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My family and I traveled from Raleigh to Hatteras this past Friday (May 22) night towing our travel trailer. It's a long ride no matter how you do it. We passed through Manteo and were excited to be heading South on NC 12 with what appeared to be plenty of time to get to the campground and set up before dark. Just after crossing over the temporary bridge at New Inlet, we became stopped in traffic, a lot of traffic. After a while we could see some lights and wondered if there were an accident. Not many cars were moving North either.
The closer we got, the more questions came up. There was no obvious accident, no emergency vehicles. Getting closer still we now noticed there were quite a few people actually off to the side, some sitting, some standing - all in handcuffs. There were cars being searched.
DUI Checkpoint? Manhunt?
Next thing we noticed were maybe around 20 police standing in the center of the road facing in alternating directions. We finally made it to "our cop" who asked for my Drivers License. He took it, walked to the back of my truck and I guess checked the plate, came back handed me my license and told me to have a nice night.
REALLY? WTF?
This little BS sting operation added 45 minutes to my trip. To add insult to injury, as we were pulling away we heard two cops talking to each other about how much money they were making doing whatever it was they were doing!
I'm all for safety on the roads. I am NOT all for random road blocks and being stopped for NO REASON so the county, or whatever jurisdiction was responsible, can "make money".
Anyone know anything about this operation or similar ones? I have been trying to look it up, there's no information out there that I can find. I figure there should be statistics regarding citations, arrests etc. since after all, this must have been paid for with tax dollars and should all be public record, no?
Would love to know more about this if anyone has info....
The money being made I'm sure goes a couple ways. First to the cops standing on the road doing the work, they probably get paid extra for that or picked the shift up to make more. But what I think they were referring to was likely the number of citations being written. Each one of those generates court costs which of course make far more money than the measely charges for whatever violation. Say it's a registration expiration violation, like a $30 ticket. The court costs on that are probably $180 or more!
I don't have any info regarding this particular case. I would like to say that I think if you saw people in handcuffs, there was obviously something fishy going on in the area (drunk driving, drugs, etc. ) and the police thought there was enough of it going on to do a traffic stop.
Sure your 45 minutes you were held up in traffic could have been used differently and gotten you to your destination faster, but within that 45 minutes one of the people in handcuffs (let's say, a drunk driver) could have run you and your family off the road, or run directly into your car and caused significant injury or death if they hadn't been stopped at that checkpoint and been taken off the road.
The comments by the cops aren't anything i'd be particularly upset by. There was lots of money made all over the state this past holiday weekend because unfortunately, people like to drive drunk. People also like to do lots of illegal things while driving their cars. If they were in handcuffs, I'd assume it's not some minor infraction like an expired registration tag or broken tail light.
All true Michael and I can't argue with any of what you say. In some strange way, putting it the way you did, takes the edge away somewhat for me, thanks.
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