Flutterby™! : Houston, we have a problem 2008-07-02 21:26:20.776471+00

Houston, we have a problem

2008-07-02 21:26:20.776471+00 by Dan Lyke 5 comments

Buying fireworks in Texas? Houston annexing roads just so that it can stop and ticket people with fireworks in their trunks:

"We obviously didn't have any idea that the HPD or the fire marshal was watching our stand with binoculars or whatever," Kammerlohr said. "I realize the city of Houston can do what it wants, but it seems kind of peculiar that they can hopscotch down Fry Road and annex this block and not that block."

In the past I've driven through rural Missosuri, where fireworks stands are pentiful this time of year. The odd thing is that most of them are next to gas stations. I've often wondered what would happen if some guy wandered into the stand with a lit cigarette, and took half the township out with him.

Petronius, during my time in Chattanooga there was an incident where someone drove a truck (no body was found and they had a hell of a time tracing the owner of the truck, I believe the serial numbers may have been filed off) into a fireworks stand. That made the front page...

Shadow, it sounds like Houston isn't even making the pretense of "for safety reasons", they're just doing this for revenue.

What I don't quite get is how Houston annexes a road. Does it pass through Houston on its way from the next county to the arrestee's home? In that case I would assume they already have jurisdiction. Surely Texas has some rules about this.

In my area we have many streets that abut town lines. If you speed on one eastbound you're in Chicago, westbound in Skokie. I'm not sure if the Chicago cops can collar a speeder Westbound, or vice versa. We also have a skinney corridor up US 94 from the old city limits to O'Hare airport, which is city property. However, police patrol on interstates up here are the duty of the State Police.

I've never been to Houston, but I've seen situations before where the borders of cities are gerrymandered pretty far out into rural areas "to allow for growth" or somesuch. I'd guess that's what's going on here, there are some places where roads cut across corners if the city boundaries, it's far enough out of the city that nobody thinks of it as anywhere near city limits, and the city cops do the "follow people going that way from the fireworks stand" thing for easy revenue.

Heck, it could even be that these corners and spikes were annexed specifically for this purpose. Get a friendly developer on board who claims that some ranch land is going to become a subdivision, it shouldn't be a problem.