Upon casually browsing North Carolina’s Environmental Education
website, I found a link to a program conducted by the NCDOT’s Roadside
Environmental Unit entitled “Swat-A-Litterbug,” which seeks to get citizen tipsters to report examples of littering from across the state
If you see a litterbug and “Swat ‘Em!,” you are required to give the
person’s license plate, the date, time, county, and highway/street
where the littering occurred. You also have to report what was
littered in the process (were they throwing a Jolly Rancher wrapper
out the window, or pushing a sewing machine out the back of a pickup
going 78 mph?). The site seems to be missing a box where you give
actual proof of the event that “transpired.”
It all just makes me wonder what happens if you are reported? Do you
get a nasty letter, or “threat” of a future citation? Do they have
David Caruso and the CSI folks out on the road fingerprinting each
piece of litter and observing the detailed minutiae of the crime scene?
I don?t know.
The best part about it is that if you report someone, you can do it anonymously. Pretty Orwellian, if you ask me.