Police handed out over $200K of traffic tickets Memorial Day weekend

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - The Mobile Police Department wrote more than 1300 tickets over Memorial Day Weekend.

The staggering numbers leave many to wonder: Where is all that money going?

Each routine traffic stop a Mobile Police officer makes has the potential to bring in money to the City of Mobile.

Deputy Police Chief Lester Hargrove said the purpose and focus of details like the one over the holiday weekend is not profit but safety.

"We’re writing tickets to save lives. If a person knows they're going to get a ticket, in theory, they're not going to speed around town with no regard," said Hargrove.

Speeding accounted for 429 of the citations written. With more than 1300 overall tickets issued, that could equal lots of revenue. Speeding tickets have a price tag of $163-243 depending on the speed the driver was caught at.

Mayor Sam Jones said, "When people see tickets, people assume all the money from the ticket goes to the city. It doesn't."

Jones says each ticket a driver has to pay is split.

The mayor said it's mainly divided by the state and the courts. The city gets a portion, but Jones said it's not nearly enough to put a dent in the budget shortage.

"We consider it a source of revenue," Jones said. "We certainly don't consider it any major source when you're talking about a $29 million deficit."

Jones said the ticket money could possibly help if it's actually collected.

"We ran several amnesty programs because we have several million dollars that haven't been collected. So yeah, it could have an impact on the budget but it takes a little to collect it, he said.

At the end of Mobile's amnesty program in 2011, there were still 40,000 violators who had not paid tickets totaling about $10 million.

"Yes, it does have the potential to raise some money but not where it's going to be real significant to our deficit at this time, because you would collect that months from now or weeks and have to go to court,” he added.