Craziest, Perhaps Dirtiest, Little City in Florida about to Disappear

Anyone who has been in North Florida knows to slow down or just avoid Hampton, Florida. The tiny town of less than 500 people has no schools, no public services but a water department and police force, but for years, it had a golden ticket.  It had annexed a piece of Florida Highway 310 and used it for all it was worth. 

Hampton was run for and by that stretch of highway outside town  The police force existed to bust people for driving by.  The AAA warned motorists.  The AAA put up billboards and still people got stopped and hammered with tickets while crime in Hampton was rampant  Didn’t matter. There were more police per capita than just about anywhere else in the country, and thye were all out on the highway outside town. Inside town, do what you please.

Hampton racked up $1 million in traffic tickets for less than a mile of road.  That’s million with an “m” in a matter of a few years.  How’d they do it?  By doing nothing else.  Why’d they do it?  Because they could.

In a long article, CNN explores the whole, sorry mess, here.  It can be summed up in this, quote though:

The city doesn't pay its bills on time, if it pays them at all, the audit says. It doesn't balance the checkbook or withhold employee payroll taxes or hold elections when it should. It doesn't maintain insurance on city vehicles. Record-keeping is hit or miss. The auditors were told that the records they sought were destroyed by an accident or in a flood. The water meter readings? Those were "lost in the swamp."

This was perhaps the most disturbing bit of news to come out of that hearing: City officials acknowledged that petty cash and money from water customers -- the city clerk often demanded payment in cash -- were kept together in a bag. When police said he needed cash to buy drugs for "undercover investigations," it came out of that bag, Smith and Van Zant said.

No records were kept, so nobody had a clue what happened to the money -- or the acquired contraband. This much is clear to Smith: No prosecutions resulted.

In the end, the auditors unearthed a problem far deeper than speed traps and mismanagement. They found evidence of what legislators called "wholesale corruption" and "abuse of the public." The vote was unanimous: request a criminal investigation, a forensic audit and a grand jury and look into getting a special prosecutor.

It started to end when the county sheriff clamped down on the city police, a state legislator got a traffic ticket, and the mayor got busted for meth.  A serious trifecta.

So, the Florida legislature in Tallahassee is about to kill the town.  Hampton is about to cease to exist.  And folks are going to go to jail.  More should than are going to be there, though.