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Governments Tap Tickets For Money
As the economy has tanked, speculation has grown in some parts of the country about the number of tickets police are issuing and their reasons for doing so.
Are municipalities pressuring law enforcement officers to write more tickets to generate revenue and offset budget shortfalls?
“No one has asked me to have the deputies write more tickets,” Fauquier County Sheriff Charlie Ray Fox, Jr. said last week.
Last year, Fauquier County deputies issued 8,137 tickets. So far this year, they've written approximately 3,298.
Despite denying pressure to write more tickets, the math would seem to indicate that county law enforcement is on a pace to write nearly twice as many tickets this year as last.
While they used to work rotating shifts, Maj. Paul Mercer of the Fauquier County Sheriff's Office said the road deputies began working permanent shifts in January. That created opportunities for more special enforcement, accounting for the increase in traffic tickets issued this year, he said.
The Sheriff's Office has more than 100 deputies. Approximately 30 are assigned to the agency's Patrol Division. The road deputies generally issue most of the traffic tickets.
Several factors influence the number of tickets the deputies write, the amount someone must ultimately pay in contested cases and where the money goes, Fox said.
See the Fauquier Times-Democrat for the complete story...
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