No one voluntarily stays in Dumas.Originally Posted by Irving
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No one voluntarily stays in Dumas.
Understatement...
Even the subway there sucks...
The only real reason to stop is that's the last Braums on the way back to CO (taking the NM/TX route). My wife grew up in SW OK and so we make always visit that Braums on the way home.
Me either. My buddy lives in Houston and he's had friends coming down to visit him get caught in that.
"There are no finger prints under water."
They gave me a ticket for speeding on 285 back in March of 2020 shortly after the lockdowns began. Of course I got a letter in the mail explaining that due to covid the courts were closed and they would be happy to change the ticket to a violation that had zero points implications if I just paid the fine.
Lol.. I had to stay there for a week once while working on a project down there. Dumas had the same sort of liquor laws as Utah, anywhere that you wanted to get a drink you had to be "sponsored" by a member and of course the server was a member that could sponsor you..
Got stuck there for 3 months working the oil field in the 90's. It was worst oot job location ever.
https://www.9news.com/article/news/l...4-1b100bd9c325
9News - Denver, CO
Morrison PD chief resigns days after conceding ticket revenue would fall $800K short of expectations
Money from fines and forfeitures makes up nearly 50% of revenue for the Town of Morrison
MORRISON, Colo. ? The town of Morrison has a reputation for being a ticket trap, and that?s because it is. A report prepared for the town this year found that 98% of all calls initiated by officers in Morrison were traffic stops.
Police Chief Misty Siderfin leaves the job Thursday, resigning just three months after she was hired. The pressure to keep up that infamous ticket trap may have played a big role.
At a board meeting on Oct. 5, she told town leaders the department would bring in $300,000 worth of fines this year, more than $800,000 less than the town had budgeted for. Two days later, she submitted her letter of resignation.
"At this point in time, I am unable to continue within this role due [to] the limited resources, lack of financial stability and budgeting for the Police Department," Siderfin wrote, in part, in her resignation letter submitted on October 7.
George Mumma knows Siderfin's predicament well. He was the police chief in Morrison for nearly three years, but retired in August of 2020 after he says the town manager wanted his department to write more tickets instead of focus on community policing.
"The entire budget was based on traffic tickets," Mumma said. "Ethically, I could not do that."
Mumma was still at the department during the lockdown at the beginning of the pandemic. He said the town still wanted officers to wait on C-470 to write tickets to any speeding drivers. Of course, there were nearly no cars on the road back then, which impacted the revenue coming into the town.
"Since the budget is traffic tickets, everything that we did was based on it. I know that during my time there, our budget continually dropped because we weren?t bringing in traffic tickets," said Mumma. "Writing an entire budget worth of traffic tickets to fund a police department was not something that I could do in an ethical manner."
"After being a cop for 40-plus years, that?s not the way I work."
He?s now a commander with the Edgewater Police Department and a Republican candidate for Jefferson County sheriff.
Earlier this year, Morrison commissioned a report from a Denver consulting firm,?KRW Associates, to evaluate the department.
In-part, the firm found officers were pressured to write traffic tickets to subsidize the town?s budget. In 2021,?nearly half of the town?s $2.6 million budget?came from fines. The other half came from taxes along with other smaller sources of revenue.
In 2017, the report found revenue from tickets in Morrison brought in $1,165,874. In 2018, the number was $899,659. In 2019 it was $935,934. In 2020 fines brought $820,180 for the town.
The town's budget projected the police department would bring in $1,101,000 in 2021. Chief Siderfin notified the board in early October that number would only be $300,000 this year.
"I guess I just don?t know how a little town like Morrison gets out of that sort of addiction to writing tickets to supplement their revenue," said Lonnie Schaible, an associate professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver who focuses on policing.
Schaible said a town that focusses solely on writing tickets can face problems.
"I think it?s a dangerous trap for a department to rely on as a sole source of revenue because it pushes a lot of abusive behavior," said Schaible.
The report written by KRW was not released to the public on the town of Morrison's website. 9NEWS obtained the report through a public record's request.
In it, the consulting firm determines a series of "overall common themes" from confidential interviews with Morrison Police employees. Among them are these findings:
"The pay at Morrison PD is low compared to similar agencies""There is a perception within the police department that somewhere within the Town of Morrison, pressure has developed over the years for the officers to write traffic tickets."
"Officers have to purchase some of their own police gear."
"Ultimately, modern policing is about more than just generating revenue by giving tickets," said Robert Preuhs, chair of the political science department at Metropolitan State University of Denver. "Any time you?re making tradeoffs, moving personnel away from ticketing, you?re risking your revenue stream."
Preuhs said if there's only one stream of revenue funding a town, the pressure to write more tickets is higher.
"If people actually obey the law and don?t speed, you don?t have much revenue," said Preuhs. "Any time you have a downturn in that particular stream, a whole lot of pressure goes on both the city generally and ultimately you end up with reductions in services."
One of the recommendations the report made was to close down the department completely and let the Jefferson County Sheriff?s Office take over permanently. The report said that would be a solution to the town?s dependence on writing traffic tickets for revenue. Of course, the town would then have to find a new way to make money and this recommendation was not adopted.
The mayor of Morrison told 9NEWS at a town board meeting Tuesday night he does not plan to close the department.
9NEWS reached out to every member of the Morrison Board of Trustees, the mayor, town manager and the current chief. No one responded to a request for an interview.
Morrison will now pay the Jefferson County more than $20,000 a month to run patrols in the area as Mumma waits to see if his former department will return.
"If I were to look at it now with what?s going on, there?s no way I would take that job," said Mumma. "It?s too demanding for what they?re asking and I don?t see a way to recover from it."
Last edited by kidicarus13; 10-21-2021 at 22:30.
Lessons cost money. Good ones cost lots. -Tony Beets
Lol. Fvck traffic cops
IIRC Morrison hasn't even had a PD for that long. I know in the 80's all they had was a "town marshal."
Funny story: The town marshal had the legal authority (apparently) to appoint unpaid "deputies" who were then technically sworn LEOs (albeit without POST certification.) I know this because from 83 to 85 I worked for Johns-Manville in-house security and several of the supervisors on the security force became buddy-buddy with the Morrison Marshal and he "deputized" them so they could CCW (this was obviously long before our current CCW system.) The supervisors would actually brag about it and show their Morrison Commission Cards to some of us.
I think after a lot of abuses (ya think?) that authority was taken away from him. It must have been about this time CO started requiring POST certification for all sworn LEOs.
Morrison's PD sounds like Mountain View, a department that only exists to write tickets.
Whatever happened to Mountain View PD? Is it still around?
Martin
If you love your freedom, thank a veteran. If you love to party, thank the Beastie Boys. They fought for that right.
Still alive!
https://www.mountainview.gov/depts/police/default.asp
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