farmdevil.net

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.