Officer Viner works a speed trap.
Campo, Colorado's single police officer Brad Viner works a speed trap
on highway 287. Colorado local
9news has been doing an ongoing feature called
Citation Nation:
"Yes, Campo thrives on tickets," officer Viner said with a chuckle during an interview with 9Wants to Know. "Basically, the police department pays for the town." [...]
Campo, population 107, brings in 93 percent of its revenue through traffic enforcement and court fees. The state average is about 4 percent, according to the 2013 data obtained through the Department of Local Affairs.
Campo is an extreme example of what has been happening across the country for years now, in some cases with
more obviously insidious motives. However, as
Grand Junction Free Press points out, Campo tops a list of already disproportionate ticket revenue towns:
In 2014, Mountain View police patrolling the town’s several blocks wrote 3,624 traffic tickets.
Final records for 2014 were not available, but in 2013 ticket revenues generated $621,099 — more than half of Mountain View’s municipal budget. As a percentage of total, that’s 10 times more than most Colorado communities earn from traffic tickets and related court fines.
Mountain View is second to Campo, with 53 percent of their revenue coming from traffic citations. According to Free Press, of the 230 towns and cities (who report traffic ticket revenue), 40 reported revenues above 4 percent. And while most of these places, when asked, will say it's about public safety, we all know that depending on that kind of revenue
must take a toll.
Two years ago, former Mayor Ray Johnson and his twin sons were caught on surveillance cameras pumping about $5,000 worth of town gasoline into their personal vehicles and trucks.
One of those twin sons, Kevin Johnson, happened to be one of Campo's three police officers at the time.
Viner says that Mayor Tim Grey told him he needs to write more tickets or lose his job. Mayor Grey denies saying it—
like that.
Traffic tickets in Campo comprised 93 percent of the town’s budget in 2013. That was more than $300,000 for the town of 107 people. The town relies on tickets. Without them, said Mayor Tim Grey, services would be significantly reduced.
“Yes, if we don’t have revenue coming in, and presently, most of our revenue comes in from tickets, then we won’t have the money to pay anyone,” Grey said. “Then at some point we’ll reduce, not to the point of dissolving the town, hopefully, but we’ll have to reduce police force, we’ll have to reduce … everything.”