This is not a warning.

If you drive through Peachtree City, plan to drive slow or plan to get a ticket, but don't expect to get a warning. Peachtree City is a known speed trap in the state of Georgia. You can even find it on the Internet. You can find it at www.speedtrap.com.

This site states that in November 1998 Peachtree City police wrote 8,400 tickets. The city produced more than $800,000 in court fines in 1998. The planned budget for fiscal 2000 calls for $992,000 in fines for the year. Close to $1 million.

How do they plan to meet this budget increase? Write more tickets.

Also in the budget you will find the police department has increased its printing cost from $8,880 to $10,180. This cost is specified for “traffic citations.” Although there is a section for “warning citations,” and “letter head,” and “victim witness brochures,” no money has been specified for these items. I can only assume that police plans to only use the traffic citation forms, and give no warnings.

The city pays 55 officers a total of $1.5 million a year. They also have 33 police cars, which seems to be excessive since there are probably no more than 10-12 officers on duty at any one time. On practically any day of the week you will find 15-20 police cars parked at the station not in use. I know, I have gone there and counted them on numerous occasions.

Why do we need 33 cars that we lease at close to $250,000 a year when we are obviously not making use of these vehicles?

Now Peachtree City is building a new police facility for $2.1 million. Why? The present facility is too small for the number of officers. I would suggest that they keep the same facility, and reduce the number of officers, and the number of police cars which are apparently not being used anyway.

“To serve and protect” should be changed to “To ticket and collect fines.” Peachtree City is a fine community to live in, but the police situation is almost out of control. Ours is not a community in need of a constant police presence.

The police say they are proactive with enforcing the law, but I see an abuse of power. The police are being used as another form of collecting taxes. They as much as admit that in the budget by planning to collect $992,000 in court fines for year 2000, a $173,000 increase over 1998. The police lie in wait trying to find someone who is violating “the rules of the road.”

We need to do something about the problem with the police in our fair city. They are here to protect and serve not harass and ticket.

Carl Thompson

Peachtree City

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