Speed Traps and Burglars
Your otherwise excellent article on Mission Viejo (“A New City Takes Stock,” Dec. 12) inexplicably included two paragraphs of unfounded attack on law enforcement in our city.
Someone named Nadine Secarea is quoted as complaining about sheriff’s deputies “setting up speed traps,” carping that “it doesn’t make my home and my community safer from burglars.”
In the first place, speed traps are illegal in California, and while I’ve seen a lot of traffic enforcement in Mission Viejo, I’ve seen no speed traps. I’ve seen deputies staking out areas where drivers are known to speed, but that is not a speed trap. Indeed, it is one of the examples of particularized law enforcement that we were promised cityhood would bring us.
In the second place, complaining that traffic enforcement doesn’t protect us from burglars is like complaining that your heart surgery didn’t help your asthma. We demand a lot of our police, and I for one am happy they’re doing all their jobs, including traffic enforcement. The burglar steals my goods; he can have them. The mindless speeder endangers me, my wife, my teen-age son, all of whom drive, and my two younger daughters, who don’t.
Which would you rather do Ms. Secarea, replace your VCR or identify your child’s body?
BILL BEDSWORTH
Mission Viejo
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