Toll Plaza Nails Speeding Sunrise Cops
SUNRISE (CBS4) - A Sawgrass toll plaza turned into a speed trap for some of the very officers who patrol the road in Sunrise.
"Seven of our officers were found to have violated department policy by speeding while operating police vehicles," said Sunrise Police Sgt. Rodney Hailey.
One officer is accused of speeding thru 50 times in a one year period. All of them have been punished already, some got counseling, others were written up and lost their take home police cruiser; one even lost his police car for six months.
"The public knows we're sorry that it happened and we took immediate steps in discipline to send a message to the rest of the agency that we won't tolerate this and we don't want this to happen in the future," said Sgt. Hailey.
There have been a lot of examples of cops speeding recently, the most recent one was on Miami Beach.
The officer was going so fast, he went airborne.
On the turnpike last October, a City of Miami police officer was stopped by an FHP trooper after the trooper said he hit 120 miles per hour in his police cruiser.
And a tragic example in Fort Lauderdale happed in June of 2006. That's when an off duty officer hit and killed a woman while going at least 90 miles per hour on the way home.
All of these incidents chip away at the public's trust.
"It's a double standard!" said driver Jennifer Jones. "They'll pull you over for doing the same thing. Yet they don't go by their own rules."
Sunrise police are working on a plan to address that, possibly installing GPS devices in police cars to help with dispatching and keep an eye on speed.
