Another Blow for the Big Pee

The daytime speed trap on Washington is apparently the city’s latest means to drive tourists, and business, away.

It seems now that all the drug houses on Tulip Alley are closed, the crack heads cleaned out of Halifax St., and the whores and pimps and assorted thieves and murderers are all behind bars, the police have plenty of time on their hands. So what better way to spend it than by harassing unwary tourists and visitors by nailing them the moment they are stupid enough to get off the freeway and venture into our glorious shopping and entertainment venue?

Petersburg does all it can to discourage new business—anyone who has started a business here quickly knows that. You jump through hoops, get a dozen or so signatures, have your signs approved and you might be ready to go. (In other, more enlightened places you send in a check and get a business license.) “Really?” some locals ask. Duh… yes, some towns actually ENCOURAGE business. “Hmmm, why on earth would anyone want to do that when you can get free money from the state for doing nothing?” Good question.

The new Washington Street Speed Trap puts that issue to rest, however. I lost one of my best customers today, allegedly because she was doing 35 mph in a 25 mph zone. Of course the obscenely slow speed limit is hard for anyone to obey, let alone see posted. Throughout the day, 18-wheelers, Ghetto blasters on wheels playing dated, offensive and misogynistic “music”, along with clowns in drug-financed Mercedes fly through at twice that speed, with immunity. So one could make a case that this lady was easy pickins’--- attractive, petite, and driving a new, but not very expensive compact. She looked out of her element. Perfect prey for a predator cop. When the officer saw that she was visiting from Newport Beach specifically to patronize Petersburg, (something she had only recently begun doing), he might have had the courtesy to let her off with a warning. But no, we are TOUGH on crime in the Big P, and we punish ALL transgressors. No biases here. Yeah, right. It’s a lot easier to fill a monthly quota with easy prey than actually bust a real criminal. Once again, the path of least resistance is the P burg way.

So, the lady in question next went downtown, not to eat and shop, as planned, but to pay her ticket at the courthouse. There, in the belly of the beast, the hot, depressing bureaucratic Temple of the People, she waited in line amidst the utility-cut-off and overdue-fine people to atone for her crime. (It seems that doing this is necessary to eliminate excessive additional charges incurred at a court date in the future.)

Needless to say, her day in Petersburg was not exactly material for the Petersburg Regional Tourism commercials.

I will pay this lady what she had to lay out for her ticket, and apologize for the cop laying in wait who either managed to, or was assigned to avoid the drug deals, domestic abuse, theft, larceny, and more relevant speeding (i.e. Marshall, Adams and Jefferson) all around him in order to nail this obvious middle class felon. Typically, I personally am staunchly pro police, and always support Petersburg’s force. I do not support speeding. But I believe in an empowered, forceful, even aggressive anti-crime and property-protection police force. Not this Barney Fife bullshit. Not this double standard that reinforces the worst of what we already suspect about small towns off the freeway.

Speeders, stop sign and light-jumpers all over town continue to be ignored. The new circle has been run over many times and you never, ever see a cop anywhere in the vicinity.

Having lived all over the country, and visited all over the world, I have never encountered a place with such an inherent and enigmatic compulsion to reward the wicked and discourage the good, to its own detriment.
“So get out!” one local once told me. If things continue as they are, most assuredly, I will. Until then, I will keep trying to change the chronically soiled diaper that the city seems to wear with inexplicable pride. If enough new people keep trying, maybe P-burg can be trained to stop peeing on the good people, and itself.

Thoroughly fed up
Roquentin