Back in the days when I was a cop, my least favorite thing to do was writing traffic tickets, but, as a rookie waiting assignment to a real shift while languishing on the day trick, I was often forced into generating a little revenue for the city. Not that we had quotas – we did not – but, from time to time I was encouraged by my Lt. – a heart attack waiting to happen – to sally forth and write a few.
When I had no choice, I would sit near a heavily-traveled, suburban intersection feebly controlled by four stop signs, and, because in traffic law a policeman has the right of selective law enforcement, write every 25th driver that ran one of those stop signs a ticket for failure to obey a traffic control device.
I was not popular. I hated it almost as much as my unsuspecting victims despised me. The issuance of tickets done simply for the issuance of tickets did not then and does not now seem very nice to me.
Leave a Reply