Ode to Constable Ted
March 27th, 2008 John Posted in The Last Visible Blog |
Recently on NPR, I heard a news item about something I never would have thought would hit national news — Constable Ted Miller of Island Pond, VT. The news item focused on a rival for Ted’s elected position — a young guy without any police experience named Bucky. He promised to go to the police academy and get some if elected. Good for Bucky!
The NPR piece went into the story of Constable Ted somewhat, but there’s only so much that can be done in three minutes and the story of Constable Ted is legendary.
Last fall, during my week-long stay in Vermont, the Caledonian Record was abuzz with the tale of Constable Ted and his legendary overzealousness in regard to handing out tickets, citations, etc. Actually, we were warned prior to going up there by a cousin, who mentioned a gung ho cop to avoid. Thankfully, we were nowhere near Island Pond (though have been there on a couple of occasions before). Apparently, the board of selectmen in that town received numerous complaints about Constable Ted and they were beginning to worry that it was keeping people from actually visiting there and, thus, hurting local business.
In response, the selectmen decided to put up a red light next to stop signs that tourists often miss and Constable Ted often caught them missing to the tune of $199. My favorite part of the article I read was this: “Selectmen are in the process of buying a marked police cruiser for Constable Miller to use. As a result, Miller will no longer receive reimbursement for the use of his private, unmarked cruiser.” I think you get the picture about Constable Ted’s scam right there.
The basic complaint has been that Miller hands out tickets too quickly, ignoring the typical elbow room for warnings. In 2004, there were 1822 warnings and 1320 tickets, in 2005 there were 1365 warnings and 996 tickets, in 2006 there were 1662 warnings and 1224 tickets. Those numbers are pretty hard to work with to find a pattern and either absolve or condemn Constable Ted, but the paper ded report that Island Pond ranks number one in traffic violation revenues in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom and number 10 in the state! They made $71,000 from traffic tickets in 2006!
Miller himself was quoted as saying, “Should have sacrificing of public safety for the sake of recreation? I won’t do it. Do I affect business? I don’t know. But I do know that it’s safer to drive in Island Pond than it ever has been.”
Island Pond is like one main street and a cross street.
One merchant was quoted as saying, “Island Pond is protected by a one-man army.”
Miller functioned as constable for 24 years.
This is a good quote: “Miller said he appreciates the selectmen purchasing a marked cruiser for him to use. He said the only reason he has never paid to have his personal vehicle marked was because it would be harder to trade in if it was all decked out as a police cruiser.”
Constable Ted said that he videos all his traffic stops and often shows them in court to prove the violators stories to be wrong. In fact, on more than one occasion, he welcomed the Caledonian-Record to his house to view his traffic tapes and/or public records. Sounds like an ominous sort of party to me.
There was also a piece in the paper called “Island Pond’s Infamous Intersection,” a first-person account of Constable Ted’s procedures as seen by a staff reporter Jacob L. Grant, who describes one of the traffic traps like this: “The intersection of Main Street, Route 105 and Route 114 in Island Pond is so excessively signed, it’s astonishing that anybody could not notice the warnings: ‘Stop Ahead.’ ‘Stop.’ ‘Wrong Way.’ ‘Go back.’ ‘You Idiot, You’re breaking the Law!”
Later, Grant has this to say: “This is regarded as a confusing intersection, or maybe the motorists have become so used to signs that we just blow them off. I’m guilty of it, too. I mean, come on, I’ve been driving for 10 years, I know what I’m doing. Well, I suppose the Captain of the Exxon Valdez did too, but not even he was impervious to a little mishap now and then.”
So basically tourist drivers are to be equated with drunken polluters.
Later the reporter sat on a stakeout with Constable Ted to watch him in action. No surprise that he is courteous to anyone he stops as he sits there with the reporter except for the big jerk from — you guessed it — Massachusetts who he speaks more forcibly to. “You’re ruining my weekend for this?” the Masshole yells. When the Masshole says he is never going to come back to Island Pond again, Constable Ted replied, “‘I don’t care,’ and told him that if that was how he was going to drive he probably shouldn’t come back anyway.”
Constable Ted claimed there was a traffic fatality at that little stop sign on Main Street and that is the reason for his efforts, but the reporter didn’t corroborate that anywhere in the article. I’d love to know the circumstance of it, though, as it would have shed some light on the validity — or lack of — of Constable Ted’s concern. One thing I do realize is that the entire Constable Ted controversy revolved around him planting his cruiser on Main Street for what I can only imagine is most of the day, seeing as he is such a scourge to violators there. I’d be curious to know how much time he spent seeking out violations in other areas of the town and just cruising around on patrol or if this one little nook was such a cash cow for the man and the town that he nary budged from it.
The controversy of Constable Ted did not end there, of course — it was followed up by an editorial in the vaguely conservative paper with the headline “It’s time to pull the plug.” The editorial states “One victim told us that Constable Miller told him that, in order to avoid a ticket from him, a driver must stop and count to five before proceeding” and speculated that “It’s hard to believe that Theodore Miller is doing this harassment of microscopic offenders for anything but his own pleasure” and added “He’s one heck of a bad welcome mat.”
Surprise, Constable Ted responded in with a Letter to the Editor, but not before someone came to his defense: “Isn’t it wonderful to have a whipping boy while the select board of Brighton sits back in relative anonymity and enjoys the revenue stream that is created by the infamous ‘Stop Sign,’ NOT Constable Miller?”
Constable Ted himself said that the editorial was “based on hearsay and rumors and not on the facts” and he outlined some of his procedures, denying he ever told anyone to count to five and revealing another false allegation that “I have told motorcycle operators I require them to put both feet on the pavement in order to be a legal stop.”
Then Constable Ted showed his claws “I suppose printing the truth or investigating those allegations would not sell your newspapers. I challenge you to visit my home so that I may show you proof that these allegations are indeed false. Please bring the names of people that claim to have received tickets for less than 10 mph over the speed limit and I will reimburse those people the amount of the fine and send a dismissal form to the traffic bureau.”
He “challenges” them? He demands names? That doesn’t sound like a good idea to me.
“It also appears to me that you are of the opinion that public safety should be sacrificed for the purpose of recreation and tourism,” Constable Ted reiterated. “That is a recipe for disaster. I will not put a price tag on public safety.”
Then he chargeed ”Publishing an editorial base solely on hearsay and false allegations makes you part of the problem instead of part of the solution.”
And then in for the kill: “The vast majority of motorists traveling in and through our town drive the speed limit, stop at stop intersections and don’t travel the wrong way on Main Street (a clearly posted one-way street). It seems that the few who fail to follow basic motor vehicle laws and fail to take responsibility for their actions are the ones who attempt to villainize me by writing letters to the editor with false allegations. They bank on the fact that editors and readers will not do the research and believe exactly what they say to be the truth. I challenge editors and readers alike to go to traffic court and view the evidence for themselves. For as Paul Harvey would say, ‘And now, the rest of the story.’”
Is Paul Harvey still alive? I know Constable Ted means serious business by quoting him.
The last I heard about Constable Ted — before the NPR story, that is — was a letter to the editor in the Caledonian Record, a great screed that managed to link up a defense of Miller with the right wing crackpotism that I had mentioned before. There’s lots of it in the Northeast Kingdom, apparently, this kind of older citizen, gasket-blowing rage that’s astonishing to witness:
“To the Editor:
It certainly doesn’t take much to bring the anarchists scurrying out of the woodwork.
In a letter to the editor published in The Caledonian-Record on Aug. 28, 2007, Mr. Eric Long of Newark, Vt., spews his venom toward Ted Miller, constable of Island Pond (Brighton), in a fashion characteristic of those unfortunate souls that believe the world would be better off if society would simply ignore the law.
In a chapter taken from the anarchist’s handbook, Mr. Long seems to urge Ted Miller to stop enforcing the law through a not-so-veiled warning that continued enforcement of the law may be hazardous to Mr. Miller’s health. Mr. Long continues to render an uneducated and uncredentialed pop-psych evaluation regarding Mr. Miller’s mental state. The gracious acceptance of unreasoning criticism is always a part of a lawman’s job.
While I do not know Ted Miller personally, I am a retired peace officer of 31 years and I have had the honor of working with dedicated professionals such as Ted Miller appears to be. I believe that Mr. Long’s disparaging remarks will only serve to inspire the tenacious Mr. Miller into continuing his law enforcement career into his 60s.
As with all anarchists, Mr. Long’s utopia is to be found in such places as Iraq, the mountainous tribal areas of Pakistan and any other lawless area where all political power comes from the barrel of a gun. If our troops can find their way over there, I’m sure that Mr. Long should have no trouble at all. If this trip proves to be too costly, perhaps Mr. Long can take the short trip to Brattleboro and lounge around the downtown “au naturel” discussing the benefits of anarchy with his fellow ideologues.
Joe Bradley
Newport, Vt.”
Echoing Paul Harvey myself . . . and now for the rest of the story.
On March 5, it was reported that Constable Ted had been defeated by Darren “Bucky” Tardiff.
A week later, Tardiff failed his first attempt at the entrance exam for the Vermont Police Academy — “I know a couple of troopers who failed,” apologized one selectman.
As for Constable Ted, there was a rumor going around that he had started issuing tickets for the neighboring town of Orleans and that police force had to respond to numerous concerned phone calls that the scourge of Island Pond had expanded its web.
With apologies to Paul Harvey, whatever Constable Ted is up to, I have a feeling the Island Pond story is far from over — we have the crazy antics of Constable Bucky to follow. There is no rest of the story.
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