Keystone Kops At It Again

I received this email last evening from a man in Towanda.  It seems a State Trooper gave him a $100 ticket because he had something hanging from his rear view mirror.  I have to agree is this really what we're paying the Keystone Kops to do?  Don't they more important work than ticketing everyone with something obstructing a window or any other part of the driver's view?  His satirical approach is entertaining and serves to make his point.  I'm publishing it here as a guest column.

John

EDITOR: After getting nailed with a 100-plus dollar ticket for having my late father’s string ties hanging from my mirror by Trooper Warnick, I decided that Trooper Warnick actually did me and some of you a favor. God works in many mysterious ways, and thanks to Trooper Warnick I now realize how dangerous anything is on one’s dash board or on rear view mirrors. Further, thanks to Trooper Warnick’s intervention, I have now become the Johnny Apple Seed of mirror education and have already given out around 300 warning notices to those in violation so as to allow them to change their ways.

I have also sent e-mails and/or faxes to all of our banks, and drive up fast food places to ask them to educate their customers. I have done the same to OSRAM and DuPont in the hope that they care enough about their employers to educate them. I have also contacted the Bradford County Chamber of Commerce.

Hopefully this paper will run an article on the dangers of having things obscuring the drivers view. I know that the VFW and American Legion should warn those who donate not to put those poppies on the mirrors. I look forward to the day when there is not one item obscuring visibility in our car’s windows. No doubt thousands and thousands of lives will be saved. If everyone who reads this e-mails others, then the state troopers can concentrate on other more pressing issues. Maybe our schools will ask kids to check their parents cars and make them legal.

But at this point about 20 to 30 percent of the cars driving through Towanda are driving in a very precarious condition and risk expensive tickets and injury or death by having crosses, handicapped parking permits and air fresheners hanging from their mirrors. Hopefully society will see that I am trying to atone for my sins.

Joseph R. Dupont

TOWANDA

Comments

[InsanityRules]

Until our lawmakers resist the temptation to issue petty rules and refrain from sending swarms of officers hither to harass our people and eat out their substance, we are in danger of being reduce to the despotism we thought we threw off 231 years ago under the last King George.

The former "land of the free and home of the brave" has become the "land of the controlled and home of the punished".

For those who continually whine about needing more police, this case should prove that we have far too many already!

[John Morgan]

I saw a state trooper cruiser parked in Trexlertown this morning. It had something on the dashboard and some decal on the window. Isn't all that illegal? We can't be obstructing views now, can we?