AZ Speed Cam Good News

[GT38]

The new Pinal County, AZ sheriff pulled the plug on the county's photo radar program today. Pinal County is south and east of the Phoenix metro area (includes the East Mesa and Casa Grande areas). The state legislature today also began seriously considering ending the statewide program. This would not impact city programs, though. Today our now former Governor Janet Napolitano became Secretary of Homeland Security, and our new Governor Jan Brewer was sworn in. In recent weeks, Brewer has expressed her willingness to get rid of Napolitano's cameras via the legislature, so they're getting right down to business.

While the traffic data purportedly shows that there have been fewer fatalities after the cameras went in, some claim that this is the result of fewer miles being driven and that accidents have happened when people see the cameras and slam on their brakes. Whatever that reality is, the beef in Pinal County and at the state legislature comes down to this - everyone knows that the cameras were installed for revenue generation and not for safety. The cameras have been extremely unpopular, and citizens have been very vocal to their elected officials. :cheers

 

[B O N Y]

Does that mean all the pretty pictures that they took of me last week don't count?
Saw that Blazer parked on the side of the the 10 out by Goodyear, I combed my hair and smiled real purty for that picture.

 

[GT38]

Does that mean all the pretty pictures that they took of me last week don't count?
Saw that Blazer parked on the side of the the 10 out by Goodyear, I combed my hair and smiled real purty for that picture.

Bony, they have no mechanism for serving the citation on out of state driver's so your smiling face is safe! There's a chance that the operator of the Blazer was asleep when you went by. They've also been caught speeding and driving drunk (employees of Redflex, the contractor). Even the prosecutors in court are "contract" attorneys - employees of Redflex. It's been such a moneymaking scam from the word go.

 

[B O N Y]

Darn, I was hoping to order some wallet size pics....
By the way, your pictures are great, I need to shadow you and learn how to use that Kodak BROWNIE camera of mine

 

[Carnut]

Good ridance to them.

 

[Empty Pockets]

Bony, they have no mechanism for serving the citation on out of state driver's so your smiling face is safe! QUOTE]


In point of fact, they have no mechanism for serving IN STATE RESIDENTS either so long as a person doesn't answer their doorbell or a knock on their door. :wink

 

[Kingman]

Bony, they have no mechanism for serving the citation on out of state driver's so your smiling face is safe! There's a chance that the operator of the Blazer was asleep when you went by. They've also been caught speeding and driving drunk (employees of Redflex, the contractor). Even the prosecutors in court are "contract" attorneys - employees of Redflex. It's been such a moneymaking scam from the word go.

Nice....cause I got my pic taken about 300 yards from the Forum dinner....front and back (not my best side). I was just so excited to see everyone! :biggrin

 

[GT38]

Bony, they have no mechanism for serving the citation on out of state driver's so your smiling face is safe! QUOTE]


In point of fact, they have no mechanism for serving IN STATE RESIDENTS either so long as a person doesn't answer their doorbell or a knock on their door. :wink

Absolutely correct, but there have been abuses by the process servers which were upheld by the courts. The most egregious I know of was a process server who claimed that he served the woman in person, but in fact she was on a cruise at the time and brought proof to court The judge ignored the proof and upheld the fine. This underscores the point that this is a moneymaking scheme for whatever entity stands to profit, and the system is cleverly set up so that the fox is guarding the hen house. It's this kind of BS that Arizonans are furious about, and which has started the groundswell of opposition to the cameras.

I'm sure you're aware of this EP (but amazingly a lot of AZ residents are not), but Scottsdale for instance operates the speed cameras on Loop 101 under an agreement with the state, which owns the highway and receives a percentage of the haul. If anyone thinks that a city judge isn't in on the fix to generate revenue, then they're naive - case in point above.

I've often joked that I should ask the state to rent me a few feet of right-of-way on the 101 to put up my own private speed cameras. That's pretty much what Redflex has done - the rent being the cut given to Scottsdale (or other municipality) and the state.

If this state was really interested in highway safety, they would put more officers on the streets and target illegals aliens who are driving on counterfeit licenses and have no insurance - and who can't drive worth a damn. No one ever compiles statistics on this problem, but it's very real. Last year about two miles from my home, an illegal alien ran a red light at 1:00 AM on a Saturday morning and T-boned a car with a young couple in it. The couple was killed, but the illegal wasn't even hurt. It took a couple of days for the news to seep out that the driver was an illegal, and there was no outcry by the local press - which is typical. Since then, I've noticed the same pattern with a lot of fatal accidents in this area.

The data supposedly shows that fatalities have been down since the speed cameras proliferated last fall. They fail to mention that a lot of the illegals began going back to Mexico at the same time - when the bottom fell out of the housing market and construction work dried up. If everyone wasn't so darned sensitive about offending one group or another, I suspect that some honest reporter (if there is one) could track down data that would make that correlation.

Another curious news item surfaced yesterday - that only 1/3 of people who receive photo citations send the money in. The other two-thirds go to process servers and they didn't say how many people cough up the dough at that point - but probably not many more. So, that's THOUSANDS of citations that are ending up in the court system. My guess is that the unexpected administrative costs generated by these non-voluntary payers have made this whole thing not quite the cash printing press they thought it was going to be - and that's likely the real reason the state is considering giving it the axe.

There now...I feel much better!

 

[Empty Pockets]

"The most egregious I know of was a process server who claimed that he served the woman in person, but in fact she was on a cruise at the time and brought proof to court The judge ignored the proof and upheld the fine." - '38



There clearly ought to be grounds for perjury charges being brought against the process server - and that judge needs to be hit with an abuse of office complaint at the very least.

You didn't say whether this woman appealed her conviction - but, you can betcher BBS wheels I WOULD HAVE. There's just NO WAY that judge's decision could stand on appeal - assuming this woman's proof was ligit. And there wouldn't seem to be any reason to believe it wasn't.

 

[GT38]

"The most egregious I know of was a process server who claimed that he served the woman in person, but in fact she was on a cruise at the time and brought proof to court The judge ignored the proof and upheld the fine." - '38



There clearly ought to be grounds for perjury charges being brought against the process server - and that judge needs to be hit with an abuse of office complaint at the very least.

You didn't say whether this woman appealed her conviction - but, you can betcher BBS wheels I WOULD HAVE. There's just NO WAY that judge's decision could stand on appeal - assuming this woman's proof was ligit. And there wouldn't seem to be any reason to believe it wasn't.

I think the fine was about $160. Since no points are assessed against your license with these tickets, there's no insurance rate increase. Unfortunately most folks are not like you and are reluctant to buck the system. I got the impression that this woman thought she could easily straighten things out with her travel documents - which the judge acknowledged as authentic, which makes this case all the more blatantly wrong. This woman was probably like most people who couldn't afford the extra time off work to appeal - especially when the sampling of "justice" she just experienced seems to be stacked against her. I'm surprised that a local attorney hasn't challenged a photo ticket on this or any one of a number of issues that have been raised about the legality and state constitutionality of the cameras being used as cash registers.

 

[Indy GT]

Very interesting 38 and thanks for sharing all the details.
I don't live in AZ but can't stand the George Orwell symbolism...!
Hope others are vocal as well and soundly defeat this invasion.

 

[GT38]

More interesting - and eye-opening - photo/speed cam info sent to me by a friend today:

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/26/2665.asp

Arizona: Freeway Photo Radar Ban Proceeds
Arizona state House committee votes to ban photo radar as speed camera documents may have been falsified in up to 1000 cases.

Arizona House Transportation hearing, 1/22. CameraFraud photoA committee of the Arizona state House of Representatives yesterday voted 5-2 to approve legislation banning the use of speed cameras on freeways. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee decided to act in response to a rising tide of public opposition to the largest single deployment of speed cameras ever attempted in the US. State lawmakers voted to reject the program despite the testimony of state police officials that the automated ticketing machines were improving safety on Arizona's highways.

"Arizona Department of Public Safety statistics show on average photo enforcement is saving three lives per month on Valley freeways," a state police press release from December 28 claimed. "Results show 116 fewer injury crashes."

On Thursday, Department of Public Safety (DPS) Commander Thomas Woodward appeared before the panel to repeat these widely reported Phoenix metro area freeway accident statistics. The numbers were based on the first eighty days of freeway ticketing from September 26, 2008 to December 16, 2008 and compared with the same dates in 2007, before the installation of cameras. Woodward gave credit for the drop in accidents entirely to the use of cameras.

TheNewspaper obtained a comparable ninety-day dataset covering accidents on Las Vegas-area freeways between September and November 2007 for comparison with the same dates in 2008 (December data were not available) from the Nevada Highway Patrol. This agency does not use photo radar because state law bans its use under any circumstances (Nevada Revised Statutes 484.910). Using the DPS methodology, one could conclude that this ban on photo radar resulted in 142 fewer injury accidents and an overall drop in collisions of 551.

More likely, however, is that accident statistics reflect a nationwide drop in travel linkd to a slowdown in overall economic activity. When fewer cars are on the road to be involved in accidents, the number of collisions drops. According to the Arizona Department of Transportation, traffic on Maricopa County freeways declined an average of seven percent during the period in question.

Lawmakers at the hearing were concerned with more than just accident statistics. State Representative Andy Biggs (R-Gilbert) was also upset to learn that the Redflex freeway cameras have been recording video twenty-four hours a day to track the movements of drivers not accused of any crime. Last September, TheNewspaper first reported the plan to link all continuously recording photo enforcement cameras into a nationwide surveillance network.

House Bill 2106, endorsed by the committee, would allow such surveillance to continue as long as the cameras used are not deployed on a state highway. Local jurisdictions would remain free to issue tickets and track drivers with these systems. That is why a local group, CameraFraud.com, vows to continue collecting signatures for an initiative that would give voters a chance to ban all forms of photo enforcement on both the state and local level.

If enacted, House Bill 2106 would spell financial trouble for Redflex, the Australian vendor that holds the lucrative contract to operate the freeway ticketing program. Redflex rival American Traffic Solutions (ATS), however, has its own problem yesterday. Tucson courts are expected to throw out up to 1000 tickets after a process server was allegedly caught falsifying documents.

Under Arizona law, motorists cannot be held responsible for an automated ticket that is sent in the mail. Instead, the citation must be hand-delivered by a process server who certifies that the recipient actually received the notice. ATS outsourced this function to E-Z Messenger Legal Support Providers and compensated the company with a bounty for each ticket successfully delivered. E-Z Messenger fired process server Michael Dimenstein after the Tucson Courts uncovered evidence that Dimenstein may have certified tickets as delivered to collect payment even when no attempt was ever made to contact the ticket recipient.

ATS spokesman Josh Weiss was quick to point out that E-Z Messenger is not a "fly-by-night" company and is frequently used by government agencies and attorneys in the area on official court business. Photo enforcement companies around the world are frequently involved in similar legal troubles.

 

[Carnut]

Horray:biggrin