The Town Crier: 11 tickets

Published 8:15 am Tuesday, June 10, 2025

A few days ago one of my more law-abiding friends surprised me with the news that they had gotten a speeding ticket in town. “When have you ever speeded?” I asked. “Well,” they said sheepishly, “I was going the posted limit but I passed through a school zone where the speed limit drops for a couple of hours each morning and afternoon. School was already out but the speed limit had not gone back up.”

That reminded me of several stories of my own driving where I crossed the intersection of the long arm of the law. I shan’t repeat any of those here as I’m not sure when the statute of limitations runs out on traffic speeding violations. But I was also reminded of the following story that doesn’t involve me.

We had a family friend that came and visited us a few years ago. She was a young lady from Brazil in her early 20s and came to practice her swimming with my wife who is a swim coach. I had a small, blue pickup truck that was pretty old and beat up. One evening she borrowed the pickup and was to grab something in town from a drive-through for the family and meet us at my parents’ house in the north end of the county. My two kids, 10 and 8 at the time, were riding with her.

After pulling out of the drive-through and back on the road, a Dalton Police officer noticed one of the tail lights was out (which we had not noticed). The blue lights came on and my kids got excited and told her to pull over. The young Brazilian pulled onto the shoulder and sat there to see what was going on. Over the loud speaker on the police car came a thunderous voice, “Please step out of the vehicle.” She stepped out, showed her driver’s license, got a warning to fix the light ASAP and was sent on her way.

A few minutes later, driving up Cleveland Highway in the county, a sheriff’s deputy in a patrol car spotted the light and, yep, turned on the blue lights and siren and pulled her over. Knowing what to do now, she grabbed her license and stepped out of the truck to meet the deputy. As soon as she stepped out beside the truck a thunderous voice sounded over the loudspeaker of the law enforcement car, “Please get back inside the vehicle!”

Between my friend getting the school zone ticket and remembering the story of our friend getting two tickets within a few miles and a few minutes of each other, I started wondering about the worst possible case, mainly how many different tickets could I get for one infraction, i.e., a brake light out. I’m going to assume if I got a ticket from the sheriff’s department, a little further down the road if I get pulled over again by them, I can just show the previous ticket and they would let me go on my way. If, on the other hand, like our friend, I get pulled over by a different jurisdiction, they may indeed decide to ticket me in addition to the first one, so they can get some money from the fine as well, and get another notch on the “saving society” post for the year-end count of what all their department did. Granted, these are only the paranoid imaginings of a chronic speeder, but theoretically, it could happen. So how many agencies in the area could ticket me? Here’s the list I came up with:

We have four city police departments in the county; Dalton PD, Tunnel Hill PD, Varnell PD and Cohutta PD. That’s four tickets right there I could get on a dark night driving the backroads of Whitfield.

Then of course, to fill in the gaps, there’s the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office. Now, let’s say I double park at Dalton State College. Bam! A ticket from the Dalton State public safety crew, aka the “campus cops.” Over at the hospital, there’s Hamilton Medical public safety. And at various locations around there is a patrol car with Dalton Parks written on the side looking for ways to put the bite in crime. Or maybe just help a mom with her kids who locked her keys in her cars. All these groups are at the end of the day there to serve the public, not just an eye out for leadfoots like me.

And on the way to Rocky Face there are the State Patrol barracks where Post 5, manned by Troop A, is based. I will tell a story on myself about being pulled over by the State Patrol, but just to keep my name out of the papers, it was the North Carolina State Patrol. As a young man I was pulled over for speeding, and a jovial trooper walked up to my window and chuckled as he said, “Well, someone your age, it’s either you’re late for work or it has something to do with a girl.” Sadly, I was just late for work.

There is also the Whitfield County Constable’s Office. I don’t know much about what they do but I’m pretty sure they can come pick me up if I don’t pay my traffic ticket. And finally, a law enforcement agency most folks don’t even know exists, and for a town like Dalton, these folks are probably on duty a lot while other counties will never see them. I’m talking about the railroad police! Each railroad has their own officers. Unless I’m driving a locomotive (and I don’t have a license to) I hope to avoid trouble with them.

So, there’s 10 (11 counting the railroad officers) I can get caught by. I think I’ll slow down!

Mark Hannah is a Dalton native who works in the film and video industry.

Editor’s note: This column was originally submitted on May 20.