News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Some Algood City Council members asking for more action on speeding through town.
Council Member Ron Graves said the town issued just four speeding citations last month compared with 39 in September, 2020. Graves said he wondered what was being done to address the issue.
“And I’m saying this because the speed sign is sitting down from my house where I can see it,” Graves said at a Monday night work session. “People from Algood are making fun of that now. Motorcyclists are coming down there and doing wheelies and seeing how high they can push it. There’s no follow-up. Nobody comes out there with the radar, nobody follows up the next day.”
Citizens and police came together for a town hall on the topic in June. Council Member Ruby Hawkins said she’s had a citizen tell her that the town hall “was a joke.”
Police Chief Dale Armour said that his department hasn’t operated with a full staff for some time. He said that though the department is slotted for 16 officers, he’s had to work with seven officers including himself working 24 hours shifts. He said on top of that, his officers just aren’t seeing speeding like that had previously.
“We had a patrol car that had been sitting out there, a decoy car, for a couple of days,” Armour said. “I asked him to go out and I wanted him to hide his patrol car and he hid it up around the church. I asked him to tell me how many cars were speeding since that patrol car had been sitting out there for two days. From 11:15 until noon, that’s 45 minutes, with oncoming traffic he observed 133 cars, zero cars were exceeding the speed limit for more than four miles per hour.”
Armour said that posting speeding signs, having decoy cars, and radars have all contributed to bettering the speeding issue in town. He said that it’s hard to focus solely on traffic concerns when his short staff has to address other issues.
“I pulled some local small town stats, Henderson, Tennessee for example,” Armour said. “Mr. Graves talked about slower speeds there. But you have a better chance of having an aggravated assault there than you do in Algood. So we have more crimes here than just speeding and we’re trying to address all of it with what we have.”
Graves said it’s difficult as a council member to continue to deal with speeding complaints and not have the answer.
Armour said that he doesn’t have the right answer to fully clear the town of speeding. He said that when talking to other chiefs in the state, they see the same situation.
