Archive for July, 2010
Many Michigan towns fail to comply with speed limit law Wednesday, July 28th, 2010
Car and Driver recently published an interesting article discussing a Michigan state law, Public Act 85 of 2006, which compels communities to set limits based on certain factors, most notably the speed at which 85 percent of drivers are traveling at the time a study is conducted. Many may be avoiding raising the speed limit out of a fear it will reduce revenue generated from speeding tickets.
The article brings up some interesting points about how much of a role economics play when it comes to traffic enforcement and the issuance of traffic tickets. One local police chief even admits that the “need for revenue” is often behind traffic tickets and that enforcement had been increased in the past to “avoid layoffs”.
The thought of enforcement officers under the impression that their job may be in jeopardy if they don’t issue enough traffic tickets should definitely concern anyone who gets behind the wheel.
The fully published article can be found here: Feeding the Machine: Sandbagging on Speed Limits.
If you have questions about a Michigan speeding ticket, feel free to consult with a local Michigan traffic ticket lawyer.
Miami-Dade Florida Trooper jailed for issuing false tickets Thursday, July 22nd, 2010
A former Florida Highway Patrol trooper based in Miami-Dade will spend a year in jail for writing hundreds of phony tickets to motorists who were never pulled over for traffic offenses.
Paul C. Lawrence entered a guilty plea to eight misdemeanor counts of falsifying public records. Originally, Lawrence was charged with 22 felony counts, each punishable by up to five years in prison. The charges were reduced after he agreed to permanently relinquish his law-enforcement certification.
Prosecutors charged Mr. Lawrence with issuing hundreds of false traffic tickets using the information of motorists he had previously pulled over on legitimate car stops. Tickets would arrive in the mail and the recipients would understandably be confused.
Lawrence said he wrote the tickets to boost his overall summons count. FHP has responded by reassuring the public that it doesn’t set quotas for tickets.
More than 200 Florida traffic tickets were dismissed in connection with this incident.
I find two things notable here:
1. How in the world did he think he was going to get away with this? Some people would have convincing evidence to submit showing they were elsewhere at the time of the incident. All would complain vociferously that the charge was completely fabricated. Eventually, the volume and veracity of the complaints certainly would catch up with him. I can only imagine what type of cutting corners and lying he was able to get away with earlier in his career that led him to think this might work. In how many cases involving actual car stops did he successfully offer false testimony before he decided he could do away with the car stop altogether?
2. THERE ARE QUOTAS. Period. Why would an officer ever do this if there weren’t? I don’t believe there’s an outright monthly number that departments must hit–the number of troopers on the road, the hours they are on the road and the area of enforcement will always cause a fluctuation in the number of violations observed and cited. However, police management clearly expects either a certain number of tickets to be written by troopers during their time on certain patrol shifts or rewards those that hit certain numbers. If a superior sends a trooper out on an 8 hour traffic enforcement shift, what happens if the trooper comes back and says he wrote zero tickets? What about one or two tickets? Ten tickets? Clearly, the police have some idea of what constitutes a good shift, average shift and/or a “waste of time” shift where no summonses at all were issued. There’s no way Lawrence bothers with this unless there was some expectation of him to issue a certain number of tickets over certain periods of time.
Washington State cell phone tickets may be invalid Tuesday, July 20th, 2010
Thousands of cell phone traffic tickets may soon be dismissed in Washington State.
Certain police departments in certain areas of the state may not have had the authority to issue the tickets and charge individuals with this particular violation because the state forgot to update a rule book after the current stricter law passed.
Tickets written by state troopers apparently are not in question. The ones in question are those written by a handful of local police departments scattered around the state which rely The Model Traffic Ordinance, or MTO. The MTO is a document created by the Department of Licensing that most smaller and mid-sized cities adopt. It puts state laws into effect in the city and saves smaller cities the time and money required to write hundreds of traffic laws. It is supposed to be updated automatically when new traffic laws go into effect.
The state is still trying to sort out which police departments are affected.
Drivers who got a ticket after July 1 are out of luck because the state of Washington quickly updated it’s rule book.
If you have any questions about a cellphone ticket issued anywhere in Washington State, feel free to see if there is a local TicketHELP.com attorney in the area who can help.
