Had you been rushing up and down Martin Luther King Parkway here in Beaumont town this afternoon you may have found yourself busted by one of three or so motorcycle cops. MLK is always a pretty good place to get caught by the motorcycle patrol although they can show up just about anywhere. Today was a bit different although not unique.
Three of the police department’s motorcycle patrolmen were lined up next to each other ready to roll while just down the road a short distance was an unmanned BPD License and Weight cruiser with its emergency lights flashing to beat the band, or the speeders, I should say.
This is one of the traps the department uses every now and then. You might call it a “Move it on over” trap although Ol’ Hank Sr. probably wouldn’t have cared for it any more than many of us. Of course, were he caught Ol’ Hank might have been passed out from drinking Jesus in a Jar so he might not give a dog’s bark.
Now I am not big on police entrapment of any kind. I liken the entire field to what we used to refer to as “calling up fish.” You’d have an old crank-type tellyphone along with you in the boat. You (not you, the rhetorical “you”) would stick the bare wires in the water and use Mr. Bell’s version of “crank bait” to electrocute fish. Speed traps of any kind, likewise, do not curry nationwide favor. That is why there are so many places on the Internet one might look to discover the location of a possible speed trap.
I am not saying that “speed limit enforcement” is necessarily a bad thing. It is what LEOs do. They may even catch someone who needs to be caught.
Other stings I don’t have great feelings for at all. Prostitution or “John” stings is one example. It gets people off the street for a short period of time. That’s about it. Such arrests make the police look like the “moral outrage coppers.” Bad stuff.
I don’t have anything against the local motorcycle cops. They do probably a more efficient job in traffic enforcement than anyone else in the department. But the “Move it on over sting,” I feel, pretty much sucks. I could’ve said it was reprehensible but let’s just call an “is” what it is. The law is to get drivers to slow down for any emergency vehicle that is pulled over, not just police cars. I have no problem with that whatsoever. I have been at wreck scenes or fires, on the side of busy road, and I know the danger present. The Texas Department of Public Safety defines the law as such:
“The move-over or slow-down law requires drivers nearing stopped emergency vehicles with emergency lights activated to either slow down or change lanes. Specifically, the law states a driver must either slow down 20 miles per hour below the speed limit or vacate the lane closest to the stopped emergency vehicle that has emergency lights activated if the road has multiple lanes traveling in the same direction. (If the speed limit is below 25 mph, the driver must slow down to 5 mph.) Drivers should only move over if they can safely and legally do so; otherwise, they should slow down.”
I find that law completely reasonable. But, it is difficult to enforce unless there is more than one police officer there because, say there is one patrol car which has pulled over one other motorist as is often the case, it is difficult for that one officer to finish up what he or she is doing and go after the speeder, or to even to determine to the law’s satisfaction that the person whizzing by was even in violation.
So how does the local PD enforce the law? They set up a trap. A mechanical deer (if they were game wardens, the local cops know better than putting a mechanical deer on the side of the highway in Southeast Texas even in the daylight. No telling how many folks in their pickups would stop and throw a 30-ought-6 round or two in that decoy!) Back to the real trap, they have the car down range with its “overheads” on and another unit or two with radar and camera, and the Beaumont version of “CHiPs.”
The Texas DPS says that since the “Move Over or Slow Down” law took effect seven years ago, more than 14,000 tickets have been issued by that agency. Is that a large number of citations? The DPS news release doesn’t say. The latest Texas Department of Transportation statistics indicate the state has 20,864,318 registered vehicles. How many stopped emergency vehicles are involved in accidents? Nine occurred in 2009. That’s not a lot but that’s too many.
There are probably ways in which the law could be written and technology applied in which a stopped police car could catch on video another car speeding near it, much like the way red light cameras work. Those haven’t found a lot of fans, so far, either. So is the answer stings like today on MLK? Well, I don’t think so but I don’t run things. What’s more, I don’t have a motorcycle with little blue and red lights on it either. So it looks like I just spent an hour or so exercising my typing fingers, doesn’t it? Well, yes, it certainly does.
“Remember pup, before you whine
That side’s yours and this side’s mine
So shove it on over (move it on over)
Sweep it on over (move it on over)
Move over cold dog ’cause a hot dog’s moving in.” — Hank Williams “Move It On Over.”
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