Sunday, August 06, 2006

1/2 of Springfield Police Department patrolling I-105

Robin's Commentary--

We're told that in Springfield that during the day time that the only have four officers on average patrolling our streets and how shorthanded they are, so I was very flattered when I saw half the department tag teaming radar by Weyerhaeuser today, a tactic that the state police used to do.

This involves one officer sitting in the center median standing outside of his car with his "laser" radar gun standing at the same stance that one would use when they get ready to fire a weapon and looking like he's getting ready to blast an oncoming vehicle into the next county, while about a half-mile down the road sits a chase car [with another radar gun] waiting for the radio call.

What makes it very interesting about this particular roadway, just from my observations from daily travel is I see more people on this particular roadway doing 10 miles an hour under the speed limit [of course I always find them] then I see going over the speed limit. [just my opinion, I do not have the facts to back that up]

Personally, if given a choice, I'd rather have the uniformed police officer at the side of the road instead of using photo radar, however, I think it really an issue of how best to use our limited police resources.
Given the choice, would you rather...
A) Have your tax dollars pay for the police to watch for speeders on the freeway?
B) Have your tax dollars pay for police to patrol the neighborhoods and investigate crimes, etc.?
I choose option B)

4 comments:

Bob said...

Well, geeze Robin. If they were patrolling Main street, they might have to do something about Meth Mart.

Anonymous said...

hey, they got to go where the revenue-creating offenders are, right?

Anonymous said...

It IS about money. If they spend time arresting crack heads, it will fill the jail and not the bank account. The speeders on the freeway have jobs to get to or vacations to enjoy and they have money to pay the tickets. Maybe they need to re-define 'protect and serve'.

Anonymous said...

It actually has more to do after the horrible accident that killed an entire family from a drunken driver a couple of months ago.

As for downtown there are too many out of state property owners that do not care what is in their building just as long as they are collecting rent. As for the meth mart one of the big ones was closed down, Mi Pueblo.