Video: Police in Mountain View, Pop. 518, Wrote 3,624 Traffic Tickets in 2014
Rocky Mountain PBS I-News, in collaboration with 9Wants to Know, analyzed 270 municipal budgets in Colorado to determine the percentage of each town or city's revenue based on traffic stops. Only 40 municipalities earned more than 4 percent of total revenue from citations.
Of those, only five towns earned more than 30 percent of revenue from fines, including Mountain View, which made 53 percent of its revenue from citations in 2013. Also in the metro area, the Red Rocks town of Morrison earned 52 percent of its revenue from fines. Tiny Campo in far southeast Colorado was at top of the list, earning almost its entire municipal budget, 93 percent, from traffic stops.