The city of Galveston has placed all twelve members of the city’s traffic division on “paid administrative leave”. Apparently, there’s some sort of investigation going on.
Note: these are not Galveston PD officers, and don’t issue traffic tickets. These are the folks who maintain the city traffic lights and suchlike. Which kind of makes this a full on “WTF?!” moment. (As the HouChron notes, there is a budget for the division, but they don’t collect money from the public, so you’d figure the chances for skimming and embezzlement are slim.)
From what my uncle tells me of Galveston, I’d be surprised if anyone in the government there wasn’t a crook. Evidently all the money to rebuild after Ike went into numerous pockets and nothing got rebuilt…
Couple of possibilities come to mind
1st — kick backs for setting out traffic barriers and such for the events.
2nd and most probable – they were shaving time off the yellow lights.
Tx DoT recommends minimum yellow light times based on many variables and cities are supposed to comply. Shortening the light time can increase the number of violations dramatically….and it doesn’t have to be a large decrease (0.15 seconds).