City Tax Camera Tickets 7 MPH SUV for going 45 MPH

[demopublican]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/mar...tory?track=rss

Should these tax-bots be considered organized crime and investigated by the FBI?

The speed camera ticket that Baltimore City issued to John Slingluff last summer said he was speeding, yet the evidence says he was closer to stopping than to breaking the law.

The citation alleged that his Chevrolet sport utility vehicle was headed east on University Parkway at 45 miles per hour. But The Baltimore Sun found that it was going just over 7 mph, based on measurements taken using the two time-stamped photos provided by the city as evidence of the infraction.

"Mine was obviously terribly wrong," the Roland Park resident said Thursday.

[Spot72]

We previously reported that Baltimore City had a previous complaint about an error by a camera at 1300 West Cold Spring Lane that was discussed by city officials and their contractor Xerox Corp (formerly ACS State and Local Solutions) in February and March of 2012 -- the local press and city officials have since confirmed the existence of such errors. Now, additional documents have been provided to StopBigBrotherMD.org which document that problems by this camera were ongoing, and were known to officials in Baltimore City Officials in July of 2012.

The following email was obtained through a Public Information Act Request by a reader of StopBigBrotherMD.org and was then provided to us. We have redacted the names of city employees and the company making the complaint, but the company is a different one than those which we have reported on previously or which have been named in major press reports.

http://www.stopbigbrothermd.org/

[Lawman 27]

Don't forget that for most people it costs less to just pay the ticket then to actually stand trial.
_______________________

Since slowing down is not going to help, I would again suggest that drivers STAY OUT OF BALTIMORE CITY!!!
_______________________

One thing that has my curiosity peaked is why the Sunpapers cares about this. As a general rule, Sun writers adore any program that takes money away from honest citzens.

Either one of the Sun employees got grabbed
-OR-
the problem is SO PRONOUNCED that even the Sun couldn't cover it up any more.

[Wizard777]

I'm suprized the attorneys aren't lining up. They call these tickets "mistakes." But these "mistakes" have exposed the dark side of this practice. These "mistakes" could also be called abuse of process. Possibly even malicious prosecution. There is also the ethical cocerns of conflict of interest. These companies are acting under color of law to enforce the law and they are paid a percentage on each ticket they issue. Police officers can issue these same tickets. But for them to be paid a percentage of each ticket they write would call their professional integrity into question, constitute a conflict of interest, and constitute corruption when tickets are fraudulently issued. None of these issues disappear just because the tickets are being issued by a for profit corporate persona instead of a police officer. In fact it compounds the issues. Then you have Jurisdictions like Baltimore and Harford counties that operate their speed camera's with a reckless disregard for the truth. They intentionally use a time stamp that is not sufficient to allow the person being issued the ticket or checking the ticket to verify it's accuracy. Further more it deprives the accused of any chance of having the witness be in their favor. Using a time stamp that will allow the accused to verify or dispute the accuracy of the ticket could deprive the jurisdiction and their coporate partners of revenue and profits. Whether or not the accused actually commited the offense is OBVIOUSLY a secondary concern in these policing for profits scam.

[SonOf Scribbler]

One of the largest supplier of these systems claims it has the "■Potential to generate surplus funds".

To get further educated on their "advantages", visit their website:

http://www.redflex.com/index.php/en/...ed-enforcement

[StraightShooter]

These "mistakes" could also be called abuse of process. Possibly even malicious prosecution. There is also the ethical cocerns of conflict of interest. These companies are acting under color of law to enforce the law and they are paid a percentage on each ticket they issue. Police officers can issue these same tickets. But for them to be paid a percentage of each ticket they write would call their professional integrity into question, constitute a conflict of interest, and constitute corruption when tickets are fraudulently issued. None of these issues disappear just because the tickets are being issued by a for profit corporate persona instead of a police officer. In fact it compounds the issues. policing for profits scam.

Wiz, you have hit the nail on the head. Being a cop, I cannot imagine the fallout if a Police Officer were just as recklessly charging/citing/arresting people with abandon and complete disregard for civil rights.

Some say this isn't an arrest and there are no points, so it is okay. HECK NO! It is a tax, a fine, a fee, whatever you want to call it, that is IMPOSED by a machine run by a for-profit company, and supported by an apparently for-profit government that has been so brazen as to include the REVENUE in next year's budget! And remember, even with no points, by paying the "fine" one is admitting guilt of a crime, and accepting the fine as full compensation.

With so many citations PROVEN to be outright wrong, the system should IMMEDIATELY be put on hold until it is PROVEN to be accurate, just as an equally offensive police officer would be suspended or fired and subject to dozens upon dozens of lawsuits by now. The MANY that have been found to be wrong should invalidate ALL issued, just as ALL of a bad cop's arrests are brought into question if only one case is tainted.

[yeah]

the cameras are correct much more than they are incorrect

[StraightShooter]

That statement can be no more than an assumption, and one that cannot in any way be empirically supported. If one is incorect, then all could be incorrect - in EITHER direction (how many who ARE speeding are NOT being captured?). That is the only logical conclusion that can be made! And to charge (collect a fine from) ONE person erroneously is error enough to place a hold on the entire program.

It becomes a question of ethics and civil rights. No law is worth trampling anyone's rights. Even if they are "correct much more than they are incorrect," does that justify finding the "incorrects" guilty of a crime as well? Guess that throws the death penalty argument on its head: "Well, as long as most of the people we put to death are guilty, it's okay." (Yes, I know death is much worse than a $40-$75 citation, but I don't believe we have started ranking our rights as yet...)

It appears that revenue trumps Baltimore Citizens' Rights in this case...

[workerbee]

the cameras are correct much more than they are incorrect

So is the use of the death penalty!

[Wizard777]

Wiz, you have hit the nail on the head. Being a cop, I cannot imagine the fallout if a Police Officer were just as recklessly charging/citing/arresting people with abandon and complete disregard for civil rights.

Some say this isn't an arrest and there are no points, so it is okay. HECK NO! It is a tax, a fine, a fee, whatever you want to call it, that is IMPOSED by a machine run by a for-profit company, and supported by an apparently for-profit government that has been so brazen as to include the REVENUE in next year's budget! And remember, even with no points, by paying the "fine" one is admitting guilt of a crime, and accepting the fine as full compensation.

With so many citations PROVEN to be outright wrong, the system should IMMEDIATELY be put on hold until it is PROVEN to be accurate, just as an equally offensive police officer would be suspended or fired and subject to dozens upon dozens of lawsuits by now. The MANY that have been found to be wrong should invalidate ALL issued, just as ALL of a bad cop's arrests are brought into question if only one case is tainted.

Even with 100% accuracy I'm still not okay with the ethics of Policing for profits.

[Ravens2006]

It always annoys me when they pull over a car in traffic because the guy sitting in his cruiser thinks he accurately nailed one person. The hand-helds are already incredibly prone to human error and environmental influences. And the tickets from the stupid cameras can be virtually error proof, if they captured at a high frame-rate and time-stamped each frame. You're talking millisecond precision. It's so, so easy to do with today's off-the-shelf technology... but of course government paid a premium for more flaws.

[Wizard777]

It always annoys me when they pull over a car in traffic because the guy sitting in his cruiser thinks he accurately nailed one person. The hand-helds are already incredibly prone to human error and environmental influences. And the tickets from the stupid cameras can be virtually error proof, if they captured at a high frame-rate and time-stamped each frame. You're talking millisecond precision. It's so, so easy to do with today's off-the-shelf technology... but of course government paid a premium for more flaws.

I wouldn't have a problem with the government owning and operating the camera's. I just don't like the idea of any level of government farming out their police powers to corporations. Corporations exist for only one purpose and it's not justice or public safety. They exist only to make more money than is humanly possible.

[Wizard777]

OH! Can you say class action? It's against the law to pay contractors by volume AKA per ticket. So technically in every juriduction paying per ticket every ticket issued was or is issued in violation of the law. This also raises the questions for the State Prosecutors Office of Malfeasance in Office and Misappropriation of Funds on the illegal contracts.

O'Malley says counties should stop paying speed camera contractors per citation

Gov. Martin O'Malley said Tuesday that state law bars speed camera contractors from being paid based on the number of citations issued or paid — a so-called bounty system approach used by Baltimore City, Baltimore County and elsewhere in Maryland.

"The law says you're not supposed to charge by volume. I don't think we should charge by volume," O'Malley said. "If any county is, they need to change their program."

In brief comments, O'Malley weighed in for the first time on criticism of speed cameras since The Baltimore Sun published an investigation of the devices, focusing on the city's network of 83 radar-equipped cameras. Several state lawmakers have since proposed changing state law that governs how counties and cities operate the speed camera program. Among the proposals is to add language clearly barring payments by the citation.

[Wizard777]

What really get me about this is it's known that some camera's are malfunctioning and some jurisdictions are operating their programs illegally. Yet no one is doing anything to shut this down until everything is on the up and up. There are other means of policing these area's. But then again you can't buy overpriced phones or pay out raises with Justice. Uh huh.......

[yuca]

"It's about safety and the children."

[Wizard777]

Md. State Highway speed camera tickets spike overnight

More than 40 percent of all speed camera tickets issued to drivers in Maryland highway work zones have been doled out between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., times when crews often aren’t on the job.

That picture emerged when The Baltimore Sun graphed, hour by hour, all million or so work-zone citations generated by the State Highway Administration between December 2009 and June 30.

Over 24 hours, the tally rises and falls like a wave. The highest number of tickets was issued between 11 a.m. and noon — nearly 102,000. The low point came between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m., with only 359 tickets for exceeding the speed limit by at least 12 mph.

[Wizard777]

This is the part that gets me.

Laurie Moser testified against Brochin’s bill. In 2007 her husband, state highway worker Richard W. Moser, was fatally struck by a truck while leading a maintenance team near Frederick. She wonders how many deaths the cameras have prevented and has no sympathy for speeders.

“The real point is there are people who are consistently breaking the law,” she said in an interview. “Whether they want to acknowledge it, they increase our risk every single day.”

I can understand her POV. But I also have to ask, what do we do when the "people who are consistently breaking the law" are the jurisdiction and company operating the speed camera's?

[Lawman 27]

the cameras are correct much more than they are incorrect

When Police use RADARS, LIDARS, etc we MUST show in court that the device was tested and properly working before and after the reading was taken.

If the device didn't work, we didn't use it. PERIOD. Didn't matter if the device worked 'some of the time.'

As I understand your comment, you are saying that since the cameras work most of the time, then it is okay to use them?

___________________________________

Would you accept Police going out and ticketing you with faulty equipment?

(I would hope not).

[Wizard777]

When Police use RADARS, LIDARS, etc we MUST show in court that the device was tested and properly working before and after the reading was taken.

If the device didn't work, we didn't use it. PERIOD. Didn't matter if the device worked 'some of the time.'

As I understand your comment, you are saying that since the cameras work most of the time, then it is okay to use them?

___________________________________

Would you accept Police going out and ticketing you with faulty equipment?

(I would hope not).

Good call by the good Lawman. That's another angle that I haven't gotten to yet. I have to ask is this a standard proceedure or just at the request of the defandant?

When they first started this they claimed it was all about public safety. I found that claim to be somewhat specious. Because without the camera's they would have to assign officers to traffic details in these zones. The officers would pull over the vehicles physically stopping the vehicles. With the speed cameras there is no one to physically stop the vehicle. So as long as I can afford the tickets I can speed up and down that street all day long. There's no one or nothing to stop me to make me sit and think while I'm waiting for a ticket. There's no one or nothing to run my ID for warrants. So basically as long as they get their 40.00 or 75.00 they don't care if I speed down the road and run your kid over or if there's a warrant out on me for running over your kid yesterday. If they cared about more than the money they would have a cop there to physically stop me before I ran your kid over. But cops cost money. One company has made 20.9 million in a year. So you pay a cop 40,000.00 a year to work a permanent traffic detail. That's 25 traffic cops for every 1 million. 20 million would be 500 traffic cops to physically stop people.

So there seems to be a trade off of reduced public safety for increased revenue. Now of course I'm sure some people would say that speeding rates have been reduced. When you take into consideration that this claim is based on a study of numbers from what we now know to be faulty equiptment. That claim too is specious at best. We know that the equiptment will issue tickets to people who weren't speeding. So how do we know that they are issuing tickets to everyone that is speeding? What if they are not detecting people who are speeding? Who complains about not getting a speeding ticket? Are these systems audited by the government every year to ensure that the company is not holding back some tickets to produce an artificial success rate? Has the software been examined to ensure that the program isn't designed to create an artificial success rate? Like I said, who complains about not getting a speeding ticket? How do we know the rates haven't actually gone up because speeder late for work would rather pay the 40.00 or 75.00 ticket than lose their job? Is the government selling the ability to speed by using the speed camera's instead police to physically stop the speeders?

[Wizard777]

Oh, but there's a fail safe. The tickets are examined by police officers. So the tickets are actually being issued by those officers and not the company. Then how did this person get this ticket? That ticket never should have been issued and yet it was. It's vecoming increasingly clear that this is a policing for profits scam. Another angle, if the program is successful and speeding is continuouslt reduced. At some point the program becomes unprofitable to operate. Would these companies continue to operate these programs at a loss simply for the sake of public safety and justice? So does the company's bottom line constitute an illegal quota on tickets? It seem like there was a lot that the legislature and local jurisdictions failed to considered in this rush to increased revenue. Now the programs continue on in what can only be called a reckless disregard for the truth. Who cares about truth and justice when you're making millions?

City issued speed camera ticket to motionless car

The Baltimore City speed camera ticket alleged that the four-door Mazda wagon was going 38 miles per hour in a 25-mph zone — and that owner Daniel Doty owed $40 for the infraction.

But the Mazda wasn't speeding.

It wasn't even moving.