FLORIDA: Trap Sprung

Hialeah Gardens, Fla. (pop. 180) has only one distinguishing feature. Fourteen miles northwest of Miami, it straddles U.S. Highway 27, one of the roads that carry thousands of money-loaded tourists to Hialeah Race Track, just six miles away. In 1955, unhappily aware that all this traffic was racing by-much of it trying to get to the track in time for the daily double-Hialeah Gardens set itself up a whopping new industry: a speed trap.

Doubling in brass as police chief, Mayor James A. Grimsley and his five-man force blew the whistle on hundreds of motorists, in less than a year collected $52,422.23 in speeding fines and forfeitures. When the anguished cries of Highway 27’s motorists brought on a Dade County grand jury investigation and forced him out of office as police chief, Grimsley had a worthy successor. In twelve months new Chief William C. Geronimo and the Hialeah Gardens whistle-blowers racked up $45,000.

For all that fine income, Hialeah Gardens was unhappy-and last week it sprang its own trap. A reform ticket, voted in by 72-6, took over the government, with the new mayor, grey-haired Mrs. Hazel Shattock, pledged to abolish the speed trap. Major reason for the change: the people of Hialeah Gardens had seen hardly a penny of the speed-trap collections. Most of the money had gone toward a new jail, the cost of keeping traffic records, and ever-new, always souped-up patrol cars.