Police officer fired after attacking speed-trap warning sign
Justin Hyde —
Residents of tiny Rosebud, Texas, were upset enough with a flurry of speeding tickets that they put signs just outside city limits warning of speed traps. Now a Rosebud officer has lost his job after attempting to remove the sign.
Speed trap vigilantes have become something of a thing in Texas, but the 1,000-odd souls of Rosebud seemed to have been united in their grievance of the town's traffic tax along Highway 77. The signs along the town's outskirts were paid for in part by donations out of civic pride, said signmaker Bobby Bailey:
"The city was trying to more or less turn the town into a little evil town. We want it to be like nice little Rosebud Texas, like it's always been."
Last Saturday, a Rosebud police officer whose name has not been released, confronted one of the sign supporters, saying the sign needed to be removed because it was impeding traffic. The problem for him: The sign was on private property outside the city limits — and outside the officer's purview.Rosebud Police Chief Kenneth Proctor said the officer was fired Monday for other reasons than the showdown over the sign. Proctor also said he was curbing speeding ticket output and had no problem with the signs — despite the fired officer telling a TV station that a "supervisor" told him to ticket or arrest the sign's owners. Let's hope this closes out Rosebud's rough sledding.
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