Twelve miles west down I-10 from me is the little town of Vinton, Louisiana. Vinton has ONE real industry, a horseracing track/casino, several truck stops, which by quirk of Louisiana law can have up to fifty video poker games at each, and a couple of fast food joints easily accessible from the interstate highway that runs along the south side of town.
That proximity to the interstate highway provides a major revenue stream for the “city”. You see, Vinton has a policed department. And they have “jurisdiction” over the interstate highway for a couple of miles where it borders their town. Ergo, for the safety of the fine citizens of Vinton, Louisiana, the city police department MUST control the speed on two miles of I-10. And control it, they do. You might be able to by crack cocaine by the bagfull and meth out of candy machines in downtown Vinton, but if you’re speeding on the interstate, you’re likely to meet one of Vinton’s finest.
A couple of interestingly salient points: Recently, Vinton chiefs of police have suffered a high rate of arrest and conviction for various things like misuse of public funds and harrassing political opponents. An article in the local paper says that Vinton expects at least 30% of its revenue to come from fines by the police department.
But take heart, folks. Vinton has a website, and they make it easy for you to pay your fines on line. You think I’m joking? Here’s a clip from the official Vinton website:
And down the page from this is a convenient table so you can figure out how much you got stuck with for endangering the citizens of Vinton.
So consider this a word to the wise: If you’re tooling down I-10 in Louisiana, be careful around mile markers 4 through 8 or you might get a chance to meet Louisiana’s version of Barney Fife and to use one of our innovative forays into online finance.
I made a road trip to Houston this past weekend. I successfully negotiated Vinton both ways with no problems. You forgot to mention that they like to target out of state plates.
Mississippi likes to target those ‘out of state’ plates also. You can cruise around MS with plates from Alabama, Louisiana or Mississippi, but outside of that you’re getting tailgated, pulled over, license and insurance information scrutinized…
I think every state has a little town that is notorious for having speed traps for $$$$’s.
Whenever I have out of town guests and they’ve got a rental car, I always insist on driving them around in one of ours, so they can avoid that little taste of southern hospitality!! :)
It sounds as though you may have contributed to the operating expenses of Vinton, LA. Another little wonder the unwary need to be warned about is Sulphur, LA. Operates in very similar fashion.
John-
No, I was stopped once in Vinton, but they let me off. Louisiana plates, you know.
Sulphur, Louisiana isn’t as bad as they were a few years ago when they were the subject of an article in “Readers’ Digest“. The Sulphur cops make plenty of money by installing new stop signs and then writing tickets.
MC
Sulphur used to be bad news. They either participated, or allowed wreckers to place “abandoned” cars they hunted up in parking lots in the impound yard. I know of one situation where the “abandoned” car was almost brand new, reported stolen and they still wanted an impound fee for the car, even though it was picked up in a parking lot on the other side of Lake Charles. The owner refused, and they unwillingly “alowed” an exception. It wasn’t long after that when the feds busted up their operation.
And lets not forget the Golden Meadow speed trap for oilfield workers and fishermen.
Good to know. Still probably not as bad as those legally-sanctioned extortionists in Woodworth, but still…
Wasn’t the legislature considering a law that discouraged those speed traps? As memory serves, if a municipality writes a speeding ticket for less than 5 mph over the limit on any Interstate highway, they get to keep absolutely nothing of the proceeds.
It would certainly have removed the financial incentive for writing the tickets. I wonder if it ever passed?
In Texas, there’s a little community right East of Beaumont, which has a city Marshal. A few years ago, he would spend a lot of time on IH 10 writing tickets, which were such a distraction, the automobile accidents increased. The Department of Public Safety(Troopers)politely told him to stay off the interstate. I imagine the drop in revenue was staggering.
This happened to us while I was at Hammond PD. Initially, I was quite excited about our receiving of ~4 miles of I-12 because that particular stretch of road is one of the more heavily used drug corridors in the country (traffickers dodging New Orleans). While interdiction continued as normal, no officers at the time I was there were allowed to run radar on that piece of I-12. The Chief’s reason was quite simple-
“Son, how’d you like to go out with your family one night and see 4 HPD units running radar on that road only to get home and find out your house had been broken into while you were gone?”
That was six years ago. To my knowledge, that policy still stands. I didn’t agree with the Chief on a lot of things, but this wasn’t one of them.