Tulsa City Councilor Wants Speed Trap
A Bubbaworld Editorial/Opinion
Tulsa City Councilor John Eagleton has floated a trial balloon for the creation of what can only be deemed as a plan to turn Tulsa into yet another Oklahoma speed trap town.
Eagleton's grand plan involves hiring additional police officers whose sole purpose would be to write traffic tickets to basically pay their own salaries and to create a dandy revenue stream for the city.
Eagleton has suggested that each new officer would be expected to write at least 20 traffic tickets per-day and then surmised that with the minimal traffic fine of $120 per-ticket that each new 'traffic cop' would generate approximately $500,000 per-year in a city where the current 'take' from traffic tickets is already approximately $9 million each year.
Councilor Eagleton was quoted in the Tulsa World as stating that in addition
to reducing accidents:
there is a collateral benefit of generating a revenue stream that, in fact,
pays for itself. Traffic enforcement strikes me as a no-brainer.
My question to the administration is why aren't we doing this?
I may have a bonehead idea, but do the math. The figures showed
that a traffic officer generates about $500,000 per year.
In a City Council meeting Tulsa Budget Director Pat Connelly pointed out
that additional police officers who would focus on traffic violations could
be problematic for the city. Connelly reportedly told councilors:
We would have to analyze what realistically could be achieved in those
tickets, and it would have to be clear that this isn't a revenue-raising effort
but a public safety action.
Connelly also told councilors that a new police officer costs the city about $100,000 the first year, including costs for training, salary and equipment and that in subsequent years the cost is between approximately $60,000 and $70,000.
When one considers that under Eagleton's scheme the city would stand to net between $400,000 and $430,000 per-year from each new traffic cop hired how can anyone not consider such a plan to be a revenue-raising effort?
Eagleton's plan is sheer folly and for multiple reasons.
First, it assumes that there is a vast untapped and unticketed supply of
scofflaws available in Tulsa. Eagleton presents no evidence to
support this theory.
Second, it assumes that current Tulsa police officers are either failing to
do their duty to uphold our traffic laws or that they are overwhelmed by
the sheer numbers of such offenders. Once again Eagleton presents
no evidence to support this theory.
Third, such a plan imposes a per-shift 'ticket quota' on police officers.
That is and always has been a bad thing in that it encourages officers that
have not attained their daily quota to 'cheat a little' near the end of their
shift. Else they incur the wrath of their supervisor.
Fourth, if such a plan is implemented it will not be long before those that
can avoid Tulsa do so owing to the city acquiring the reputation
of 'a speed trap town'. This will only damage area businesses that
rely on customers from the suburbs for a portion of their revenues.
This will cost the city of Tulsa in lost sales tax dollars, dollars which fund
city government and services including police and fire departments.
Fifth, once a town or city becomes 'speed trap oriented' and pressures are
exerted upon police officers to meet a quota or lose their jobs the over-all
quality of law enforcement declines, corruption flourishes and the quality of
life of the town's residents diminishes.
Councilor Eagleton's idea is not only flawed, it is sheer idiocy. Councilor Eagleton and anyone that supports his speed trap scheme should go back to school and study the law of unintended consequences because they clearly played 'hookey' on the day that lesson was covered previously.
