Monday's Missives

• "It's a whole different ball game now," Lyons says. "They're trying to use police officers to balance the budget on the backs of drivers, and it's too bad. The people we count on to support us and help us when we're on the road are the ones who end up paying the bills, and they're ticked off about it. We might as well just go door to door and tell people, 'Slide us $100 now since your 16-year-old is going to end up paying us anyway when he starts driving.' You can't blame people for getting upset."from car and driver article
• I know law enforcement gets tired of hearing the tired phrase, Shouldn't you be out catching drug dealers and murderers? when they stop someone but, now it's really true.
• I can tell you the city of Fort Worth PD wrote over 30,000 class c violation tickets in one recent month.
• Where I lived in Fort Worth my neighbor found a dead body in his yard one morning. A dead dude just laying there stabbed to death. Behind us a block or two were crack houses and burned out cars lining the streets. Every night you could hear gunfire and on weekends it sounded like a bad day in Fallujah. We slept with guns and carried them to the door night and day. We had guns in our vehicles. The corner store which was owned by some really decent people was robbed so often you couldn't have melted me down and poured me in there after dark.
• And you have hundreds of officers out there writing speeding tickets?
• Not rational
• Not reasonable
• No, don't blame the officers. I know they'd rather take a beating than stroke tickets for 8 hours.
• I was stationed at Fort Hood and like any military post every small town outside of the post was a speed trap. While leaving for the weekend with a buddy once I got a ticket for 75 in a 55 mph zone. I was going the speed limit- I knew better but, the must have cop left 75 mph up on the radar from someone else to show me and I got a ticket.
• Not the only profession that wonders how their image can be so negative but, they wonder.
• Same town would also give guys PIs in stead of DUI when caught driving impaired so the fines would stay in the city no court costs for guys fighting them and still get impound money etc.
• I got a legit ticket there one time though. After I paid the fine I said to the girl (who was quite hot), Look, you got my money isn't there a trash can the other copy can fall into to keep that ticket off my record- please?  If I'm lyin' I'm dyin' she said,  We'll talk about it over drinks...
• It didn't go on my record.