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I had a lively discussion tonight regarding photo-enforcement of traffic offenses. I wanted to write a quick post with my thoughts.

Many supporters of photo-enforcement seem to think that one shouldn’t be worried about this topic if we obey the law. Well, really that’s exactly what my problem with it is- The system should obey the law too. There are several reasons why the use of photo-enforcement is unlawful as well as unethical:

1) The technology just isn’t that good. I have worked on image-recognition systems of the type that would be used to automatically read license plate numbers. They aren’t perfect, and things get worse under varying weather conditions and lighting that occur in the real-world.

2) The agencies and companies behind photocop systems always promise to have humans look at each and every ticket to ensure that the problems in point one above are caught. In reality, these humans simply serve as a rubber stamp. On my ticket, there was a picture of a different guy driving a vehicle of a different make and color than the vehicle I was driving. Three Redflex employees and one police officer(?) looked at my ticket to check for these errors. A second person from the police department had his signature affixed to the ticket. This is fraud and possibly libel since the incident is still on my record.

3) A private company installs, calibrates, and operates these cameras. The same company sends out the tickets. The company contractually receives approximately 50% of profits.

4) I am supposed to have the right to confront my accuser yet that is really a computer in this case. When you show up to court for one of these tickets, not one human being believes that you are guilty. It’s just a picture. There is no testimony regarding calibration or circumstances. If the picture is of somebody else, then they wasted your time in hopes that you would pay instead of dealing with the hassle.

Red light cameras (RLCs) in particular have been repeatedly shown to increase accident rates. When state laws make it harder for communities to profit from these deals, the cameras are always taken down quickly. This just shows that it really is all about the money. We need to vote against these things as they get put on the ballot in various cities and we need to vote against any politician who has supported them.

This is about an event last week, but since I was out of town I am just now getting around to posting…

Apparently Officer Johnson really likes to showcase her immense power by parking illegally whenever possible. This time she was blocking an entire row of parking spots in front of Cafe Milo. She had somebody pulled over into a parking spot so she thought it would be a good idea to park her car a good 40 feet behind him in the center of the road in a spot that most impeded other drivers. When I was inside Milo, the barista told me that it was better than where she had been parked before I got there, as apparently she was blocking access to an entire half of the parking lot before moving.

I was already upset by it before I knew who it was, but upon seeing it was her I’m not that surprised.

I should state up front that I do not text message while driving nor do I promote it. But, as somebody who knows a lot about cognitive limitations and technology, I have started to take a stand against the ill-informed policy that our politicians have been promoting. In particular, a bill is making it’s way through the Iowa House. My specific anger about the bill centers around one senator, Herman Quirmbach. Somehow I got on his email-list and generally his stances are pretty run-of-the-mill but he has really stepped up his ignorance on the text messaging issue. Following is most of my rebuttal to a recent email:

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Senator Quirmbach sent out another email the other day, illustrating that he is either clueless or is just pandering to people’s fears. I didn’t send him these responses but I have included some rebuttals below:

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Taking your eyes off the road and your hands off the wheel are dangerous habits. By restricting texting while driving, we can save lives and make Iowa roads safer for everyone.

Sure it’s not good to take the hands and eyes away from the road, but the cognitive resources are really what causes accidents. Don’t dumb this down for me, senator. Also if studies have shown that cell-phone bans don’t decrease accidents then how do you figure on making the roads “safer for everyone?”

At any given moment, one percent of drivers on the road are texting. Those drivers can be as much as 23 times more likely to crash, putting everyone on the road at risk.

I rebutted this above. This number is probably high because it applies to long haul truckers. Also this sounds more like propaganda than telling me about an issue, senator.

Senate File 2321 would make it illegal to write or send a text-based message unless the vehicle is stopped and off the roadway. The use of GPS devices will still be permitted, and if you get an urgent message, you may still read it.

So it sounds like you’re going to outlaw just enough to make people feel safe but not really tackle the cognitive issues. What text message could possibly be so urgent? What if my GPS device is a phone? If I enter an address into my phone, that sounds like text to me. What if I use one of the phones that allow hands free text messaging? What if the person on the other end has a phone that reads text messages to them? What would make that different than just using the phone for voice? I realize that the bill has more detail that answers some of these questions, but basically your law was obsolete before it was written because it will do nothing to make the roads safer. Remember, using the thumbs has not been shown to cause accidents – diverting cognitive resources has.

For one year after the law goes into effect, officers will issue warnings to violators while the Department of Transportation and the Department of Public Safety step up efforts to educate the public about the dangers of texting while driving.

For what reason? This education really sounds like propaganda to convince people that you aren’t all screwing around down there in Des Moines. If you write a good law, it should be enforceable on day 1.
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I don’t text message while driving, but I would love to be the lucky defendant that gets to fight one of these tickets in court. I agree that this is bad stuff and that people should keep their eyes, hands, and minds on the road. If we have decided that this is a large enough problem to legislate on, let’s be comprehensive. We shouldn’t single out specific technologies. Technology is a moving target and we will never make the roads safer with the current approach. This is likely a larger problem with our society. I don’t know how to fix it, but people need to start thinking of driving as a task that is important on its own, warranting proper attention.

The right way to go now is probably to make sure that distracted driving laws are comprehensive enough. I don’t want to regulate everything like California tried to do (radio, smoking, etc…). I’d like to see a law that makes it performance-based so that if a person swerves because they were adjusting the radio they would get the same penalty as a person who did so because they were sharpening their skates. This is really the only way to improve safety with a fair, technology-independent approach.

I did a little Google search a while back and found that, in addition to this site of course, Officer Johnson has one other notable mention. It seems that she found drugs on a guy during an illegal search a while back. Arresting a guy and having the court of appeals decide it was an illegal search must be a good source of embarrassment for a cop.

You can read the whole document here:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/iowastatecases/app/7-762.pdf

The best part is her testimony:

Q.  You had suspicion that it was drugs?

Johnson: Yes.

Q.  You didn’t have probable cause?

Johnson: Correct.

So not only is this funny because she was horrible on the stand, but it also highlights some pretty dishonorable police action. It raises the question of why she knowingly conducted an illegal search.

In other news, it seems a female police officer came to the neighbor’s house the other day looking for my roommate. It was probably Officer Johnson because I don’t think there are many other female officers in Ames. But it also seems likely that Officer Johnson would have been dumb enough to show up at the wrong house. It also seems likely that she would be dishonorable enough to tell the neighbors what she wanted, which wasn’t that bad but still none of their business.

Some of you know about my recent day in traffic court. If not here is a brief summary. I was driving along one night, not far from home, when I saw a police officer parked with all lights out in a manner that completely blocked a driveway and partly blocked a sidewalk. Of course it’s no surprise that the officer’s ego was too big to take my honk as I drove by.

I knew I would be found guilty, but I went ahead and wasted way more than $60 of the system’s time. I saw it as a cheap way to get some more courtroom experience while exercising my rights. I went through the process and discovered some pretty shady things along the way.

The law here doesn’t allow for a deposition in such offenses but the prosecutor’s office has an open door policy so they were actually pretty helpful. That said, the prosecutor and the police officers I spoke to didn’t seem to understand the purpose of a deposition. They acted like there was no good reason to have that information before trial. It’s common sense that you want to know all of the officer’s answers before you ask the questions in court. That’s why depositions are allowed for felonies.

Then some major shadiness occurred when I attempted to get dash-cam video footage from the records division. First, I called and was told that I needed a subpoena to get that and I was specifically told that public records laws do not apply. I did some looking on the internet and found that the police department must give up video footage in most cases and that to knowingly deny access to public records is a misdemeanor. It’s really too bad that I didn’t get that person’s name, though it was probably unintentional due to lack of training. Then I walked in to the records department in person. I told the employee there, Cheryl Spencer, that I’d like to get some footage. She asked me what I needed and I told her that I could give her an officer, date, and time period. She said that wasn’t good enough and that I needed to identify the incident. I was very adamant that I didn’t like being required to tell her my name and the case this was in regards to. It happens to also be illegal. Iowa public records law requires only that I give enough information for a subject matter expert to retrieve the requested document. Finally, I was told that if I wanted it, it was going to cost $23. The price seemed a little high to me considering that Iowa public records law does not allow for a profit to be made on the duplication of public records. For all of these reasons, I have been in contact with the Iowa Attorney General’s office so with any luck the Ames Police Department will be forced to start obeying state laws.

Finally, let me tell you about some of the ridiculous things that Officer Adrienne Johnson (she goes by Ady) said in court. Part of the reason I fought this was to bring light to some ridiculousness. The officer is the only witness against a typical traffic-court defendant. For that reason, officers have to come in there acting like they know their stuff and remember details of the encounter even though in reality they have pulled enough people over in the past two months that there is no way they can be a good witness. Let’s just say in a murder trial, such low-quality witnesses would be impeached quickly.

1) She claimed that she was an expert on license plates and that’s how she noticed an Arizona plate on a car earlier in the evening. When I asked her to describe an Arizona license plate, she said simply that it is yellow. That’s not very accurate. The background behind the numbers on an AZ license plate is white. When I asked her what color the letters are, she didn’t know. When I asked her how it differed from an Ohio license plate, she didn’t know. When I asked her if she could tell the difference between an Arizona license plate and an Ohio license plate, she said no. She ended up acknowledging that the car that drove by could have had either an AZ or OH license plate. This is called perjury.

2) She went into great detail describing how dark it was where she was sitting then, 10 minutes later, explained how it wasn’t really that dark. This is also called perjury.

3) When asked what road I was stopped on, she named the wrong road. It wasn’t just me tripping her up on names either. She legitimately thought she pulled me over on the major road that was north of the small side street that I was actually stopped on. This is pretty bad memory considering she no doubt studied her notes beforehand.

4) When asked if anything was different about me on the day of the trial from when she stopped me, she didn’t notice my full growth of facial hair in contrast to being clean shaven when stopped. This is pretty bad memory. At about this point she acknowledged that it had been two months so she didn’t remember many details.

I took the stand since I knew I would be found guilty either way. But really, I shouldn’t have. Seeing how un-credible Officer Johnson was on the stand, a fair court might have thrown the charges out.

So Judge Nevius rejected my appeal in the case I previously wrote about. I’m sure that a lot of it has to do with my lack of legal ability. I have no doubt that a lawyer could have made it happen with how obviously ridiculous this case was. The system needs to shape up right from the top. I maintain that I shouldn’t need a lawyer to argue against an officer who is ignorant of the law in question. It’s all about the money.

Also last week I had a debate with a guy here who used to work with the police. He was so obviously indoctrinated. His grounds for why cops should just pull over people without grounds is that they often catch them for other criminal things. Sorry, but that just isn’t in the spirit of the constitution. The ends aren’t supposed to justify the means. Besides, if that is true, why do they always write tickets? Also I realized that I tend to come off as anti-cop. That is not at all what I mean. I think we need cops and laws. I just wish that the police would focus on the laws that actually affect people. I don’t think that police officers are evil people. I just think that they are part of a severely broken system that no longer serves the needs of the people. I believe that they really think they are doing good because they have been so brainwashed that they actually believe that speed laws are set for safety. In Ohio at least, that is simply not true.

Finally, it doesn’t matter if I’m right. What matters is that there is a whole group of people who agrees with me. These people are not allies of the system. We don’t trust it. If the police plan to fight real crimes, they will need to have the support of the public.

I think I was too easy on officer Melchi in the last post. I realized that a large part of why I lost was because officer Melchi decided to write 800 block on the ticket even though he verbally told me 900 block at the scene.

I’ve been trying to look at the bright sides of this, mainly that there is no way they prosecuted this case for the $138 I paid. The only way we will curb needless tickets is by impacting the economics behind them. On the other hand, it is unfortunate that I had to do this and waste all of that government money and time. I would rather have seen officer Melchi out on the town preventing a murder or something than having him be paid to sit in court. But he probably would have been ripping poor college students off instead. I make about $1600 a month (pre-tax). I don’t have a lot of money to throw away on this sort of thing, but the system doesn’t understand that. There is no way I could have been more innocent than I was today, so what can a person do when they are wrongfully accused and the system places such little value on personal testimony?

The other good news is that my last post is already the #1 search result for “officer Melchi” or “Brian Melchi.”

I ended up fighting the speeding ticket that I wrote about in a previous post. It turned out that the officer was wrong about the speed limit on the road. There was no speed zone in either direction, which meant that I was doing 55 in a 55 zone. I went to court today and ended up being found guilty anyway. The good news is that the magistrate liked my defense and he suspended the fine so all I had to pay was court costs and I got 2 points on my license. That was still a high price, but I’m confident that the system lost money wasting their time on me. Also I’m uncertain if my Arizona license will ever see those points.

I will include some names because I like my site to be in the Google results when people search for them. I was in front of magistrate Albert Stewart. The only witness for the prosecution was officer Brian Melchi and my witnesses were myself and Bruce Smith, the County Engineer.

I realized beforehand that I remember officer Melchi from my days at Clark State. He was one of the power-trip officers who would camp out by the stop sign waiting for people like me to intentionally run it. But that’s another story.

Officer Melchi testified completely accurately as to his beliefs about the speed zones and I can’t fault him because he never asserted that I was still back in the stretch before the speed limit changed to 55.

The assistant county prosecutor spent his time trying to get me to acknowledge that I had accelerated to 55 before leaving the speed zone. For whatever reason, he was successful at doing just that even though I never once said I was traveling faster than 35 in the 35 zone. He kept asking me to clarify what speed I was going at different points, but I never misspoke as he was hoping for. I thought I made it clear that I accelerated to 55MPH after leaving the speed zone. For some reason, those assertions were enough for magistrate Stewart to agree with him. It became very apparent that it was never about the truth to the prosecutor. He knew he would lose if they stuck with the story about the speed zones being different on each side of the road, since I thoroughly debunked that notion. The problem was that 2 houses in the 800 block rested in the 35 zone. Since my ticket says 800 block I figured I should try to convince the magistrate that I was on the right side of it before accelerating. I should have concentrated way less on that I guess.

The magistrate found me guilty because (he said) he weighted the officer’s testimony more than mine, even though the officer never asserted that I was in the 35 zone. Even at the scene, the officer indicated that he clocked me in an area that was 55 on the other side but 35 on mine. The good news was that the magistrate liked my testimony and professionalism when representing myself so he suspended the fine.

On the way out of the courthouse, I asked officer Melchi if it was ever really about the truth. He indicated that he has no problem with the prosecution’s tactic. That’s funny, since at the scene he said that I would not have been speeding if I had been in the other lane.

The whole experience wasn’t too bad. The magistrate was helpful to me. He even overruled one objection against me. The county engineer was great and I felt sorry that I had to waste his time with this. The prosecutor did his job, but he is scum as far as I’m concerned. He got me convicted not because of the actual crime but because of a notion that hadn’t been confirmed by any witnesses. At least officer Melchi didn’t actually lie on the stand, but it’s too bad that he isn’t more aware of the speed limits because none of this would have happened if it wasn’t for his mistake. Also I have a hunch that he will gladly pull people over for the same thing again. I have decided that I am always going to pursue tickets as much as I can from now on. If I’m really guilty, I might be less likely to go to an actual trial. People need to fight these things even if they might lose, just to make the system realize that we won’t just pay up. They just need to realize that the system is designed to raise money and there is no allowance for reasonable doubt.

I just got another ticket. It was near Springfield and was a similar scenario to how a got a ticket when I was 17. I was driving on a road with a speed limit of 35 MPH while the other side was 55.

It was a Clark County Sheriff who pulled me over and he was one of the more friendly and professional cops I have encountered. But was writing me a ticket really accomplishing anything other than revenue-raising? Punishing people for crimes that they accidentally commit does nothing to deter future crimes. That cop could have instead spent his time preventing a murder or even pulling over somebody who was maliciously disobeying the law. Also I don’t want to imply that this happened, but it certainly fails to reject the hypothesis that Ohio cops target out-of-state plates (probably less chance of the cop needing to show up on the court date).

Further, it has always bothered me that the speed limit is 20 miles-per-hour different on each side of the road. It seems like this would rarely be necessary for safety and further supports revenue-raising theories. Particularly in the case of both roads that I am referring to, where the limit on the downhill lane of the road is lower than that on the uphill lane.

When I drive in Iowa, I never feel threatened by the police. I just drive at a comfortable and safe speed, mostly within the limits but no guarantees, and they never bother me. Here in Ohio, the only people who don’t get tickets are old people who just drive slow naturally. People who drive the sheer number of miles that I do every year (20,000-30,000), and aren’t old and slow, just don’t have a chance. Interestingly, these old and slow drivers are causing accidents too, but the cops don’t even notice them.

I have wanted to write about this for some time but I wanted to complain to the proper people first. I have plans to start an anti-photocop website dedicated to exposing the problems and unconstitutionality of the systems. Note that this is clearly written by an angry person, but I assure you that all facts are accurate to my knowledge.

Now for the story…
I was out in Arizona last Spring and I rented a car to drive to Nevada for the weekend. The car was a Chrysler PT Cruiser and I rented it from Enterprise Rent-A-Car. I went home to Ohio a couple days later and returned to the house in Tempe in July. On the last full day of my July trip, I went through the mail that my roommate had stacked in my room for me. I found a Scottsdale photocop ticket amongst the papers. I also started getting junk mail for how to beat photocops, so apparently this ticket was publicly released.

Here are scans of what I received (click for higher resolution):

If you look critically at these images, you should easily be able to spot the error. The vehicle shown is a Jeep Liberty while the ticket refers to a “CHRY PTE.” It would be somewhat forgivable if the readers of this page don’t catch that, but a person who is trained to review these before sending them out should spot it immediately. Notice that Bill Harper has “signed” off on the ticket.

Back to the story…
I am aware that all I really had to do was throw the ticket away because they would never have been able to serve me in Ohio. Due to an experience my uncle had and other stories I’ve read online about lying process servers, I thought I’d just go down to the courthouse and clear this up (I was innocent, after all). I had been planning to drive up to North Scottsdale to work on the boat at my uncles’ house, so I stopped by the courthouse on my way. I didn’t see any reason to change into something nicer than my “working on the boat” clothes, so I wore American Eagle Jeans, a sleeveless shirt, and some Teva sandals. I got to go in and speak to the judge but, since there is no prosecutor at those hearings, he could do nothing for me. I charge that the prosecutor is not present at those hearings because the system is set up to facilitate people just paying and not fighting. All he could do was schedule a court date in a few weeks. Obviously that was not going to work for me since I was going home the next day. I did get the judge to direct me to the prosecutor’s office, which was behind the courthouse. I went over there and waited a few minutes to speak to the prosecutor that handles photocop tickets. She was friendly and agreed to get it dismissed. When I asked her who Bill Harper is, she said I was wasting her time and that she wanted to eat lunch! I told her that I had planned on eating lunch as well, at which point she sort of acknowledged my wasted time. It’s not like she really had any option but to dismiss the charges. If she had brought me to court, it would have been malicious prosecution.

A week later, my roommate in Tempe called me saying I got a letter from the Scottsdale courts. I had him open it and it turned out that the motion to dismiss had been denied! I had a court date set for the exact date of my move to Iowa. It said if I didn’t show up, I would have a default judgement issued against me. I was wondering to myself who the heck I was going to fight in court if the prosecutor agreed with me, but obviously this would not do. I called the prosecutor’s office and eventually got ahold of her. She looked into it and eventually called me and apologized and said she was embarrassed that this happened, but apparently the paperwork was filed wrong. She filed it again and the next week I got a letter saying that the case had been dismissed.

What happened…
I have communicated with several people about this. They all confirmed and enhanced what I already knew about how the system works. Apparently at the time of my ticket, Scottsdale hired Redflex to administer their cameras. Redflex is a private company that sells, calibrates, and operates these systems (an obvious conflict of interest). Apparently what happened in my case is that the license plate photo was blurry so the computer accused the wrong car. Enterprise Rent-A-Car pointed at me, so I got the ticket. Redflex is supposed to have three people look at each ticket and then, once they have approved it, a police officer is supposed to give it a final review before sending it out. It has been understood for years that the only reason that a person reviews the tickets is to pacify the public, who was questioning the constitutionality of having a computer accuse a person. In my case they all failed to notice that the vehicle in the picture said “JEEP” in large letters on the back, when they were ticketing a PT Cruiser. This is probably because the system is more interested in the money than the crime.

The players…
Some of them have been more helpful than others but none of them seem to value my time. They all have the attitude that I got lucky and handled this properly so I didn’t have serious problems. I think that my time is important and they need an exercise in humility so they should write me an apology letter.

• Frank Vardon-Dove: This is the representative that I have been speaking to from Enterprise Rent-A-Car. He initially defended their position in cooperating with police. But then I pointed out that due dilligence (looking at the citation) would have protected me from this and it was probably a legal matter to violate my privacy by giving out my information whenever someone asked for it. Also I mentioned that Enterprise is the only rental company known for doing this. Most others don’t turn the drivers over, from what I’ve read. I sent him a copy of the citation to review. [UPDATE 12/28/07: He just called me and said that they have a system in place now where they will verify the plates. Also he says he will send me a coupon for a free rental. I couldn't be happier with his response. If they must involve themselves in this broken system, they should protect their innocent customers and take responsibility for mistakes that happen.]
• Richard D. Baranzini: This is who I initially communicated with from the Scottsdale Police Department. He was very helpful, but does not value the trouble I went through and the implications of this mistake. I was basically required to go to court to fight evidence that pointed to somebody else. That a computer can cause this and that proper checks weren’t in place are serious constitutional problems.
• Robert Salcido: This is an employee of Redflex. He is obviously unapologetic and I believe he lied to me about an important detail of their system. He also is one of those assholes who points to their email signature like it’s legally binding so I can’t repeat his communications. I suspect that, in reality, it isn’t very binding at all. But it really doesn’t matter. He said exactly what was expected of a company that makes money by bending the constitution.
• Bruce Kalin: This is Richard Baranzini’s boss at the Scottsdale PD. I am still waiting on a response from him about my apology letter. I sent him an email outlining how this was a hassle for me and how any amount of hassle was unacceptable when it was completely due to a failure on the parts of the Scottsdale PD and their contractors.
• Bill A. Harper: This is the (fake?) person whose signature is printed on the citation. By him putting his name on it, it really should be him who I sue. However, I’m sure he has some immunity that protects him from the need to be ethical or legal.

If I don’t hear back from the PD and Enterprise, I will consider other action. There have clearly been laws broken with respect to my privacy and my right to confront my accuser. I understand that my ticket was released to the public due to some information request act. Since the information will be seen by companies and possibly my insurance company, it is important that a person does the ticketing instead of a computer. The release of my information, strictly based on false information that brief due diligence would have spotted is borderline slander.

If anybody knows of lawyers that deal with this sort of thing, let me know. I am definitely interested in having this resolved properly. Regardless of what statistics exist (or don’t exist) pertaining to the lives saved by these systems, any system that would falsely accuse somebody from out of state in this way is completely unacceptable. If I hadn’t gotten my mail, I could have had a warrant out for me for all I know. I dedicated a few hours of my life and many cell-phone minutes to this, some while on vacation and some while I was preparing to move to Iowa to start my Ph.D. work. This was a very busy part of my life without all of this.