug dealer. He says he's not sure whom to blame for his predicament.

On a recent afternoon, Moore shuffled into a visitor's room at the Bradford County Jail in orange plastic slide-on sandals that matched his orange jumpsuit. His hands were cuffed in front of him, his ankles shackled. He took a seat and smiled, looking a little puzzled.

He allegedly sold a single 30-milligram pill of oxycodone -- a "blueberry" in street parlance -- to an undercover sheriff's informant for $20.

He denies the charge and swears he's going to beat the case in court. He's been sitting in jail in Starke, about 10 miles up the road from Hampton, since a few days before Thanksgiving. He can't raise the $4,500 required to bond out.

He's still the mayor, he thinks, although Gov. Rick Scott has suspended him. He thinks he's being made a scapegoat to steer attention away from the audit and Hampton's bigger problems. He talks about himself as a little fish swept up in a big net.

"They made it sound as if I was running some kind of pill mill right out of my house, which is not the case at all," he said. "If I was some kind of drug dealer, I would at least have a car. I ride a bicycle around town. I had my lights cut off twice last year. If I am a dope dealer, why are my lights getting cut off?


"I'm a good guy that got caught up in a bunch of nonsense that was bigger than me."

He grew up in Hampton and worked as a general laborer until he got hurt. The first time, a forklift hit him. The second time, he fell off a roof. He says he is in constant agony and has taken prescription painkillers for the past 22 of his 52 years. He admits that he is addicted to oxycodone, which is what brought him to this little yellow brick jail.

He wasn't in office during the period the audit covers, and he hadn't seen a copy. But from what he's heard, it made it appear as if Hampton were being run by a coterie of crooks.

"I think that's not very far from the truth at all. They are either a bunch of crooks or a bunch of stupid people," he said with a rueful laugh. "I hate to say it like that, but it's the truth. I look like a crook sitting here in an orange suit, don't I?"

The way Moore sees it, he was targeted for arrest "as part of a systematic way to tear the town of Hampton down."

But why would anyone want to do that? Hampton seemed to be doing a pretty good job by itself.

'One heck of a debacle'

There are two reasons for the City of Hampton to exist: to provide water to 477 people and to protect the peace. Some 89 years after it became a city, the audit revealed how badly Hampton botched both jobs.

Nearly half the water the city pumps from the Suwanee River simply vanishes. Leaky pipes are partially to blame, but in some cases, the water goes to buildings without working meters. Some customers may have been getting free water for years.

Hampton's bigger problems grew out of the city's duty to "keep the peace." It led to what everyone calls "the annexation" in the early 1990s.

Somebody got the idea to snap up an easement along both sides of County Road 18 and a 1,260-foot stretch of U.S. 301. Because of the annexation, the bird's eye view of Hampton resembles a lollipop on a stick. Or, depending on your point of view, a fist with a raised middle finger. Most outsiders take the second view.

Hampton set up its speed trap, just like its neighbors, Waldo and Lawtey. Since Hampton has no schools, homes or businesses along 301, traffic safety really wasn't the issue. The focus always was on revenue -- and state and county officials say that's where the city went wrong. It's the crack that allowed corruption to creep in and take hold.

The key players in this chapter of the saga are the county sheriff and Hampton's chief of police.

Almost from the minute Sheriff Gordon Smith was sworn into office, he started hearing about Hampton and its speed trap. He couldn't go to the store or church or a Friday night football game without running into somebody with a gripe about the city.

At first, all of the complaints were about the speed trap. But as time went by, people started complaining about what was going on at City Hall, too. They told him they couldn't talk to anyone else. If they spoke up at City Hall, their water got shut off.

Smith is a bit of an anomaly: a Democrat in conservative North Central Florida. He's a redhead and fair-skinned. When something angers him, he sputters: "That makes my freckles pop."

He had started his law enforcement career on the police force in Starke, where he met another young officer named John Hodges. The two began as friends, but it didn't last.
Hodges became the police chief in Hampton. And what was going on in Hampton was enough to make the sheriff's freckles pop.

Hampton cops were a fixture out on U.S. 301. They sat on lawn chairs, pointing radar guns at unsuspecting motorists. They hid behind recycling bins. As more and more money came in, they idled in slick SUVs, trolled the median strips in riot gear and toted state-of-the-art firepower. Locals gave one the nickname "Rambo" because he slung an AR-15 rifle across his chest.

All to write tickets.

Money generated by the tickets was poured back into law enforcement.

They "were just out there writing tickets galore," recalled Moore, the jailed mayor-for-a-minute. "I mean, you can hear all those sirens all day long -- woo, woo, woo -- lighting up everybody. It got ridiculous."

The American Automobile Association's Auto Club of the South labeled Hampton a "traffic trap" and warned members about the town, along with Lawtey and Waldo, on its maps. The AAA also erected warning billboards along U.S. 301.

People complained that Hampton officers were stopping them without cause, leaving kids and pets in hot cars and impounding cars based on outdated allegations that surfaced in computer searches. The sheriff's department investigated some of the complaints, but those inquiries never went anywhere.

Hodges bristled at the interference. Smith said he asked the chief for a roster of his officers so they could be trained to use the county's radios and computers. He also wanted to verify that people who radioed in and said they were Hampton cops actually were authorized to run criminal records checks.

Hodges handed him a list of four names and indicated that 15 others either worked "undercover" or were assigned to "special details" and would not be named.

The ticket money continued rolling in: $616,960 between 2010 and 2012. Hampton's peak year came in 2011, when 9,515 speeding tickets brought in more than $253,000.

That was the year state Rep. Charles Van Zant got his speeding ticket. He says he drove directly to the courthouse in Starke and paid it. And, he insists, he carries no grudge. But later, he observed, "When I got my ticket, you couldn't hardly pass by Hampton without getting a ticket. You can say that's law enforcement, but no. That's banking using the U.S. highway system."

By 2012, Smith was playing hardball. He questioned whether the city had legally annexed the 1,260-foot stretch of U.S. 301; he said nobody could find a document recording the easement. He also believed that Hampton was illegally tracking cars with its radar outside the city limits.

He persuaded a judge to dismiss Hampton's tickets and cut the city's officers off the county radio and national criminal record database. He ordered his deputies not to accept Hampton's prisoners at the county jail.

Responding to the pressure, Hampton took down its speed trap. The ticket money for 2012 dropped more than 40 percent from the previous year.

Smith and Van Zant weren't finished with Hampton. They wanted to follow the money.

On April Fool's Day 2013, Van Zant asked the state auditor general to step in and go over the city's books. Lots of money was coming in, he observed, and Hampton had plenty of police officers and shiny new cars, but there was no sign that other services had improved.

Hodges did not return CNN's calls requesting comment. He has retired from his $400-a-week job as chief, leaving Hampton without a police force.

The sheriff's department has been patrolling the city for more than a year. Hodges has said he plans to run against Smith in the next election.

He told a local newspaper, The Gainesville Sun, that he considers the audit a one-sided political "witch hunt," even though he acknowledged he didn't read it.

more at the link

quote:

Originally posted by TigerDore:

quote:

Originally posted by 911Boss:
Curious, if you don't mind saying, what did the attorney and any other cost (traffic school, etc.) add up to?

The attorney's fee was about $250. The driving school was about $50 or $100, I cannot recall now. The court costs will be about $80, so I am out somewhere in the neighborhood of $400. The fine for reckless driving could have equaled or exceeded that, and then I would have a mark on my record that could cause my insurance to skyrocket or even be canceled. And if I had been forced to travel to the court, several times, the costs would have been in the thousands. All things considered, the attorney fee and driving course were a bargain.

All part of the "game." I knew a guy who got a ticket for driving a vehicle in the left lane with a trailer attached in New Jersey for like $1500 or something stupid. Had about a dozen letters from local attorneys who said give us $300-$400 and it will go away. He picked one, gave them the $300, and it went away.

All part of the "game." I knew a guy who got a ticket for driving a vehicle in the left lane with a trailer attached in New Jersey for like $1500 or something stupid. Had about a dozen letters from local attorneys who said give us $300-$400 and it will go away. He picked one, gave them the $300, and it went away.[/QUOTE]

Judges are Lawyers "All in the Family".... There are signs EVERYWHERE on the NJ Turnpike and Garden State Parkway (As well as all Interstate Highways)"NO TRUCKS - NO TRAILERS" in the this/third Lane. Sorry but your buddy isn't too bright.
I guarantee you, a motorist dimed him out, however.