Virginia Cracks Down on Speeders, Budget Deficit

In an effort to help close a $2.2 billion budget, the state of Virginia sent its police officers out on a “ticketing blitz”, issuing 6996 traffic tickets to generate government revenue. “Operation Air, Land & Speed”, as they called it, was across Interstates 81 and 95 and gave officers two days to issue as many tickets as possible.

While Police Superintendent W. Steven Flaherty claimed this was an issue of promoting highway safety, we’re not buying it. Generating between $100 for simple speeding violations and $2500 for more serious infractions, each ticket is a direct attempt at chipping away at the $2.2 billion Virginia lawmakers are scrambling to come up with.

It is still to be determined whether the ticketing blitz was legal, as it appears to have violated state law:

“All officers making arrests incident to the enforcement of this title shall be paid fixed salaries for their services and shall have no interest in, nor be permitted by law to accept the benefit of, any fine or fee resulting from the arrest or conviction of an offender against any provision of this title,” Virginia Code Section 46.2-102 states.

State officials have already admitted officers would be paid overtime for their participation in this program. The additional pay appears to be against the Virginia Code described above. Time will tell if these tickets will hold up in court, and if the Virginia Police Departments did enough to offset the state’s budget problems.