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Creation gets man in trouble
By MATTHEW WAITE, Times Staff Writer
PORT RICHEY -- Tim Dodge and his neighbors were fed up with people speeding down Westcott Drive, using the straight residential street as a shortcut around a stoplight. There are often children playing nearby, Dodge said, including his own. In fact, he said he has video of speeding cars narrowly missing kids skateboarding down the street. So Dodge, an engineer who owns Digital Camera Batteries in Port Richey, built himself a speed bump -- a good one, too. The bump is made of plastic polymer blocks, many times stronger than concrete, and laid out one by one in a row. They're stuck down with globs of a greenish-yellowish epoxy glue. Go ahead. Kick them. They're going nowhere. "We're just tired of people flying down our street," Dodge told the Times. "They don't slow down." Well, one person wasn't tired of being able to speed down Westcott. The Pasco County Sheriff's Office got a complaint about Dodge's nearly completed speed bump, and Deputy Andrew Gershkowitz was sent to investigate Sunday afternoon. When he got to Dodge's home at 7104 Westcott at 4:26 p.m., Gershkowitz told him to remove the trash barrels he had surrounding the latest block to be glued down. And then he told him to remove the speed bump. Dodge said Monday that he told the deputy if there was a law that said he had to remove it, he would, but it would take a truck to rip them off. So Gershkowitz got his statute book and found Florida Statute 316.2045, subsection 1. The law says that "it is unlawful for any person or persons to willfully obstruct the free, convenient, and normal use of any public street, highway, or road by impeding, hindering, stifling, retarding or restraining traffic or passage thereon." The punishment? A $15 civil infraction. While Gershkowitz was searching for the statute -- Dodge said it took a half an hour -- Dodge said he went inside his home and took a shower. According to Gershkowitz's report, Dodge went inside and locked the doors. Gershkowitz wrote in his report that Dodge finally came to the door, but wouldn't give any information for his citation. Dodge has a camera mounted outside his front door with a tiny microphone recording everything. On the tape, you see Dodge refuse to give Gershkowitz information and turn to walk inside. Gershkowitz follows him, and Dodge yells, "I am not inviting you into my home!" A whole lot of shouting later, Gershkowitz leads Dodge out the front door in handcuffs. Dodge was taken to the Land O'Lakes jail facing a charge of resisting an officer without violence. He bonded out for $150 shortly after arriving. Bob Reck, the county's traffic operations manager, said it is against the law for a civilian to install a speed bump. The county will take it out "if we get a complaint on it," said Reck, who added that the county gets complaints about people speeding through neighborhoods "constantly." "Unfortunately, the Sheriff's Office can't be out there all the time," Reck said. And Dodge's homemade speed bump comes about a month before County Commissioners will vote on an ordinance that allows county road crews to install "traffic calming" measures designed to slow cars down. A traffic calming program means things like speed bumps, street narrowing and traffic diverters, and is paid for through street assessments billed to property owners on the street. A petition would circulate through an eligible area, and 75 percent of people must approve. Some of Dodge's neighbors are on his side. Nicholas and Aileen Cicchese, who live two doors down, said they're also fed up with speeders. "It's a raceway," Nicholas Cicchese said Monday afternoon while clipping lemons from a tree in his front yard. "It's constant." "They could put a 4-foot wall up," Aileen Cicchese said. "The speed is unbelievable." And Dodge said no assesment would be needed on his street for a speed bump. "I'll even pay to put it in," Dodge said. -- Staff writer Matthew Waite can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6247 or (800) 333-7505, ext. 6247. His e-mail address is waite@sptimes.com
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