Red-Light Camera Contracts Incentivize Ticketing Innocent Drivers
TheNewspaper.com recently published an interesting story on red-light camera ticket quotas in Los Angeles County and Roseville, California. The quota is explained in this excerpt:
The contract sets as the baseline that the company must issue 25 tickets for every 100 alleged violations recorded by the machine. These recordings include any number of situations where either no real offense took place, or the driver cannot be positively identified — as required under California law. Nonetheless, if the total number of citations mailed falls under 25 per 100, the corrective steps must be taken to boost the number of citations mailed. In effect, this provides a direct incentive to the contractor to issue tickets regardless of whether the machine properly captured a true violation. There is no penalty under state law for a contractor to guess, for example, a license plate number when the image is unreadable.
The contract documents were obtained by the editor of the highwayrobbery.net website who suggested that these provisions directly conflict with a state law prohibiting “any policy requiring any peace officer or parking enforcement employees to meet an arrest quota” (California Vehicle Code Section 41602). The law defines arrest quotas as any requirement for a police officer or meter maid to issue any proportion or number of “notices of violation.”
Predictably, other cities have already been caught guessing license plates.
Of course, the authorities are always on the lookout for any way to prevent unjust tickets from being issued:
In a 2006 memo to a neighboring department, Roseville Police expressed frustration with individuals, including the editor of highwayrobbery.net, for disclosing contract provisions that the city prefers to keep secret.
“The one annoyance are the people who have made it their mission to fight photo red light citations by making public records requests,” Roseville Police wrote. “My recommendation is that you save every related document somewhere and when you get your first public records request you send them an avalanche of paper and charge them accordingly.”
With that attitude it’s a good thing that ticket cameras never make mistakes.
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More rocket scientists discussing how they get wronged everytime they get a ticket. You get tickets because you ignore, fail to obey and simply disregard the laws as if they don’t apply to you. It is an interesting spin that whomever the author of this article is(I see he doesn’t want to be known for writing it). It isn’t a quota that the municipality expects 25 citations per 100 violations recorded. Remember if the machine records 100 violations 100 citations could be written if the machine is working correctly. That the municipality expects 25 citations per 100 violations is nothing more than a performance measure of the machine that they laid $$ out to purchase or lease. If it isn’t going to do the job that they were promised it would do then they would terminate the lease I am sure. The intended incentive is to have the contractor install the mechanism so that it will properly record a high percentage of the violations that happen at the intersection. What I don’t understand is why you get up in arms over mechanical enforcement but litterally could careless that so many drivers don’t know or don’t care what the yellow light stands for and end up violating the intersection by continuing through when they should have stopped. If as driver’s we did what was expected of us and did not enter the intersection under a yellow and cleared the intersection when the yellow lit there would be no need for this type of mechanical enforcement. If you are mad because the mechanical enforcement is there be mad at yourself for driving selfishly enough to try to “beat the yellow” because the 1 minute of time that you will sit at the traffic light is much too important to you that you don”t care who you inconvenience.
Randall,
exactly! that’s what people(including cops)need to remember is that WE pay their salary! with comments like that.. they deserve zero respect.
I absolutely concur Randall!
Well said.
comments like that from the police just piss the citizens off more and make us want to disrespect them even more. If it’s a public document we have a right. For that cop to make such a statement to prevent handing out public information is a disgrace to the police and an insult to those of us that pay their salary.