Change can be freaky for almost anyone. But when the change is truly radical, it can get down right disturbing.

In the South, a few flakes of snow in March are enough to make headlines.

In the North, a 70-degree day in January is enough to do the same.

And in Ferriday, when the flood of speeding tickets suddenly dries up faster than a drop of water on hot pavement, people take notice.

Between Saturday and Tuesday afternoon, not a single speeding ticket was written. That’s an amazing fact for anyone who watches such things. A couple of months ago, the daily tickets ranged from between five and 20 per day.

As much as we’d like to think that the thousands of cars that head through Ferriday each day simply began driving more carefully, we know that’s not true.

Unfortunately, another radical statistic change has also occurred.

In the same time period, not a single person was arrested.

That, too, is almost unheard of in most small towns, including Ferriday.

What appears to be at play here is that the Ferriday Police force is reacting to Saturday’s election results.

Incumbent Mayor Gene Allen was defeated. And, since the Ferriday’s system is a bit antiquated, the entire police force works at the whim of the mayor, not the police chief, a civil service board or even the Ferriday Town Council.

So the thought is that since the entire force knows it’s likely to be fired soon, they’ve stopped caring.

Now is a good time for the Town of Ferriday to realize a great opportunity. To have a truly professional police force, regardless of who is sitting in the mayor’s office, the police force needs to have some protection of its own in the form of job security.