Judge Dismisses Speeding Ticket for Another Bredesen Cabinet Member
November 14, 2007
 Another state official has gotten a break on a speeding ticket.
Labor Commissioner Jim Neeley was written up for going 85 on the interstate.
But he got notification in the mail that the judge dismissed it before he went to court.
A W-T-V-F reporter asked Humphreys County Judge Dan Bradley why he dismissed it. The judge said that the trooper failed to show up for court.
But when the reporter noted that the ticket was dismissed before the court date, the judge refused to comment any further.
Is it not "what you know" but "who you know" that counts in USA legal system?
Metro police camera revenues crash
 |
Metro police camera revenues crash
(Greg Whitesell/Examiner)
A red-light camera monitors violators on Wisconsin Avenue. D.C. traffic cameras nabbed roughly 250,000 fewer violators than the previous year. |
Nov 5, 2007 by Michael Neibauer, The Examiner
WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Revenues from the Metropolitan Police Department photo radar and red light programs collapsed by nearly $25 million last year, as the cameras nabbed roughly 250,000 fewer violators than the previous year.
The camera program must be working, police contend. “Generally speaking, the reason for the decline is that people are slowing down,” said Traci Hughes, the department’s spokeswoman.
According to statistics provided by Mayor Adrian Fenty’s office, 63,402 drivers were caught by cameras running red lights in fiscal 2007, which ended Sept. 30, compared with 80,475 in fiscal 2006. The numbers for photo radar were more dramatic — 340,454 speeding tickets in fiscal 2007 compared with 582,717 in 2006.
The drop-off means significantly less revenue for the District’s coffers. Photo radar generated $31 million in 2007, $22 million less than the year before. Photo red light generated $6.4 million in 2007 compared with $8.5 million in 2006.
People who read this also read:
Although automated tickets fell, officer-generated tickets did not. MPD officers issued about the same number of tickets for moving violations between 2006 and 2007, 103,231 to 102,627, respectively. Ticket revenue for those officer-issued citations, however, fell by $1.4 million.
“We’ve got cruisers in place and police officers patrolling, and when they see them, they get them,” Hughes said. “It’s a lesson learned. Just because they’re slowing down in the range of the cameras doesn’t mean they can speed up in the rest of the city.”
The District operates 49 red-light cameras and about 25 radar cameras, some in fixed locations and others attached to cruisers.
Although $31 million in fines remains a “huge amount of money,” drivers appear to be slowing down in the area of cameras, said Lon Anderson, spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic, which has long criticized D.C.’s use of photo radar as a money grab. Motorists, he said, “are getting the message.”
But the cameras have an ancillary impact, Anderson added, what AAA calls the “halo effect.” Drivers on 16th Street NW near Carter Barron, for example, slow down to 25 mph within a block of the fixed-location radar camera. Then they speed up again.
“The halo effect is half a block,” Anderson said. “A few hundred feet on either side, [the camera] changes people’s behavior.
To flash, or not to flash, for cops?
Canada - Posted 2nd Feb 08
I'm a huge supporter of the police, but you wonder who counsels them on public relations.
They wonder why the driving public often does not co-operate with them, when they pull stunts like they did March 24 last year.
Brad Diamond, producer of TSN's Motoring 2008 (full disclosure: I appear on this show) lives near Broadview and Danforth Aves. Every Saturday morning he goes out for his usual four-buck coffee.
On this day he was driving westbound on the Prince Edward Viaduct, which connects Danforth Avenue and Bloor Street across the Don Valley. He spotted a radar trap nailing eastbound drivers, and passed it at approximately 49.999 km/h. It's there all the time so it was no surprise to him.
Of course, like most concerned citizens, he has often wondered: if radar is supposed to be a traffic safety measure, why would they run it on a bright sunny Saturday morning, on a three-lanes-each-way bridge, with excellent visibility in all directions, without a single intersection, store, home, school or in fact much human activity at all?
Surely, there are more dangerous places they could be trying to slow people down?
Let alone more important public safety initiatives the police could be doing?
Can you say "fishing hole," boys and girls?
Okay, so speeding is speeding, and speeding is against the law everywhere. But seriously.
As any concerned citizen would do if he knew someone was possibly going to break a law - especially if he knew the cops were lying in wait at the potential scene of the crime - Diamond flicked his headlights at oncoming traffic.
As you would. And as you would, most of the oncoming traffic did slow down.
Now, still assuming, perhaps naively, that slowing traffic down to make the roads safer is the objective of radar (it never works, but that's a story for another day), you'd think the cops would be happy that Diamond was assisting in their cause.
You'd think they'd want everybody flashing their headlights, all the time. Who'd take a chance at speeding then?
But no, stationed at the west end of the bridge were a couple more cruisers, pulling people like Diamond over for warning people about the radar trap.
$110 and no points.
I checked the Highway Traffic Act (HTA). I could find no reference to radar speed traps at all, let alone anything about it being illegal to warn other drivers about them. After all, traffic reporters and some websites even announce their locations.
The ticket said the offence was "flashing head beams" in contravention of the HTA, section 169.
Never mind that I have been in the car game for more than 30 years and have never heard the term "head beams."
I checked section 169 and nowhere does it mention radar traps in there.
Sgt. Cam Woolley of the Ontario Provincial Police told me that this law was put in place a few years ago to prevent "civilian" vehicles from impersonating emergency vehicles, notably tow trucks trying to bully their way through traffic to be first on the scene of a wreck. Nothing at all about radar.
What's more, Diamond's Chevy Tahoe was not producing "alternating" flashes of light. "Alternating" means one, then the other (just like police cars and other emergency vehicles can do), not both on/both off.
Not only was there no harm, there was no foul.
In our legal system, the legislature passes the laws, the police enforce them. It is not up to the police to make up their own laws - that's what they call a police state.
If the legislature decided in its collective wisdom to make warning of radar speed traps illegal, how hard would it be to pass an unambiguous law to that effect?
I can even help: "It is unlawful to warn other drivers about upcoming radar speed traps; never mind that they don't improve traffic safety."
Okay, the legislature might choose different wording.
The fact is, the legislature has not chosen to pass a law like this, or anything remotely like it.
If Diamond had been standing on the sidewalk holding a neon sign reading, WARNING! RADAR AHEAD!', there would have been nothing the cops could have done.
Needless to say, he decided to fight the ticket.
He contacted the prosecutor, saying the law in question had nothing at all to do with what he allegedly had done, but she said they were going to proceed with the court case.
Okay then, Jan. 10 it would be.
I had a 30-page script ready to go as Diamond's representative. (My dad, who was a lawyer, would have been proud of me. I hope.)
At traffic court, you first present yourself to the prosecutor, who asks how you're going to plead. You'd think anyone who didn't just pay the ticket in the first place and who had shown up at 9 a.m. to fight it would plead not guilty, but some didn't.
You also may have the option of pleading guilty to a lesser charge, which the first case of the morning did.
We were about fourth on the docket.
The prosecutor called Diamond to the bench, asked his name, read the charge, and asked how he pleaded.
"Not guilty, your worship," he responded.
Then the prosecutor said, "The police officer has no evidence in this case, your worship."'
"Case dismissed," said the justice of the peace.
What? The police officer has "no evidence?" If he had no evidence, why the heck did he lay the charge in the first place?
The fact is, he had no law upon which to base the charge, because Diamond had not done anything illegal.
They assume that you will assume you had in fact done something illegal, fork over your cash, and they smile all the way to the bank.
Now, dad always said that in court, you take a win any way you can. But we were disappointed not to take it to trial so as to set a precedent against this little Buford T. Justice scam by the Toronto Police.
Someone more paranoid than me might suspect they did not want it to go to trial for that very reason, so as not to put their scurrilous behaviour on the trailer for all time.
Now, maybe the "no evidence" gambit is traffic court shorthand for "the cop didn't show up." But usually with fishing holes, they expect a certain number of people to fight the tickets and schedule the cop for court duty.
I guess we'll never know.
I don't blame the individual cop here, although some of them are clearly overzealous in their pursuit of tickets, quotas, or whatever other pressures they face from their superiors.
But I think it is disgusting that police management sends cops out there to lie in wait to ticket unsuspecting law-abiding citizens when they have to know that what they're ticketing them for is not against the law.
And if they didn't know that before, they sure do now
Signs don't follow state posting guides
By Bob Dyer
Beacon Journalist columnist
Published on Friday, Jan 25, 2008
Wouldn't you love to have their deadlines?
On Sept. 18, the Ohio Supreme Court heard arguments for and against Cop-in-the-Box systems like the one Akron is using in school zones. Four months have passed, and not one peep.
Meanwhile, another 50 billion speeding tickets have been mailed out. And somewhere along the way, a new wrinkle emerged in the spirited dust-up between the Everyday Driver and the city of Akron.
The people operating the speed cameras have taken to placing a plastic construction-type cone directly in front of each warning sign.
Not next to the sign. Not towering behind the sign. Rather, smack-dab in front of the sign, hiding some of the words!
Even in the best of circumstances, those signs are difficult to see. They are small, white rectangles with black lettering placed on a folding stand on the sidewalk, low to the ground. All other traffic signs — stop signs, speed limit signs, directional signs, whatever — are much higher. That's where drivers have been trained to look.
In fact, Ohio law specifically addresses the height of traffic-control signs:
''Signs installed at the side of the road in rural districts shall be at least 5 feet, measured from the bottom of the sign to the near edge of the pavement. (In urban areas), the clearance to the bottom of the sign shall be at least 7 feet.''
In other words, if these were real signs, rather than just a PR sham, the signs would be illegal — even without the cones blocking them.
Another problem is the wording: ''Photo enforcement zone ahead.''
Now, if you notice the sign at all, down on the ground, behind the cone, and if you can instantly figure out what ''photo enforcement zone'' means, you would definitely slow down to 20 mph, keeping our children safe. But most drivers don't notice the signs, and most drivers couldn't tell you what a ''photo enforcement zone'' is without giving it some thought.
So the $100 tickets keep flowing. And the people at Nestor who run the program keep getting $19 for every ticket they can sell. You don't think they want to send out as many tickets as possible?
If the city's primary goal is truly to slow people down (which city officials keep saying), rather than to make money (like most of the rest of us keep saying), then these people would be told to erect big, colorful signs, up off the ground, that say, ''SPEED CAMERA AHEAD.''
And you certainly wouldn't hide them behind plastic cones.
We're not talking about a one-time blunder by a clumsy worker in a hurry. Last week, cones were placed directly in front of signs at both ends of the speed zone in front of Hope Academy on South Arlington Street. And a week earlier, the same thing was evident at the new Resnik school on West Market Street.
Robert Noland, an officer in the Akron Police Department's traffic bureau, says Nestor has been using the cones in an attempt to draw more attention to the tiny signs.
OK, but why would Nestor put them directly in front of the signs?
''Who knows?'' he responds. ''Who knows?
''The city's trying to do everything to be fair to people. They put the signs out — that's not required. Then they put cones out so people could see the signs. But if you put the cone in front of the sign, you can't see the sign.''
He said he would pass the word to Nestor to move the cones to the side.
Duh. Apparently, the company has been hiring chimps.
As for raising the signs off the ground, that's up to the city. And the city is not likely to spend a dime on this issue until the Supreme Court justices finish their homework.
Until then, somebody should put a lens cap over these things.
1,161 speeders snapped by traffic camera cited
CARLI BROSSEAU
Tucson Citizen
The crews in a van police employed two months ago to photograph speeders are nearing the goal of eight citations per 10 photos shot.
By Oct. 25, the van's camera had snapped 4,002 photos resulting in the Tucson Police Department issuing 1,161 citations, American Traffic Solutions records show.
But that percentage is misleading. More than two months into the pilot project, TPD and American Traffic Solutions, the company contracted to operate the van, are catching up to the learning curve.
In the final week of August - the first week police issued citations through the system - about 1 in 5 photos led to citations, according to company records. In the first three weeks of October, the quality of the photos had improved to the point where about 7 out of 10 photos resulted in a citation. Trends match police expectations. The number of photos taken each week is dropping and the percentage of photos resulting in citations is increasing. That means quality is improving and the van is deterring speeders, said Lt. Mike Pryor, who oversees the program. The goal, he said, is 8 out of 10.
"There has definitely been a learning curve," Pryor said. "We're pleased with what we're seeing so far." The radar van hit the road Aug. 15, but no citations were issued the first week, Pryor said. That week was for working out kinks in the system.
ATS, a Scottsdale-based company that provides similar services in about 70 U.S. cities, was hired for a year-long pilot program that includes the radar-camera van and four cameras placed at intersections to snap photos of red-light runners. The first red-light camera - atGrant and Tanque Verde roads - began operating Oct. 31.
The others will be installed by the end of January at 22nd Street and Wilmot Road, Valencia Road and Nogales Highway, and Oracle and River roads. Though the cameras are automatic, the review process for those photos is similar to that for the radar van.
The ATS contract was prompted by a City Council request that police look into traffic enforcement technology, Sgt. James Scott said. Scott said police have taken to the project.
"It increases our manpower, and that helps us," he said, because officers are free for other tasks.
The intent for the first few months of the program was to reduce problems related to technology or insufficient training, Pryor said. The numbers show that happening. The contract stipulates that company employees drive the van, take the photos, crop the photos, match car registration information and photos, and reject photos if no match is found or if they're illegible - all before police are involved.
There are a series of closely monitored steps ATS employees follow, director of operations Korey Hinz said. Employees are evaluated and given feedback each week by the company's two-woman quality assurance team.
"There are quality-assurance steps at every stage in the process," she said.
A typical employee working in a variety of areas processes about 1,000 photos a day. Twenty of each employee's weekly transactions are double-checked, Hinz said. It's more for new employees.
In August, 87 of the 278 photos ATS sent police were rejected because police didn't think the quality was good enough. About a third were rejected because police thought the lighting wasn't adequate to identify the driver.
"In that first month, we were setting the standard," Pryor said. "We absolutely do not want to give someone a ticket who doesn't deserve one. We are going beyond what other departments do to try to ensure that."
The number of photos police rejected dropped to zero in September and one in October, records show.
The number of photos ATS rejected because of problems with the system fell from 997 in the last two weeks of August to 1,150 for all of September and 392 from Oct. 1 to Oct. 25.
Those photos were rejected because the camera was not focused, the lighting didn't work properly or the timing of the second photograph - of the back of the vehicle, to get thelicense plate - was off. The number of rejected photos declined in all categories. A good photo is critical for positively identifying the driver - a TPD priority.
"If we can't say for sure that the person in the car is the person in the (Motor Vehicle Division) photo, we don't send a ticket," Scott said. "We send a notice of violation instead. It's about credibility. This evidence is hard to fight in court. It's pretty clear."
A notice of violation is a warning. It states that a violation occurred but no fine was issued, most often because police are unsure about the driver's identity, which happens whenever a rental car or corporate car is photographed. The notice includes the photo and a space for the recipient to enter the name of the driver.
And people are fessing up. TPD has received returned notices of violation in which the recipient admits to being the driver. Parents have reported their kids, rental car companies have reported renters and corporations their employees. Some slips even include handwritten apologies.
About 400 notices of violation have been issued, ATS spokeswoman Ellen Pence said. For drivers issued a citation, the fines range from $191 for driving 11 to 15 mph over the speed limit to $366 for driving more than 30 mph over, Scott said. Forty-five percent of the revenue goes to the state as a surcharge, said Joan Harphant, City Court administrator. City fees account for another $20. The rest is put into an account that will be used to cover program costs, said Christopher Hale, deputy City Court administrator.
ATS is paid $33.50 per photo radar ticket adjudicated, which means a ticket has been paid, contested or the driver will go to driving school, according to the contract. It is paid $35 for every adjudicated red-light ticket. Harphant said 109 speeding citations had been adjudicated through Oct. 25 and one had been contested. The first hearing has yet to be held. The setup means it is in the company's interest for as many photos as possible to result in citations. Pence said it was too early to say how many were necessary for the company to break even.
Police said the number of citations is less important to them. "This is not a revenue generator for us," Scott said. "The state makes it difficult to break even."
"We would run the program even if we had to pay for it. Sure, the company makes some money, but we increase our manpower. Our goal is public safety, slowing people down."
The van's visibility reduces the number of speeders and therefore the number of times the camera goes off, Scott said. In the last half of August the camera went off 1,275 times. In September, that number was 1,644, and from Oct. 1-25, it was 1,083, ATS records show.
Police plan to present a report to the City Council in January, Pryor said.
"The plan right now is to expand," Scott said. "It's unclear how much."
|
