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Bea Reyna Hickey didn’t necessarily personally send the email, but she’s taking the fall because it was sent from her department.

The mayor called the memo a stupid email sent by some bureaucrat.

The e-mail noted how fewer traffic tickets issued this year compared to last year would cause a dramatic decrease in revenue.

The biggest question here…Does the Mayor think it’s actually wrong to encourage the city police to issue more tickets or is this only a problem because the encouragement was put in writing?

It’s the old quota issue. We won’t tell you that you need to issue a specific number of traffic tickets, but if you don’t issue “enough” traffic tickets we’re certainly not going to be happy with your performance.

If you have any questions about a Chicago speeding ticket or other traffic ticket, feel free to contact a Chicago traffic ticket attorney for a quick consultation.

Submitted by New York traffic lawyer Scott Feifer

First, a story about issuing tickets with the help of Facebook…

Traffic officers in in New Delhi, India have started issuing traffic tickets based on images uploaded to Facebook by motorists who claim to have witnessed certain violations. There are so many posts that police actually have two full time staff members looking through them for legitimate traffic violations. The justification for this enforcement method is that, with only 5,000 traffic officers patrolling a city with 6.5 million registered vehicles, too many violations go unpunished and motorists drive with little fear of receiving a traffic ticket. With the help of pictures where a license plate was visible, police have been able to track down and issue almost 700 tickets since mid May and, in theory, encourage many more to drive safely out of fear for being the next violator photographed.

Now a story about tickets getting dismissed with the help of Facebook…

A Houston, Texas woman recently made a public Facebook plea for help with a few Houston traffic tickets she had been issued. An investigator from the Houston Fire Department responded that she knew the police officer and within a few hours there was a public posting that the tickets had been ripped up. The woman who received the tickets may have had a story that would ultimately have helped in court–apparently her father was a firefighter who recently died and she was attending to his funeral arrangements at the time the tickets were issued. Nevertheless, the use of such a public forum to conduct this type of business has resulted in further investigation of the parties involved.

Social Media really is infiltrating more and more aspects of our lives.

Submitted by NY traffic lawyer Scott Feifer

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.

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.

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.

How about the Bluff City Police Department website http://www.bluffcitypd.com?

McCrary first visited the website after he got a letter in the mail informing him he had to pay $90 because he was caught driving 56 mph through the 45 mph zone that Bluff City’s speed camera patrols. When he got to the website, he was surprised to see a special warning letter posted instead of the police department related content he expected.

The notice was posted by Go Daddy–the company through which the BCPD registered their website domain name originally–and it informed visitors that the domain www.bluffcitypd.com had expired and will be deleted or sold in 42 days. This notice is posted only after numerous warnings are sent to the website owner at certain intervals prior to the expiration date.

McCrary saw an opportunity here. Surprised that the BCPD had yet to respond to the numerous warning about the impending loss of their domain name, he decided to monitor it over the next 42 days. As soon as is officially went back up for sale to the public, he stepped in and bought it.

“It just slipped my mind,” Bluff City Police Chief David Nelson said, adding that he knows little about computers and the more technical aspects of running a website. “If you open up a website and let it go down, somebody can buy it I did not know that.”

Now McCrary has the actual site and uses it to discuss both local traffic camera news as well as camera enforcement news in general.

I give a lot of credit to McCrury for two reasons. First, way to stick it to them! Most people walk away bitter and frustrated that they had no recourse after getting a camera ticket they didn’t agree with. McCrury actually did something about it–he took control of the entire police website and gave them a good dose of public embarrassment for losing it.

Second, McCrury showed control by turning the site into a legitimate depository of news and feedback on camera tickets. His efforts all come off as that much more sincere by resisting the temptation to turn the site into a complete police enforcement bashing forum.

Good job by McCrury and good story.

Submitted by Scott Feifer

Speeding tickets and failure to yield to pedestrians at crosswalks and street corners were the most popular Florida traffic violations cited. Pedestrians have also been cited for jaywalking.

On top of the increase in traffic tickets issued, the city is considering lowering the speed limit and potentially installing red light cameras.

Police have been instructed to make themselves highly visible and to perform traffic stops and issue traffic citations to all violators on Las Olas. Officers were ordered to pay particular attention to cars not stopping at occupied crosswalks, but were told to look out for pedestrians breaking the law as well.

State law requires drivers to yield to pedestrians at crosswalks and intersections, regardless of whether they are marked or not. That includes brick-paved crosswalks like those along Las Olas. On the other hand, pedestrians must obey “Don’t Walk” signs and are prohibited from crossing streets between intersections.

The number of tickets is up substantially. The Police Department motorcycle unit supplemented the work of regular patrol officers. The number of tickets issued are up more than 5X the average of 60 tickets per month issued there last year.

If you have any questions about a ticket issued on Las Olas, please contact a Broward County traffic ticket attorney. Elsewhere in Florida feel free to contact other Florida traffic ticket lawyers.

Instead of traditional California traffic tickets written under California state traffic laws, officers have been issuing “local” traffic tickets under a local ordinance. About half of Alameda County traffic tickets issued are currently issued under local ordinance.

The difference? Typical California state traffic violations carry points, come with relatively high fines that are split between the local county and the state and will appear on a driving record and potentially affect auto insurance rates. These local traffic summonses do not carry points, the fines are generally less, they don’t appear on a driving record and the local county gets to keep all the fine money collected.

The person who gets the traffic ticket wins. Alameda County wins. The losers? Insurance companies which never know these drivers have received tickets and the state of California which loses it’s piece of the fine money collected.

State officials claim this is a loophole that will eventually be closed.

If you have questions about any type of California traffic ticket, please contact an Alameda traffic ticket attorney or other California traffic ticket lawyer.

At the Duval County Traffic Court on Beach Boulevard, offenders often appear in front of the judge to answer a charge of driving with a suspended or revoked license.

There doesn’t appear to be any particular pattern to these cases. Different types of people similar only with respect to a story of driving when they shouldn’t be driving.

The penalties for driving with a suspended or revoked license range from a $200 to $300 fine to jail time and felony conviction.

Despite the potential consequences, many simply walk out of the courtroom and get right in their car.

Driving while suspended or revoked is a potentially serious charge. If anyone has questions about this or a similar matter, it may be a good decision to consult with a Jacksonville, Duval County traffic ticket attorney or other Florida traffic ticket lawyer prior to appearing in court.