FLORIDA: Trap Sprung

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Hialeah Gardens, Fla. (pop. 180) has only one distinguishing feature. Fourteen miles northwest of Miami, it straddles U.S. Highway 27, one of the roads that carry thousands of money-loaded tourists to Hialeah Race Track, just six miles away. In 1955, unhappily aware that all this traffic was racing by-much of it trying to get to the track in time for the daily double-Hialeah Gardens set itself up a whopping new industry: a speed trap.

Doubling in brass as police chief, Mayor James A. Grimsley and his five-man force blew the whistle on hundreds of motorists, in less than a year collected $52,422.23 in speeding fines and forfeitures. When the anguished cries of Highway 27's motorists brought on a Dade County grand jury investigation and forced him out of office as police chief, Grimsley had a worthy successor. In twelve months new Chief William C. Geronimo and the Hialeah Gardens whistle-blowers racked up $45,000.

For all that fine income, Hialeah Gardens was unhappy-and last week it sprang its own trap. A reform ticket, voted in by 72-6, took over the government, with the new mayor, grey-haired Mrs. Hazel Shattock, pledged to abolish the speed trap. Major reason for the change: the people of Hialeah Gardens had seen hardly a penny of the speed-trap collections. Most of the money had gone toward a new jail, the cost of keeping traffic records, and ever-new, always souped-up patrol cars.