St. Louis Park Ranks 67th in Speeding Tickets Per Capita

Legend

• Green pins: 0 to 500 tickets
• Yellow pins: 500 to 1,500 tickets
• Red pins: 1,500 or more tickets

Police departments that cover multiple cities have a pin in each of the cities they cover. Sheriff’s offices, state patrol, park police, University of Minnesota police and airport police are not shown.

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St. Louis Park police had among the lowest rates of writing speeding tickets for the Twin Cities in 2011, according to a report on WCCO-TV.

The city ranked 67th in the number of speeding tickets per capita among agencies in the Twin Cities metro area. The city’s 52 sworn officers wrote 570 tickets for excessive speed—a rate of .01 tickets for every person in St. Louis Park. The top three locations in the city of 45,882 people were:

• 23rd Street West and Louisiana Avenue South
• 27th and Highway 100
• Highway 7 and Wooddale Avenue

Nearby police departments ranked much higher. Minnetonka police wrote the 12th-highest number of speeding tickets per capita. Golden Valley was 18th. Richfield was 55th. Minneapolis was 63rd.

According to the WCCO-TV report, speeding tickets aren't a money-maker for local police departments, even in No. 1-ranked Edina: 

Go over the posted speed and it’s up to each department to decide what to do. There are no state standards and police departments don’t set quotas. That’s illegal in Minnesota. When departments do issue tickets, those cities don’t make much money, only about $10 to $20. Most of the money goes to the state and county.

“It’s a loser money-wise. If I could get rid of it I would but I can’t,” Edina Police Chief Jeff Long said.

See the full WCCO-TV report at minnesota.cbslocal.com. There you can also download the full database.