The lawman fighting the law
Click the play button on the video window to the right to see the storyThere is an unwritten rule in law enforcement. You back up your fellow officers, even if they don't work for the same police department.
You don't just do it on the streets. You also do it in spirit, and more often than not... in policy.
Which makes Sheriff Paul Babeu that much more daring.
Babeu is the newly elected Sheriff in Pinal County and the first law enforcement officer in Arizona to voice his opposition to photo radar cameras, putting him in direct opposition to the Department of Public Safety.
He claims he's not alone.
"You'll find a lot of (police) chiefs who are against photo radar, but are afraid to speak out because of their position," Babeu told me Tuesday afternoon.
I don't know if he's right, but I do know he makes some good points.
Babeu says photo radar is sold as a safety measure, but he points out DPS has been willing to scale back its threshold for issuing a ticket... from six to seven miles over the speed limit, to eleven. With no points off your license, by the way.
If it's really a safety issue, why the wiggle room? And why not dock points along with the ticket?
Babeu sees it as a revenue shakedown, designed to swindle Arizona drivers out of more than 100 million dollars. By the way, do the math on this... at 165 dollars a ticket, the state is apparently projecting it will nail more than 600-thousand drivers during the course of the fiscal year. That's about ten percent of the state's overall population.
"It's turned into a Stalinist state," Babeu says.
He wants it put to a vote, and he was the first to put his name on a petition which is quickly swelling with signatures. It will likely wind up as a ballot measure.
That is, if it's not outlawed first.
District 6 representative Sam Crump will introduce legislation Wednesday to ban photo radar cameras on state highways.
One thing's for sure, lawmakers are likely to get an earful from their constituents, especially the nearly 75,000 and counting who've already been caught on camera.
