Driving around Mountain View, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara, the one thing I have noticed more and more is the constant, if not oppressive, presence of police officers.  Lurking behind bushes, following cars for long distances, and of course, writing tickets.  Anecdotally, it seems everyone that I know has gotten at least one ticket this past year.  

Bad as things are in the SF bay area, the police harassment in the city of Jericho, AR is far worse.  The city has only 174 residents but has seven police officers.  The city has no businesses.  So how does the city maintain that many officers on its payrolls? Writing tickets, and lots of them.

Drivers may try to slow to a crawl along the gravel roads and the two-lane highway that run through Jericho, but that is not always enough to avoid getting a ticket.  According to 75-year-old retiree Albert Beebe, "When I first moved out here, they wrote me a ticket for going 58 mph in my driveway."  According to Thomas Martin, chief investigator for the Crittenden County Sheriff's Department, “You can't even get them to answer a call because normally they're writing tickets . . . They're not providing a service to the citizens."

Says former resident Larry Harris, "You can't even buy a loaf of bread, but we've got seven police officers."  Mr. Harris eventually left town because he said the police harassment became unbearable.

Amazingly, the city’s judge had to void a large number of tickets in part because the city's police had issued the citations outside of the city’s jurisdiction. 

Maybe CA isn't so bad after all.

Read more at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090903/ap_on_re_us/us_shot_in_court.