Eden Prairie Ranks 15th 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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In 2011, Eden Prairie police wrote the 15th-highest number of speeding tickets per capita among agencies in the Twin Cities metro area, according to a report on WCCO-TV.

The city’s 66 sworn officers wrote 3,653 tickets for excessive speed—a rate of .06 tickets for every person in Eden Prairie.

The city focuses much of its speeding enforcement in crash-prone areas. The top three locations in the city of 61,657 people were:

• Prairie Center Drive and US Highway 212 (449 speeding tickets)
• Mitchell Road and US Highway 212 (254 speeding tickets)
• Interstate 494 and Valley View Road (213 speeding tickets)

Nearby police departments had mixed results. Edina’s 8,700 speeding tickets was more than any other city per capita, and Minnetonka ranked 12^th. But Shakopee was all the way down at 49^th.

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.