Arcade, Georgia Speed Traps

While I was driving through arcade during daylight, I was pulled over by the police for not having my lights on while it was sprinkling. The officer said it was raining too hard and he could not give a warning due to the fact he was keeping us safe in the rain. He did not even have a rain coat on, if it was raining that hard. I went to court and the prosecutor throught it out and said it should have been a warning. I had to come down from another state because I do not want this on my commercial license. In the court room everyone was being charged with a $25.00 court cost. No one ever gets a warning. This is only about a 5 to 10 miles. Watch out that you’re not going too slow, too fast, no lights, lights out, tail light out. They will get you for anything. Beeeee Careful

Well they have scaled down the number of officers in an attempt to meet budget constraints (down to 3 from too many to count). But, what they have always done, is hire the bottom of the barrel officers and officers fresh out of the Academy (young guns looking to make their mark in law enforcement) so this area is quite prone to over zealous officers. Also, for a town that dosen’t even have a post office they have managed to build a very impressive courthouse complex so you add it up where the money is coming from. The speed limit on the 129 bypass is now 55 thru the city of Arcade so they have lost that element of surprise so look for them to make up the short comings in other types of traffic stops. After watching the blotter in the local paper for the last few years it seems that their favorite is equipment violations i.e. license plate light out, tail light/headlight out just to gain access to find other things and do vehicle searches.They pulled over my son once for plate light out and when he went back to see the defective light it was working just fine. At that point the officer’ s story changed to it was going on and off. But, while he was stopped, the officer asked if he would consent to a search of the vehicle and he replyed “No.” So the officer called in a K-9 Unit to do an external search(nothing found) but all this took almost 2 and a half hours. All that for a supposed non working plate light. So watch out as you pass thru this area as they will pull you over for just about anything so they can go fishing for things to cite you for.

Marked and unmarked cars sit or hide all along the bypass

I received a ticket from the local police department years ago as many locals and non-locals have. I lived in the area and passed through there almost daily and therefore knew what speed limit to keep through town. The problem was however, they started changing the locations of the speed limit signs. A 45 mph speed limit sign was extended out about a half mile towards Athens at one point and I received a ticket because I was in an area that used to be 55 mph speed limit. Then I noticed about 2 weeks later, the 45 mph zone had been extended on out further towards Athens so I started paying attention and it was moved frequently. I don’t know if they still move the signs around because I now take a different route but pay attention to the speed limit sign locations if you frequent the area.

Very small town has extended city limits to include a long stretch of new 4 lane highway,GA 129, and marked it with 45 mph speed limit. City conducts continuous enforcement with primary objective to fund the city budget. Arcade is only a few miles from a small town already on this list, Pendergrass, GA. Arcade, Jefferson, and Pendergrass all prey upon this very nice, new 4 lane highway between I-85 and Athens.