Notorious speed trap in N. Florida may be shut down

Anyone who has traveled on US 301 in North Florida will know the route's dreadful reputation for its myriad speed traps. It's so bad that the last time I went down that road late last year, some people had actually put up giant billboard sized signs on their own lawns warning motorists of the speed traps ahead. But the story behind the tiny "city" of Hampton (pop. 477) and the more than ten thousand tickets it handed out each year, even managed to shock me. The corruption sounds breathtaking...

HAMPTON, Fla. — It’s easy for motorists driving down busy Route 301 to miss this speck of a city in rural north-central Florida: Fiddle with the car radio, unwrap a pack of gum, gaze out the window at the sunset and, whoosh, it’s gone.

And so it fell to the police to force hurried travelers to stop and savor the 1,260-foot ribbon of roadway belonging to this city. Hidden by trash bins or concealed in a stretch of woods, the officers — a word loosely applied here — pointed their radar devices. Between 2011 and 2012, Hampton’s officers issued 12,698 speeding tickets to motorists, many likely caught outside Hampton’s strip of county road.

But, as it turns out, surprised motorists are not the only ones getting burned. So many speeding tickets were churned out for so many years and with such brazenness that this city of 477 residents came under scrutiny — and not just for revenue raising with a radar gun. Now, Hampton, an 89-year-old city, is fighting legislative momentum to wipe it off the map, after a state audit last month uncovered reams of financial irregularities, shoddy record-keeping and missing funds.

Read the rest here.