Heard about that on the news today. Insane that they put officers in that position just to raise revenue.

That's really sad news. One can interpret the story in a number of ways, but it looks to me like one county's hunger to gain speeding revenue has now caused the death of a good man and the years-long psychological trauma of a young woman who was guilty of something that all of us do.

Yup. Doesn't surprise me one bit.

I've started to see officers do that more and more around here. The other day (I was driving the wife and dog so I wasn't speeding), with the blinding sun in my face, two officers were on foot under the shade of a tree on a 35mph zone (one with he gun, the other presumably for flagging people down) right on the edge of the road. I just could not see them. I suddenly see flag officer just move around and that is when I finally noticed them at all. I instinctively swerved away from the motion and got a dirty look from the officer through my RVM.

WTF. I can easily see some distracted person in a large vehicle clipping one of them, or worse. That really is a dumbass thing to do. Law enforcement procedures need to be overhauled. Boston is still dealing with a case of a fleeing car running into a taxi cab killing the driver, a male passenger just back from Iraq, and leaving gf of passenger with severe brain and other injuries. All because the officer was chasing the suspect through a 25mph, crowded neighborhood over a minor traffic violation.

That really pisses me off. Yes runaway driver is a dick, but really, you couldn't mail the ticket, or whatever? It's really not worth it to do stupid shit like that.

Tragic. The poor guy was just doing his job - yet how reckless of HoCo to put him in this position. Maybe they will rethink how they pull people over for speeding now.

(This is common practice all over MD - it's not unique to HoCo).

I'm not saying it isn't, but I've never seen it done quite as brazenly in Montgomery Co. They stand along the edge of the road and point. But they don't physically block your path.

Just get a photo-radar van...

Ho Co would never do that as those vans use radar, which will provide adequate warning to those with radar detectors. Nope, Ho Co is a slave to it's LIDAR.

From your linked story:
Regardless, photo radar is an entirely different ball game. In just about every implementation in the US, photo radar is managed and paid for by contractors that are paid with a cut of the income generated. There's no downside to the municipality to do it this way. For every radar detecting user, there are how many hundreds of speeders without one?

I am actually inclined to suspect the radar reference was an error or oversimplification in the story. Ho Co NEVER uses radar.

I wonder if they were using the cherry picker again.