

Police higher-ups say the traffic unit has made Port Arthur a safer place to drive. Then, with the help of the cameras, which automatically scan the license plates of nearby cars as police cruisers drive around town, the team expanded its reach to target not just people breaking the rules of the road, but also those who owe money from prior infractions. Antoine went on a ticketing binge, and, propelled by all the new money from fines, city leaders expanded the traffic unit from just him to eight officers. Back in 2007, his bosses at the Port Arthur Police Department tapped him for a brand-new kind of job: writing up driving infractions full-time.
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Cameras peer out from the top of Roxanne’s trunk, their lenses scanning license plates in search of drivers who haven’t paid off their traffic fines.Īntoine launched a traffic-policing juggernaut in this small Gulf Coast city. Roxanne often rumbles past Port Arthur’s empty lots and abandoned storefronts as Antoine scours the area for misbehaving motorists. “My Roxanne loves putting on her red lights,” he said. His mom drove away with a ticket, Antoine said, and she didn’t cook him chicken dinner for the next couple months.Īntoine, 49, wears sport sunglasses and drives a fuel-black Dodge Charger he calls Roxanne, after the way Eddie Murphy sang the Police song in 48 Hours. But Sadie Mae Antoine’s son makes no exceptions. “She said, ‘Boy, quit playin’ with me,’” Antoine recalled.

She was driving 42 miles an hour in a 30 zone, out by the high school football stadium, the story goes. PORT ARTHUR, Texas - Officer Rickey Antoine is known around town as the man who gave his own mother a traffic ticket.
