When traffic equals revenue
A libertarian group is looking for those caught speeding on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.
Awhile back I did a short piece (I don’t recall if it was an odd or an end, to be honest) about speed trap towns on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. In it, I noted a news report that claimed the small town of Eastville (population 350) wrote far more traffic tickets per capita than the big cities in the Tidewater area. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to Eastville, but I don’t recall there being much there there - in fact, I daresay the main drag through town runs on its outskirts. It’s one of those places you have to intentionally be going to in order to stop by, as 99.5% of traffic is passing through to bigger cities north and south.
If you revisit the town on Google Maps, based on the perspective of a driver on U.S. 13, you’ll find a gas station, a bank, and a Dollar General (which is new since I’ve been around those parts.) Aside from that, it appears like many other somewhat major crossroads along that stretch of Lankford Highway, which was built in the 1960s to bypass the downtown areas of most of the ESV hamlets and lead south to the then-new Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. But to the town of Eastville, it’s a steady source of revenue because at some point the town corporate limits were extended across the highway.
In the eyes of the Institute for Justice, though, it’s another example of policing for profit, and I get the sense they’re itching to teach the town a lesson:
When police seek profit over justice, everyone is a victim. Often, this can take the form of excessive fines given to motorists who, otherwise, would not have been stopped.
For example, a police department may dedicate its entire task force to stopping motorists for the smallest infractions (or, sometimes, for no reason at all) since they are incentivized to fish for crimes rather than just responding when they occur.
Unfortunately, for motorists on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, this is now a reality.
The town of Eastville has been engaging in this kind of unconstitutional scheme for the past several years - targeting locals and tourists alike.
If you or someone you know has received a speeding ticket while driving down Virginia’s Eastern Shore, fill out our form - we’d love to hear from you.
I used to be a bigger follower of IJ back in the day when I wrote daily and used some of their stuff, but they are an entity that specializes in protecting civil liberties and fighting government overreach. “Policing for profit” is one of those ideas they work against, and my guess is that a class-action suit may be coming Eastville’s way if they don’t change their policing methods. Driver safety is one thing, but there are other aspects which could affect their budget, such as civil forfeiture. With U.S. 13 having a reputation as a drug corridor up the East Coast, I’m sure small towns drool about hitting a lucky strike of a car full of cash.
On the other hand, it has to be asked what else the town would have to fall back on. While Virginia is nearly nine million people strong, Northampton County (of which Eastville is the county seat) boasts a population of just 12,282. Its geography, which stretches along the southernmost 35 miles of the Delmarva Peninsula, dictates that not much industry can thrive there, given that it’s at the end of the peninsula and the connection south to their main would-be market is a toll bridge. There’s a modest amount of tourism in that part of Virginia thanks to the town of Cape Charles and the wildlife refuges along the Atlantic coast, but people are leaving there more quickly than they arrive: the population of the county peaked nearly 100 years ago and has almost steadily declined since. If you wanted a place to get away from it all, this would be one of them.
Heck, Dollar General may be an upgrade for them since I think the county only has one large grocery store. They used to have two, but that small regional chain of stores went belly-up a decade ago. (I used to do their Exmore location as part of a retail route during my unplanned hiatus from the building industry, which is how I became familiar with the area.) Even the nearest Walmart is a county over and the local hospital moved north as well. I guess the mindset was that the town needed revenue and if a tourist stupidity tax is the way to go, then that’s the road they had to take (no pun intended.) The locals don’t seem to mind, telling out-of-towners to simply drive the speed limit and not to be in such a hurry. We’ll see what sort of reaction IJ gets.
But in a lot of ways, this out-of-the-way place is a microcosm of rural America: little opportunity and a demanding government. It’s the epitome of lazy and not innovative, and frankly the people who remain there deserve better.
In the spirit of being a good neighbor, remember you can Buy Me a Coffee since I have a page there.