That’s The Ticket The Town Of Roy, Wash., Has A Notorious Reputation As A Speed Trap; Now, A Lot Of Residents Want The Town Cops To Get Rid Of That Image

Writing traffic tickets long has been a serious cottage industry in Roy, a blink-twice-and-you’re-through-it speed bump in the foothills of the Cascade Range.

It is a reputation the town’s fathers never have seemed bothered by. No one complained, for instance, when in the 1970s Roy made a New York Times top 10 list of towns famous for ticket-writing.

Forty years ago, back when lumber and hauling produce were the mainstays of the local economy, the council fired Mayor Edgar Fuller for having the temerity to suggest that Roy should do away with its speed trap.

Now, it’s a group of riled merchants and a rebellious collection of residents from throughout the region who are raising a ruckus about Roy’s ever-vigilant three-man police force who patrols the infamous half-mile-long stretch of McNaught Street.

The downtown main drag, a small 30 mph sliver of state Highway 507 traversed by nearly 15,000 cars a day, was named in the 1880s in honor of James McNaught. He was the general counsel for the Northern Pacific Railroad who named the town after his first son, Roy.

“I know a lot of people around here who won’t come through town anymore,” Eric Narverud said the other day while pulling off lug nuts down at Roy Tire & Automotive. “They’ll take the country roads to avoid coming through. These guys pull practically everyone over.”

Without question, traffic fines are good for the little town’s economy. Last year, they generated almost 36 percent of Roy’s operating budget.

“It’s our second-biggest source of revenue, behind only property and business and occupation taxes,” said Mayor Joel Derefield.

But Jeanne Thomas worries that attendance at the Roy Rodeo next weekend could plummet because of negative publicity about the town’s speed trap.

“People are avoiding Roy,” said Thomas, owner of Roy’s Tavern.

Here, in an otherwise peaceful haunt where residents take great pride in their rodeos, the annual Ice Cream Social Baseball Game in June and the volunteer Fire Department-sponsored Easter egg hunt, road rage came to a head earlier this month.

An angrily written petition containing 235 signatures was presented to the council. It called Roy police “thugs” and demanded that the tiny incorporated city, population 362, cut police officers’ hours in half.

“We are tired of the Gestapo tactics of the Roy Police Department,” the petition read. “If the nervous driver is not pulled over for a mistake because of the officer tailgating, then the officer will find a reason to pull the vehicle over (for a) faulty license plate light, bad taillight, loud muffler, etc.

“We will take legal action if need be as we do love the town of Roy and do not want to see it become a Nazi-socialist form of hell.”

City officials were not pleased with the incendiary language.

“The petition was slander and garbage,” Police Chief Roger West said last week while lighting up a generic-brand cigarette inside the drab, gray wooden City Hall that houses Roy’s cramped police headquarters.

Resident Charles Overturf, a Boeing mechanic who spearheaded the petition drive, concedes he went too far in comparing Roy police with the Gestapo.

“I just wanted to get their attention,” said Overturf, who said he hasn’t gotten a traffic citation in Roy in five years. “It’s a money thing. They just want more money.”

But West said the traffic citations work.

“It’s always been known that you don’t speed in Roy,” he said. “We don’t hide our cars. They’re in plain view. We don’t write bad tickets, and we’re going to continue to do our job. Most of the complainers are people who don’t live here and who’ve gotten cited.”

Said longtime Councilman Pat Sloppy, “We don’t need to cut back the force - and we won’t.”

But the mayor and council members agreed to make other changes to quell the community furor.

“We decided we’d keep the police more on the side streets and use more foot patrols,” said Derefield, a millworker who earns $125 a month as the town’s chief executive. “We’ve always had the reputation for having a speed trap, but that’s really not the image we want.”

Gregarious and engaging with a warm Southern drawl, West, who became police chief 18 months ago, said the only time there’s a real police presence in Roy is on Friday and Saturday nights when patrol cars are stationed on each side of town to catch the bar traffic.

So far this year, Roy police have handed out more than 300 traffic citations. Last year, nearly 900 tickets were issued, more than double the 1995 total. West said that’s because the council decided in mid-1995 to hire an additional $11-an-hour officer to tackle a perceived upswing in drug activity.

Two of the police officers work 32 hours a week; the third works just 20 hours.

“The way they’re writing tickets, I wonder when they have time for doughnuts,” joked Ned Ralton, a farmer from nearby Rainier who stopped in Roy last week for some teriyaki takeout.

In 1989, about $12,000 in city revenue was collected from traffic fines. In 1995, $36,700 was raised. And last year, revenues from traffic fines amounted to more than $72,000, almost all of it coming from drivers caught rumbling down McNaught Street.

Roy Nixon, 84-year-old president of the Roy Historical Society, recalled the days decades ago when Roy was more than a hiccup of a town.

“It was a destination. People would come by train from as far away as Olympia to fish at Muck Creek,” Nixon said. “We had seven saloons then, not three.

“But, oh, yes, it was a speed trap even then.”