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Cops ready to zap you for holiday speeding

IF YOU'RE BARRELING down a Pennsylvania highway, you ought to think twice about blasting past a PennDOT truck on the shoulder. It could have a state trooper inside.

IF YOU'RE BARRELING down a Pennsylvania highway, you ought to think twice about blasting past a PennDOT truck on the shoulder. It could have a state trooper inside.

Under a long-standing program called Operation Yellow Jacket, officers placed inside PennDOT vehicles point out speeders to other cops who are waiting down the road.

"Sometimes, we'll use them in construction zones, because people don't pay attention to warning signs and observe the speed limits," said state police spokeswoman Cpl. Linette Quinn. "And sometimes we'll use a PennDOT truck out on its own."

Quinn said that the program began several years ago in western Pennsylvania and has since spread statewide.

Over the holiday weekend, police will be staffing special DUI-enforcement teams and also ticketing aggressive drivers for speeding, tailgating and weaving through traffic.

But Quinn said that there's no truth to a story circulating in an e-mail that police are trailing speeders in PennDOT trucks.

"We wouldn't clock speeders in a PennDOT truck," Quinn said. "That's an urban myth."

Quinn said that other information in the e-mail is wrong: that state police are about to go on a "speeding-ticket frenzy" aimed at generating $9 million in state revenue in 30 days.

"There are no ticket-writing quotas," Quinn said. *