To commemorate 9/11 and show Las Vegans what the city could be like if those Islamo-bastards ever succeeded in turning the nation into a police state … there will be a “selective traffic enforcement” operation going on today at Tropicana and Eastern.

It frightens me when I listen to the news and hear them utter the phrase “routine traffic stop”. ROUTINE???  When did being detained by the cops become “routine”?

Now, I am admittedly older, but “routine police stops” were the types of things that our teachers used to scare us with in elementary school when explaining to us exactly how Russian commies were evil.

Now the term “routine stops” are considered as common in the USA as they were in 1975 USSR.

Yikes!  How did that happen?

But I’ve gone off on a rant as usual.  Back to the “selective traffic enforcement operations”.

That’s not my name for these operations, it is the name that LVMPD uses for them.

They will be looking for seatbelt violations, car seat violations, and drivers with a low sperm count.

A cop I know who works in another jurisdiction refers to these operations as “shooting fish in a barrel”.

He explained to me that cops want to return home to their families at the end of the day just like everyone else, and that the best way to ensure that this happens is to pick the low-hanging fruit during a shift to help lower their risk of danger.

5 guys in an SUV with bazookas blow through a stop sign while sideswiping a 65 year old lady with a burned out tail light.

What to do? More often than not, you stop the 65 year old lady, you write a ticket (showing that you were working) … and you don’t have to bother with that pesky risk.

Not that I can really blame them. Nobody wants to put themselves in danger. Self-preservation is human nature for everyone, but it just underscores the fact that only you are responsible for your own safety.

Listening to my scanner, it never ceases to amaze me at how resources are allocated. “Stopping unregistered scooter at Sierra Vista and Cambridge.” I know scooter riders, and pulling them over and ticketing them is a cottage industry here for the LVMPD. It has actually come to be known by riders as “the scooter wars”.

You see, if the scooter is 50cc and under, DMV won’t allow you to register it. BUT … if you don’t register it, the cops will ticket you for it not being registered. The LVMPD knows that they cannot be registered. It is not a mistake. Every single time someone has gone to court, it has been immediately thrown out by the judge out as soon as the rider says “It’s under 50cc’s”.

So why do they continue to write them?

A retired officer told me “Obviously scooter riders are not armed, so police like to stop them. The lack of a license plate also makes for an easy ticket. Once the ticket is written, it’s not their problem anymore”

Sweet!

It’s not the number of tickets that stick that count, it’s the number of tickets that are written.

Feel safer yet?

Yeah, me neither.

Anyway, they are going to be shooting fish in a barrel at Tropicana and Eastern all day today.

Thieves and gang-bangers in other areas of the valley … Rejoice!