News / Commentary
Welcome to TicketHELP.com News and Commentary Thursday, August 19th, 2010
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Chicago traffic ticket quotas? Thursday, August 19th, 2010
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley issued a one day suspension to the city revenue director because of and email she sent criticizing the police for not writing enough traffic tickets.
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
Facebook and traffic tickets Friday, August 13th, 2010
Facebook was in the news twice recently in connection with traffic ticket stories.
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
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.