This all comes back to reasonable judgement and discretion. If you are driving over the speed limit, at some point, the incremental speed will be a factor in public safety. If it’s a 25mph zone, any officer would have to use his own judgment to decide when to enforce the law. Is it 27mph, 30, 35, 40? The judgment gets made based on the conditions at hand, but it’s a fluid situation, that carries a large part of officer discretion. The situation cited by the OP should be no different. It is not black and white. It was a controlled environment that as described, was very orderly. Just as driving 26 in a 25 is “breaking the law”, it’s assumed that officers apply a reasonable level of common sense. So for all of you siding with the cop, stop bringing up situations that don’t exist (what if she goes crazy with a butcher knife, or jumps in the family car and starts plowing through the crowd)? Stick to the situation at hand. If you want 100% enforcement to the letter of every single law on the books, they can install cameras on your street, and automatically send you a summons every time you exceed the speed limit by 1 mph. We can do better than this. Almost every other major school does.
No it boils down to quotas and if the town needs the money because they can't generate or attract clean industry like Bridgewater (whose cops weren't too bad in my 47 years of experience).
Shore towns have no economic based besides the shore so they have no problem ticketing at 26mph in a 25 mph zone. I once received a speeding ticket in Manahawkin (where its said the police cant get along with the fire department) doing 27-30 in a rural stretch of road. The speed doesnt bother me but the police officer's radar detected me at worse angles than the kennedy bullets were said to have travelled. And oh by the way at the time the town was building a new police headquarters!
Ditto I received either a speeding or not obeying a stop sign in "south belmar"
5PM LABOR DAY one year. I wasn't even close to going thrr the stop sign (if you know belmar there are a lot of tricky short streets-especially if one isn't that familiar) However 1) it was labor day and last chance to pick on "the bennies" and 2) South belmar hated being part of belmar and had succeeded. Of course they were building a spanking new municipal building and police station.
I rememeber this racket quite well. The officer was an angry mix of nationallities and always stalked women in the years after hec ticketed me 9he remembered me well as the summons was such BS). First i called to get officer McCormick (turned out same name as R then President). I went back to the internet where all officer names had been posted on Labor Day. A few days later all the names of the officers were off the internet.
When i went to "kangeroo court" I realized my theories-lots of money was being raised for the municipal and police station. Thousands and thousands were being raised in parking fines. One homeowner negligent about garbage
received several fines for $2,000ish.
The officers were pretty much no-shows. The fat police chief came in mid session and was laughing half the time already counting his money.
Sans a few times at Bar A for WFAN day I pretty much avoided South Belmar after that.
I compare the above to North Plainfield now where 70% of traffice does 35-60MPH in 35 mph zones tops-and nobody gets ticketed. This holds for much more serious crimes.
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