It wasn’t a ticket. It was a toll. And me and my family did not see a CHP Officer, we saw a toll road collector. It was not a “Serve and Protect” ticket but rather a “Generate revenue for the local municipal court and the county, or get a poor evaluation” ticket. So was my experience with CHP Officer Vargas, badge number 20327, assigned to the CHP Substation in Barstow, California. But to me and my family, he will be forever known as the toll road collector of California State Route 127. Yes, the road that heads north out of Baker, California to our former vacation hide-a-way is a money making prospect for the local municipal court in Barstow and San Bernardino County as well. Contrary to popular urban myth, the CHP does not make a dime off the tickets it writes. The money you pay to register your vehicle and to get a driver’s license pays almost all of the CHP operational budget, from the State’s Motor Vehicle Account. In addition, “written policies” on ticket quotas, are illegal in California. But, since the budget woes of 2008, some “invisible hand” seems to be at work here. It used to be that we could expect helpful, friendly, responsible and mature policing from the CHP. CHP officers were respected because they performed an essential service to communities and they did it in a professional manner. I say “used to” because now if you have a conversation with a CHP Officer, it’s likely to start with you being asked if you know why you were stopped and end with your signature on a dotted line. According to a Sacramento Bee article, the CHP wrote 200,000 more tickets in 2009 than they did two years prior. The CHP would like the public to believe that this 200,000 ticket increase is just business as usual. However, it is hard to explain this increase without the rank and file getting “new guidelines” on issuing traffic citations. Clearly, CHP officers have gotten the message; write as many tickets as possible,(in essence, a defacto tax), so that the municipal courts and counties do not have to raise “real” taxes to continue to operate. The results of this new “Revenue Generating” CHP verse the old “Serve and Protect” CHP has been devastating on the public’s opinion of people who wear the uniform of the Highway Patrol. It does not take a lot of work to find blogs and other postings that write disparaging words about our law enforcement community. But even I was taken back by the sheer visceral hatred, in particular, toward the California Highway Patrol. Apparently, I am not the only one who is unhappy with the CHP’s new role as toll road collectors. As a society, it is exceedingly dangerous for citizens to view its law enforcement community as “tax collectors with guns” as opposed to individuals whose life’s work is to “Serve and Protect”. An example of this appeared in the Washington Post, on 9-3-2014. The Post noted that some of the towns in St. Louis County, Missouri, near Ferguson, can derive 40 percent or more of their annual revenue from the petty fines and fees collected by their municipal courts. A majority of these fines are for traffic offenses, many to poorer individuals. Some of the problems with an obsessive ticket writing policy is that not only does it undermine the public’s trust in the CHP, but a huge number of tickets the CHP is writing are to people who simply cannot afford to pay them. California tax payers get the privilege of paying the cost of arresting and incarcerating poor people who can’t pay tickets. However, this is irrelevant to any CHP Officer who writes a revenue ticket, since the county and municipal court still get half of every ticket that is paid. I, for one, am terrified by a “thin blue line” becoming razor thin, by a society that turns our cops into tax collectors with guns. Clearly, some new laws could help. First and foremost, all fines and fees generated by all municipal courts in California need to go directly to the State of California’s General Fund. No moneys generated by tickets or fines should go to local counties and municipal courts because it encourages local law enforcement to write tickets to generate revenue, as opposed for public safety concerns. California’s municipal courts deserve to be appropriately funded. To quote Californian Chief Justice, Malcolm M Lucas, “I firmly believe state funding (of our courts) is the best way to go. Stable adequate funding in every court in every county is a responsibility the state as a whole must and should bear.” – Address to California Judges Association, October 1, 1995. So I signed the toll road fee form and gave it back to Toll Road Collector Vargas. The toll fee was going to deplete our vacation funds, so we had to turn around at that very moment. Our Death Valley vacation was now over, before we even made it to the Park boundary. So, we slowly made our way back to Baker, California. We kept looking for the 55 mph posting that the Toll Man vigorously contended was there, but we never saw it. California State Route 127 is identical to many 2 lane roads in California that allow a speed up to 65 mph. It is an empty and vast highway where the road fades away in a one-point perspective. Reaching Baker and interstate 15 south, I drove 68 mph (maximum allowed speed limit being 70 mph), as semi-tractor trailers passed me like I was standing still. Then, out of the back seat, my son shouted, “Dad, look out, it’s that toll road collector again!” And sure enough, he was right, it was Officer Vargas. It added insult to injury to know that he had to be going faster than the speed limit to have caught up to us, as we headed home, our spirits low. The hypocrisy that our encounter with him would cost us hundreds of dollars for a “traffic violation” that he committed himself that day, and probably every day, did not escape us. But he wasn’t done yet. As he made his way back to Barstow, and we back to Bakersfield, he began to tail-gate a small sedan. The sedan had not been speeding or driven in an unsafe manner, but he was getting pulled over anyway. I left Barstow thinking that if the CHP just literally set up a Toll Booth across Interstate 15 and hit up every car for 20 bucks, I would have more respect for them. At least it would be honest toll road.