The quaint city was already known as an infamous speed trap zone but gained even more publicity as a small-town with big corruption when lawmakers threated to pull its city charter a month ago. However, the townspeople persevered. Within a matter of four weeks, they had come up with an outline that persuaded Representative Charles Van Zant and Senator Rob Bradley to allow them to keep their city. They won the tough battle with all odds against them.

“Thank you for the work that has been done,” Bradley told the crowd of 50 gathered Friday at Victory Baptist Church, according to a CNN article, “You’ve got a lot more to do, but boy. …” He clearly was impressed, as was Van Zant, who said, “You’ve done yeoman’s work. I think you’ve done well.”

Trouble arose in a quite innocent way according to the newly hired city attorney John Cooper. A Texaco gas station on nearby US 301 asked for cops to protect the place after a couple of bad accidents and homicides took place. Then, Hampton annexed a 1,200-foot stretch of highway. Later on though, someone arrived at the idea that a lot of easy cash was to be made from pulling over speeders and writing up tickets they would have to pay.

When Hampton’s map was redrawn, it resembled a giant mosquito, draining money straight from the highway. The biggest issue at the time was the police department as it was constantly going over its budget and the revenue from the tickets did not seem to make its way to any person working outside of its city hall building.

The amount of officers increased to 19, which included the chief. However, Bradford County Sheriff Gordon Smith confessed that a bunch of the cops were not at all trained in the proper manner. What is worse, the audit discovered that a couple of them had been driving uninsured vehicles. One policeman, who was better known as “Rambo,” kept an assault rifle strapped across his chest just to write up traffic tickets.

Voice of Russia, CNN