SorcererMickey
April 8th, 2006, 15:45
Crackdown at Disney
Scott Powers and Beth Kassab | Sentinel Staff Writers
Posted April 8, 2006
There's a new thrill ride at Walt Disney World that visitors will want to avoid: one in which a police car pursues you.
At Disney's request, Orange County deputy sheriffs have been hitting the streets there hard, sometimes writing dozens of traffic tickets a day for violations ranging from speeding to loud stereos, a Sentinel analysis has found.
The crackdown marks a dramatic change at Disney World. For a long time, uniformed traffic officers in marked patrol cars were hard to find on Disney roads. Not anymore.
Disney's attitude of keeping uniformed police barely visible to tourists changed after 9-11 when it began encouraging deputies to have a higher profile on the property. Then last year -- after increased concerns about speeding and traffic violations -- the two towns that make up the Disney resort signed landmark contracts with the Orange County Sheriff's Office to double the number of deputies assigned to the area.
During their first few months on the job, deputies wrote an average of 26 tickets a day at Disney World -- compared with an average of three per day during the first few months of 2004, according to the Sheriff's Office. The pace slowed down by last fall, and the Sheriff's Office said that is partly because traffic has slowed down. But deputies still frequently wrote more than 20 tickets a day during a three-month period examined by the Sentinel.
To read the entire article, click here (http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-disneytickets0806apr08,0,2139985.story?coll=orl-news-headlines-state).
Scott Powers and Beth Kassab | Sentinel Staff Writers
Posted April 8, 2006
There's a new thrill ride at Walt Disney World that visitors will want to avoid: one in which a police car pursues you.
At Disney's request, Orange County deputy sheriffs have been hitting the streets there hard, sometimes writing dozens of traffic tickets a day for violations ranging from speeding to loud stereos, a Sentinel analysis has found.
The crackdown marks a dramatic change at Disney World. For a long time, uniformed traffic officers in marked patrol cars were hard to find on Disney roads. Not anymore.
Disney's attitude of keeping uniformed police barely visible to tourists changed after 9-11 when it began encouraging deputies to have a higher profile on the property. Then last year -- after increased concerns about speeding and traffic violations -- the two towns that make up the Disney resort signed landmark contracts with the Orange County Sheriff's Office to double the number of deputies assigned to the area.
During their first few months on the job, deputies wrote an average of 26 tickets a day at Disney World -- compared with an average of three per day during the first few months of 2004, according to the Sheriff's Office. The pace slowed down by last fall, and the Sheriff's Office said that is partly because traffic has slowed down. But deputies still frequently wrote more than 20 tickets a day during a three-month period examined by the Sentinel.
To read the entire article, click here (http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-disneytickets0806apr08,0,2139985.story?coll=orl-news-headlines-state).