Stop Sign
© EcoVelo.info
Richland Hills - A woman was arrested because she hadn't responded to an overdue traffic ticket after a mere 60 days. Not only was she taken to jail, she was forcibly strip searched.

Sarah Boaz is a woman from Texas who ran a stop sign in August. She was caught running that stop sign and issued a ticket by Richland Hills Police. She never imagined what would come next. Boaz expected to pay the ticket and move on with her life. Until the Richland Hills Police Department sent someone to her home for her unpaid traffic ticket according to CBS News:
"I guess it was just frustrating to me, that a bill that I pay a month late, I end up in jail for," she said.

Boaz' expected trip to work Wednesday morning never happened. Because of her unpaid ticket, the Richland Hills City Marshal was waiting at her house with a warrant for her arrest. "I'm like, nobody puts out a bench warrant after 60 days. Why would you do that? You wouldn't do that."

Even when Boaz arrived at the jail, in handcuffs, she still didn't think it was real. Then a female officer started giving her instructions. She remembered the officer saying, "'I'm going to need you to undress. I'm going to need you to stand against the wall. Please don't step in front of this white box, or I'll take that'... aggressive toward me. Obviously I am going to jail."
Apparently the town puts people in jail almost immediately for unpaid tickets, unlike what they would do in a city.

Sarah Boaz
© CBS Dallas/Fort WorthSarah Boaz.

Municipal attorneys have claimed that Boaz should have received two notifications that she owed money for running the stop sign. The town claimed they sent the "notifications" while Boaz claimed she never got them. It still seems difficult to imagine a situation where a strip search is needed for a traffic ticket.

"The constitution doesn't keep the government or government officials from using common sense," Attorney Jason Smith told CBS 11 News. "Unfortunately, some police officers, some governments get overly aggressive because they want that ticket revenue."

Nothing mandates that the city use the full force of law against every person who violates any trivial ordinance. But revenue generation is serious business in the town of 7,800, and the town's only marshal wasn't going to let the overdue ticket go unpunished.

Several victims of police anal probing have recently come forward in in New Mexico after minor traffic violations, similar to Boaz's stop sign incident. The government's enthusiastic pursuance of every menial infraction, accompanied by its sadistic enforcement of prohibition laws, provides us with a stark reminder of how any American, no matter how upstanding, can be affected by the police state.