Drumming Up Business for Ogden's New Justice Court

By Rudizink

It's been nearly a year since we warned about Boss Godfrey's new scheme to generate massive city revenue by wringing-out "fines" from Ogden citizens, through Boss Godfrey's new Ogden Justice Court. "The new court will be a cash cow", neoCon City Administrator Mark Johnson gleefully exclaimed, during a Salt Lake Tribune interview last year.

Well, the newly-remodeled court is almost ready for business, as the Standard-Examiner reported last week. All that that's needed now is a steady stream of hapless citizens to be processed through the court turnstiles, unceremoniously relieved of their cash, and released out the back door, with a kick in the butt and a cheery "Thanks for doing business with Ogden City... do come back again!"

And the other necessary component of this grand revenue-raising scheme is also near-complete. In order to generate the projected massive revenue, Boss Godfrey has concocted a truly evil scheme to keep the court's massive numbers of court "customers" coming back. He's already doubled the number of "traffic officers," as this morning's Troy Arrowsmith guest editorial reports, and instituted a salary-tied citation quota system. And he intends to increase the citation quotas even more in the future. Business will truly be booming in the new Ogden Justice Court, we think.

OPBA president Arrowsmith cuts to the chase and identifies the core problem, in a few short paragraphs:

In 2005, Ogden officers had to write in excess of 20,000 citations just to get their wages to feed their family. This means that every man, woman and child who are Ogden citizens will receive a citation, at a minimum, every few years.

Are your elected city officials representing your views on this? Is this fair to you? Why are they trying to raise funds in such an underhanded way? Your elected officials are using the police department as a revenue generating machine instead of the job we were sworn to do: public safety.

And Officer Arrowsmith doesn't slow down or mince words in his concluding paragraph:

Are your elected officials truly serving you by forcing officers to watch a stop sign in hopes that they reach their ticket quota and get a raise? We feel that as police officers we swore an oath to protect and serve the citizens of Ogden. We feel that this not only means that we protect you against criminals, but in rare occasions such as this, we must protect you against your elected officials. We need your help, and ask that you call Mayor Godfrey and your City Council members and let them know that you support your police officers in this endeavor. [Emphasis added.]

And what say our gentle readers about all this? Will we sit back and dawdle, while Ogden's Finest are morphed by Boss Godfrey into a motley pack of collection agents with badges? Will we tolerate our great City's continued path toward having the lowest-paid police force in the west? Sending your email protests to the Ogden City Council would be a good start, for those gentle readers who don't relish these prospects. And showing up to offer your support for our police officers at tonight's council meeting (where OPBA representatives will again petition the council for a re-visit of the salary issue) wouldn't be a bad idea either.

Comments, anyone?

What are our gentle readers thoughts on this issue?