Ticket Quotas in McBee, SC

It is South Carolina’s best known speed trap, McBee, S.C, about 90 miles from Charlotte. Now, the mayor and two former police chiefs have been arrested, they’re charged in a ticket-writing scheme to rake-in money for the town.

Just 800 people live in McBee, but thousands pass through the town on the way to Myrtle beach.   And for years, it’s been common knowledge that you can get a ticket if you go just one mile an hour over the speed limit

For more than 30 years, a sign posted by a McBee business warned of the speed trap. But nothing was done, until a former McBee police officer recently blew the whistle. He told Queen City News, “They wanted ten tickets a day.” He said he was told by the mayor, “you can sit at this corner and write a few, you can go to that corner and write a few — and get ten a day, that’s what we want.”

Text messages from the mayor told the former chief how many tickets would be needed to raise money for a new police car. Mayor Glen Odom also calculated how many tickets would be needed to provide money to help the town re-pay a couple of Federal loans.

On Tuesday, McBee’s mayor and two former police chiefs were arrested. They are charged with misconduct in office.

.