@PigSpotter Hero or Villian?

There’s nothing worse than getting a speeding fine and I have received my fair share. Traffic Cops seemed to have passed prostitution as the oldest profession in the world because it says in Genesis 3:4 "... and I saw an evil spirit standing behind a bush..." So imagine my relief when a saviour came my way via the Intrawebs. A saviour on Twitter that goes by the name of @PigSpotter (Cliff). In the last few weeks @PigSpotter have caused quite a stir in South Africa and now the police is trying to hunt him down. Here’s a guy that warns motorist of speed traps, corrupt police officials and roadblocks and now they want him arrested. This led me to wonder, should @PigSpotter be praised as a hero or condemned as villain.

I have been following this diligent tweeter for some time now and he has saved me from many potential money draining fines. It’s not like I am a speedster (well not anymore) but I do admit that there are times that I view speed limits as a recommendation only and not as mandatory. You know what I am talking about, those days that you are late for work, about to miss your flight or curious about just how fast your rental car can really go. But after roughly 14 fines in the last 6 years, many of which I couldn’t talk my way out off, I have made a concerted effort to try and limit my speeding only to special circumstance. Trying to explain to a traffic cop that you were speeding because you were running late for your hair appointment with them then looking at you as if you come from Uranus, just didn’t seem worth the effort anymore.

So when I discovered @PigSpotter I found some piece of mind. You see now before I drive I check Twitter to see where potential evil spirits will be hiding that day and what traffic is like on my route. I don’t do this because I plan to speed, I don’t obsessively check my speedometer while I’m driving and every so often I do go over the speed limit accidentally; after all none of us plan to break the speed limit on purpose and without reason. So when the bomb dropped on a popular radio station and my secret speed trap informant was exposed, I was shocked!

You see @PigSpotter referred to traffic cops as pigs, pork chops, bacon rashes, amongst other enduring terms, and the cops didn’t take kindly to this. Now he faces charges of crimen injuria, defeating the ends of justice and defamation of character. Apparently the traffic cops have been emotionally hurt by his tweets and as such are unable to perform their duties effectively due to emotional distress. I find this queer as they never took notice of the emotional distress they caused me when they pulled me over. According to the head swine the tweeter is also enabling criminals to evade capture by tweeting locations of road blocks and not to mention the countless drunk drivers that now also can avoid driving into an ambush.

Honestly, what murderer, rapist or robber checks their twitter account after committing a heinous crime? Standing in a pool of blood, he reaches for his Blackberry, opens up Twitter and frantically searches for @PigSpotter and plans his escape route. Not to mention the drunk driver who can barely stay upright, with one eye closed to get better focus trying to open up Twitter and after several failed attempts and 20 minutes later finally tries to read @PigSpotter’s updates.

During the last few days the police have been searching for @PigSpotter. They have set up road blocks and are illegally searching people’s phones. God forbid you have a Black Berry and your Twitter account is open when they pull you over! To be fair I do understand where the traffic cops are coming from, it must be disheartening to have your job satisfaction hampered by a maverick social networking evil genius with a sharp sense of humour. The one thing I think they have failed to comprehend is that @PigSpotter might be one person’s account but there are at least, at the moment, 18 110 Pig Spotters out there of which I am one. How do they think the tweeter gets his information? Are they going to arrest us all? Should I and my Blackberry (which I’m only getting next month) go into hiding?

Clearly I am biased when it comes to my friend @PigSpotter, he is my hero! @PigSpotter stopped tweeting about road blocks as I am sure he would not want to assist criminals in getting away and he has stopped calling traffic cops pigs, pork chops and bacon rashes. But he is still tweeting about speed traps, where cops are taking bribes, traffic jams and the illegal searches that are being conducted in an effort to track him down. What he is doing might be illegal but is his actions damaging? Of this I am not sure, I’ll leave it for you to decide – one man’s villain is another man’s hero!

Till next time.

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