Speed Trap!

Montreal, QC - EvilGentleman - Wednesday, April 5th, 2006 : goo

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It was a nice sunny day on Sunday, so the local police decided to spend it outside. They set up their radar guns in front of the Chinese restaurant down the street from my place and started snagging speeders as they went by. It was a very coordinated effort involving about 20 officers working in tandem. They would take turns operating the radar gun (range: 1000 m) while other officers would stand in the middle of the road and stop traffic, directing the speeders to pull into the parking lot, where they would be issued their tickets by other officers.

Police seem to have this ability to turn away from cameras while on the job, no matter what they are doing.

Some of the people being pulled over really wanted to argue with the police, despite the fact that they were actually giving people a break and only isuuing tickets to those drivers travelling at 71 km per hour or more in a zone that is posted at 50 km per hour. Even with the leniency, they were issuing about two tickets per minute.

I had permission from the police to shoot these pictures, as they were happy to have people want to take pictures of them doing something besides taking their breaks at Tim Horton's or McDonald's. In all fairness, I must say that the police around here are usually pretty serious about their work, and the horrible racism they used to be known for has all but disappeared (but not completely)

They were writing tickets on the hood of the cruiser parked by the road, then passing them to their partners, who were standing watch over the people who were pulled over.

The owner of the Chinese restaurant was furious with the police, because his customers were calling him asking what was wrong. They assumed that something bad was going on at the restaurant, since there were a dozen police cruisers in the parking lot. He said it was lunchtime on Sunday, and he had no business.

I tried to get permission to shoot a few shots over the shoulder of the officer with the radar gun, but was denied. It was still all quite interesting.

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