Texas Judge Refuses to be a Part of Traffic Ticket Scheme, Blows the Whistle on Policing for Profit

[TexasTowelie]

[font color=330099]Note: This article is a couple of months old, but it is about one of the speed traps that I drove through frequently on my trips between Brenham and Irving. The town of Calvert has slightly over 600 residents and is on Texas Highway 6 north of Hearne and Bryan-College Station. Nearly every time that I passed through the town I would see the cops either waiting to catch someone or in the process of issuing a speeding ticket--fortunately I knew about the town and never contributed anything to their city budget.[/font]

Calvert, Texas – Retired municipal court judge David Viscarde has recently come forward to expose the use of quotas on speeding tickets. In an exclusive interview this week, Viscarde told WFAA that the police department and the local courts were involved in a revenue collection scheme where officers had quotas for speeding tickets, and judges were pressured to rush the cases through the courts.

Viscarde was a volunteer municipal court judge for over 15 years.

“When I first became a judge, we had one reserve officer. That’s all he did on Friday and Saturday every other weekend. He’d write 100 citations,” Viscarde said.

“Their municipal court is their cash cow,” he added.

Read more: http://thefreethoughtproject.com/judge-quits-speeding-ticket-quotas-blows-whistle/

[SusanCalvin]

1. Shades of Ferguson.

Except they were (still are?) preying on their own citizens.

[imthevicar]

5. Shades of Ferguson?!

Shades of the U.S.!

[Sherman A1]

6. Precisely

and while Ferguson and many other communities in St. Louis County are more than guilty of using their police forces and courts in such a manner, it is hardly alone in this methodology.

It is truly unfortunate that government officials anywhere believe that this system is a correct means of doing things. Changing this must come from the people demanding more accountability from their elected officials who are the ones who directly or indirectly put these policies into place.

[tazkcmo]

7. Exactly.

Take note of the increased presence of cops the last week of every month. In Kansas City, MO., SW Trafficway is literally lined with cops generating revenue for the city. Nothing to do with public safety.

[valerief]

2. Sickening. Heaven forbid they tax the filthy, filthy rich in that god-forsaken

state and pass it along to local governments.

[TexasTowelie]

3. The situation in Hearne is that the white people in that school district send their children out of

town to Mumford which is nothing more than than the intersection of a county road, a farm-to-market road and where the Union Pacific intends to set up a rail classification yard. Both Hearne and Calvert school districts are considered to be low performing districts.

[SusanCalvin]

4. This, unfortunately, is nothing new.

Small town speed traps have been around as long as I can remember. I'm glad someone called this one out.

[packman]

8. Echo previous post - nothing new

When I lived in the days long ago in Pennsylvania, the small towns scattered along the river valley I lived in filled their coffers with speeding tickets. The main road (only one really that went from one end of the valley to the other) had a 50 MPH limit BUT each little crappy ten house "town" would and could set their own speed limits. They would post 15 MPH signs on their "City" limits along the highway and wait like spiders. The two or three cops in the burg would have cars lined up sometimes two, three, four deep waiting to be written up.

[johnsolaris]

9. web site

Hi,

This is as biz as usual for any small Texas town. I traveled a lot at one time & made sure when I came into a small town I was going below the speed limit.

There was a website I checked quite a bit at one time that listed all the speedtraps. It had locations, times the cops were usually there & other info that was valuable. I have forgotten the name, but a quick Google should find it. Texas has a lot of speedtraps, but is by far not the only abuser.