A small town replaced its police force because officers were ticketing residents.
Utica, Indiana (poulation 800) is a suburban enclave within the city of Jeffersonville. It used to have 10 police officers, mostly volunteers, with the Sheriff for backup.
800 people, 10 officers, and too many stop signs. Nobody said so on camera. Behind the wheel residents don’t think all those stop signs are needed.
Residents envisioned their police department as a show of force to scare away criminals. What they got was law enforcement. Against residents, because that’s who drives in town and most of the illegal activity in Utica is rolling through stop signs.
As usual, making people obey their rules was not popular. Complaints were made. One town councilor tried to prevent an officer from writing a ticket, which might be felony obstruction if somebody wanted to make a big deal of it.
The town council forced out the town’s police force except for one guy working part of the day weekdays only.
They could have left it there. A town that small doesn’t need a police department, not when there’s a city next door and the Sheriff is on call.
There was no evidence that not having a police force caused any harm. People worried if anything happened in town the response time might be longer. Nothing much happened in town. Except for stop sign running, which they didn’t want enforced.
But due to municipal pride, Sheriff’s fees, or whatever, they reinstated a new police force. I expect the new officers have been advised that traffic laws only apply to nonresidents.
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