Wow! Here’s news to anyone who doesn’t live in Colonial Heights. Don’t think you’re going to frolic in the Heights by having a drink or two, or three or four or, well you know. Not only do you run a huge risk of driving impaired, but the odds are you won’t make it to the I-95 entrance ramp before you become the next Blue Light special for the CHPD.
In 2008, CHPD wrote no fewer than 407 tickets for driving under the influence (DUI), and a total of 12,308 tickets. That’s a lot of tickets, I don’t care who you are. By comparison, the city has fewer than 18,000 residents, which means two out of every three residents could have gotten a ticket in 2008. If that doesn’t bring it home, how about this? If you happen to be in a line somewhere, the person in front of you and in back of you might have been ticketed, that is of course, providing you didn’t receive a ticket yourself in which case only one of them probably got a ticket. On the other hand, if you had gotten two tickets, then they are probably both safe.
The figures for 2009 show a decided drop off. For the year, the CHPD only wrote 333 DUI tickets, which averages out to about one per day except Sundays. Overall tickets also showed a noticeable drop off falling nearly by 1,000 from 12,308 to a miniscule 11,386.
Another interesting tidbit of information from the CHPD’s annual report shows that despite the improvements at the Temple Ave and Interstate 95 on-off ramp, it still manages to top the list of potential accident sites at local intersections: in ’99 the CHPD recorded 73 crashes at the intersection, which is 12 more than the 61 recorded at the Dimmock Parkway and Temple Avenue intersection. Interestingly enough, both intersections already have traffic lights. But people tend to jump the lights, or continue through even when they have obviously changed from green to amber to red. Parking lots actually see the most car crashes, but car crashes in parking lots get lumped into the one category so it’s hard to say which parking lot is the most dangerous.
One day a short time ago, I did see a driver get his comeuppance at the Dimmock-Temple avenue intersection. Despite my own desire to run the light and thereby save myself several seconds before I reached the next road block, er, I mean traffic signal, I watched as a person pulled out of Dimmock Parkway to make a left onto Temple Avenue. Unbeknownst to him, there was a full-blown CHPD police car sitting in the U-turn lane to my left (and the main reason I wasn’t about to run the light, I’m only marginally stupid ask my wife). As he approached the middle of the intersection, my light turned green and off I scooted. In my rearview, I noticed the patrol car pulling out and the blue lights starting to whirl. Sometimes the police are where you need them when you need them.
The report also states that the CHPD has 50 uniformed officers. At any given moment, we can expect to see at least four patrol cars prowling the byways and highways of Colonial Heights. By now, most residents know their local haunts and where they are likely to lay in wait for a speeder, or scoff law, or the next DUI arrest, and most probably either steer clear of those areas, or just plain follow the laws. Strange that someone might actually respond to such coverage by being good, but I suppose it happens sometimes.
That brings rise to another question. Given the state of the economy, are we getting the bang for our buck from the number of officers we have roaming the streets. In 2008, the City Budget included about $450,000 in funding from the courts for fines, fees, and confiscated items. No one at the city could tell me how those funds broke down. I suppose the courts would probably be able to break down where the money came from, but I am not that interested in finding out. Still, it does seem like a pretty good way to offset the cost of policing. Of course, I personally didn’t pay any of those fines from 2008, so for me it’s no harm no foul.
We live in a city that’s fairly safe. Yes, we have a few crimes here and there, and yes the police appear to be Johnny-on-the-spot when handing out tickets, but do we really need to be policed at that level? The police would be the first to tell you that, while the residency is just under 18,000, the city easily swells to twice that number or more daily due to the retail centers in and around Southpark Mall. And, it’s not like the patrols haven’t had an effect, look at the ticket numbers, not all of those people are innocent. For the record, the patrol officers have made some pretty good arrests, such as the bank robbers they caught on Ellerslie Avenue, the people that robbed the Subway at Southpark Crossings, and the accident on Conduit between the Home Depot and Sheetz that required Med flight to save the life of one of the victims.
But it still seems like we collect a lot of tickets. Don’t believe me? Ask your neighbor, or his neighbor, or another neighbor. Anyway you look at it, even with 1,000 less than last year, 11,000 tickets is an awful lot of writing. I hope the officers don’t develop carpal-tunnel syndrome and send the medical insurance costs through the roof.
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