Why Motor Officers Love Writing Tickets

Police officers in America have evolved into a nearly separate societal culture. Due to their unique perspective attained from dealing with public safety problems on a daily basis they develop a perspective that influences their character and thought patterns in ways that the average citizen cannot comprehend. This is not a bad thing. Their conditioning and training make them all behave in a generally consistent manner. That is what makes it possible for us to trust them and gives us the assurance of their predictability in many situations.

For instance, we know that a police officer, upon hearing a scream for help or seeing an offense in progress, is generally going to immediately begin to intervene to protect the innocent and contain the incident. Conversely, other citizens are going to respond to their natural survival instincts and distance themselves from the problem. It is not human instinct to move toward a threatening situation. It is second nature to police officers to go against their natural impulse because their culture and training have conditioned them to do so. Police do not tolerate any cowards among the ranks.

Within police society, there are various sub-cultures. One of these is the Motor Officer. These guys have additional perspectives on traffic enforcement and investigation due to the fact that they are at the highest risk of death or injury in the line of duty than any other group within the law enforcement community. They see more corpses and seriously injured citizens than other law enforcement groups. Traffic collisions kill more people each year than any intentional crime.

Motorcycle officers literally have mere inches of rubber between themselves and the pavement, have to drive at excessive speed to catch up to violators, even those who are not fleeing, and they are on a vehicle that has much less visibility to other traffic. In last night's Grapevine PD Citizen's Academy class, I heard the passion and resolve of two of these officers, and they changed my perspective on "Motor Jocks".

When I worked as a police officer in Greenville, we didn't have motorcycle officers. I always assumed that motor officers were simply glorified ticket writers. I was 100% wrong in that assumption. Seeing the skill and discovering the training involved in becoming a motor officer opened my eyes. These are not guys who just like riding bikes so much they want to do it for eight or ten hours a day for a living. Of course, they are motorcycle nuts, but way above and beyond that they are public safety nuts. They see so many tragedies that occur due to senseless speed, failure to wear seatbelts, and just plain vehicular stupidity that they develop an extreme passion for doing the one thing that has been proven to have a positive effect on the traffic accident rate: write tickets.

These guys enjoy writing tickets. That sounds really bad, doesn't it? But look at the reason WHY they enjoy writing tickets: It's not because they like screwing up your day. They are not sadists. They enjoy writing tickets because they know that writing you a ticket will cause you to slow down and pay attention to your driving. That will result in less chance of you becoming the victim of a traffic accident. They enjoy it because it helps you.

I used to ask why police departments put so much effort in traffic enforcement over and above violent crime prevention. The answer is not because traffic tickets generate revenue, it's because traffic accidents are the number one killer of innocent people in this country.

So give them a break when they write you that ticket. They are doing it for your own good, really!