With his lean profile and weathered face, Officer Barney Gilley looks every bit the part of a West Texas lawman. Now and then, tourists stop and ask him to pose for snapshots in his mean-looking Dodge Charger squad car. Most of the time, Gilley is the one making the introductions along U.S. 287 as it runs through Estelline and its single blinking yellow light. Gilley, the only police officer in Estelline, writes about 23 tickets a day to drivers who fail to slow as the wide, flat 4-lane leaves the Panhandle’s red-dirt cotton fields and enters the farm town of 168 residents, about 100 miles southeast of Amarillo. Despite a 1975 Texas law aimed at curbing speed traps, Estelline has been able to mine nearly its entire budget from motorists who fail to slow from 70mph to 50mph when they hit the city limits. Mayor Rick Manley, whose current budget anticipates it will take in $320,000 in traffic fines this year, says the law requires that 30% of the city’s total general revenue must be paid to the state. The people of Estelline don’t deny that the highway is the town’s chief meal ticket, acknowledging that without speeding fines there would be no City Hall, city employees, a police officer, or a judge. Late last year, Oklahoma officials designated three towns as official speed traps and shut down their highway operations for at least six months. Estelline’s critics, who voice their opinions on social media by calling it a “Texas-sized speed trap,” would like to see the town face a similar fate, but that’s not likely to happen.
