I received a speeding ticket the other day. I was driving 48 miles per hour. I was on Walnut Hill at Greenfield in the middle lane and the guy in the van next to me in the left lane was going faster. The cop was hiding behind a telephone pole.
Turns out the cop wasn’t just any cop – he was a constable with Precinct 3. In response to my very sincere and confused query, ‘Was I speeding?’, he gave me a ticket for $221. Yeh, you read that right. For going 48 mph.
To add insult to injury, he was one of those ‘I have complete power and control over you. I can be arrogant and overbearing because you are no more then an insignificant female who shouldn’t have a license anyway and there’s not a darned thing you can do about it’ kinda guys.
I attempted to find out if a) constables are allowed to issue traffic tickets as I thought their job was to serve warrants, and b) what my options were to do some sort of defensive driving thing and not have to cough up the bucks.
Just my initial on line investigation into the process and paperwork involved in doing the defensive driving thing ate up an hour. Didn’t give me any idea of how much the defensive driving thing would cost, told me I’d have to fill out a whole bunch of papers, have them notorized and still pay fees. I’m just guessing here but I think, after all that and then having to attend some classes (I don’t know how long defensive driving courses take), I maybe would’ve saved $40 bucks but I ended up paying the $221 online at njmcdirect and was done with it.
But while I was investigating I found out that according to state law Constables are supposed to serve misdemeaneor warrants, eviction notices and subpoenas, that in Dallas County 92,000 warrants have gone unserved, and that 49 million is the amount of money Constables wrote in traffic tickets in the last two years.
The very next day I saw that same lovely Constable pop a guy on Ferndale and Lakemere. Don’t know where he set up that speed trap.
In my 16 years of living here I’ve never seen a Constable issue traffic citations. I have a theory: Somehow, someway, this invasion of Constables in my Lake Highlands neighborhood has something to do with the Trinity Toll Road controversary. In my heart I think this is some politician’s creative way of ‘teaching folks a lesson’. Don’t know who’s behind it. But I’ll bet that’s the case.
Y’all better slow it down to 25 and get your tail lights replaced. This may go on for a while.
