Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO) now has deputies specifically dedicated to the monitoring of traffic, especially in areas where speeding and unsafe driving practices pose a problem.
The new program, which the Jefferson County Commission approved on Thursday evening, April 1, went into effect immediately.
As Commissioner J. T. Surles and Sheriff Mac McNeill explained the genesis and evolution of the program, it started with conversations that Surles had with Tim Sanders, Madison County’s former Clerk of Court, who replaced Jefferson County Clerk of Court Kirk Reams for a while during the latter’s legal troubles.
Surles said Sanders brought it to his attention that Jefferson County was losing out on revenue by not having a dedicated traffic detail, as Madison County had. In fact, Jefferson County for many years had a detail dedicated to monitoring traffic on the interstate when Ken Fortune was Sheriff, a source of revenue to the county at the time.
Surles said that in mulling over his conversations with Sander, it had gotten him to thinking that Jefferson County might well implement a similar program, an idea that he shared with McNeill.
“It’s not to beat up on the locals,” Surles said of the program’s intent. “It’s for those people who drive too fast on the interstate. It’s a revenue maker.”
McNeill said he had no interest or intention of funding his department with revenue from citations, nor of making Jefferson County known as a speed trap. But it was a fact, he said, that many motorists sped on the interstate and that his office received frequent complaints from residents of vehicles speeding in their neighborhoods and along state and county roads.
As it was, however, he didn’t have the manpower to dedicate deputies solely to monitor traffic, given the deputies’ many other duties, McNeill said. But what his office had done was to implement a three-month trial program to see how the idea might work out, he said.
For the better part of three months, McNeill said, a single deputy working on overtime had monitored traffic and issued citations. The idea, he reiterated, was not to penalize local residents, but rather to provide for their safety by ensuring responsible driving.
McNeill shared the results of the three-month pilot program, showing that it had cost $1,307.80 in salary and equipment for the deputy. During which period, the deputy had written 69 citations, of which at least seven had been tossed out and two reduced.
Bottom line, the county’s three-month share of tickets revenues – after deducting the shares of the state and other agencies, as statutorily mandated – had come to $5,123.66, after subtracting the deputy’s costs.
McNeill said that if approved, the detail would be deployed to problematic areas based on citizens’ complaints of speeding, commissioners’ specific requests and his own department’s observations and knowledge of the traffic situations.
“The revenue from the citations will not only fund the cost of the detail, but also fund other county and state revenues that will benefit our community,” McNeill said in his presentation.
As envisioned, McNeill said deputies would work six-hour shifts on a voluntary basis monitoring traffic in problematic areas of the county and on the interstate.
“I don’t want us to become a speed trap, but there are speeders that need to be stopped,” he said.
County Coordinator Parrish Barwick warned commissioners that if a traffic detail was deployed it was bound sooner or later to snare local drivers, which would generate ill will and complaints. He wasn’t against the idea, he said, but he wanted the commissioners to be aware of what might come.
McNeill suggested that options other than citations existed in a deputy’s toolbox. There was no reason, he said, why locals couldn’t simply be issued warnings. If the behavior persisted or was habitual, however, then it warranted ticketing, he said.
And if at any point the commissioners became unhappy with the program, it could be stopped, McNeill said.
The commission voted to put $20,000 into the program for starters, to see how it would work out.
As part of the deal, the JCSO and Clerk of Court are to keep tabs on the program and maintain a list showing how many deputies are participating, how many tickets are being written and how much the program is costing and generating each month. This information is supposed to be conveyed to the commission regularly.