Study: State patrol issues most tickets at start of month
CLEVELAND (AP) — What end-of-the-month quota?
State police wrote more tickets in 2006 during the first four days of a month than at any other time, according to an analysis.
Also, the busiest ticket-writing periods were the days immediately before and after Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Labor Day, when troopers issued 70,933 citations, State Highway Patrol records show.
The highway patrol has never had a ticket quota, spokesman Lieutenant Tony Bradshaw said. The patrol’s operations are paid for by gasoline taxes, and fines are sent to cities in which tickets are written, he said.
Holiday weekends often straddle the beginning of the month, which could explain the spike in ticket-writing in the early days of the month last year, Bradshaw said.
Troopers stopped 1.4 million drivers and wrote 563,565 tickets in 2006, including citations to 1,410 drivers for driving faster than 100 mph, the Plain Dealer's analysis said.
Men earned close to 390,000 citations in 2006 — more than twice as many received by women.
Broken down by age, troopers wrote close to 186,000 citations to drivers 17- to 26 years old — the most of any age group.
The next most prolific group, 37- to 46-year-olds, received more than 111,000 tickets.
Fifty-seven of the state’s 1,537 troopers wrote more than 1,000 tickets, including one state trooper who issued 1,530 citations while working Interstate 80, which runs east-to-west in northern Ohio.
One of the state’s fastest speeders last year was Jeffrey Peters of Independence, who was clocked in June going 133 mph in his Mercedes-Benz E320 on Interstate 271 hear Weymouth, south of Cleveland, the Plain Dealer reported.