Around North County

August 21st, 2008

DID YOU GET AN ENCINITAS RED LIGHT CAMERA TICKET?

You may be due a refund!

There’s a retired car-parts manufacturer living in SoCal, who, without fee, keeps track of red light camera tickets issued and tracks down where the municipalities concerned have violated the law in order to generate added revenue. He does it as a hobby - accepts no donations, has a website but will not accept advertising. He sees it as a public service.

“I started because I got a ticket in Culver City, went to court and noticed that the defendants sitting out in the hallway were an older group, not the young lead-foots I used to see in my earlier excursions to traffic court.

I think that red light cameras could be used for a good purpose - to remove from the road the people who habitually run red lights more than a couple seconds late because they're distracted, intoxicated, or don't care. But I do the site because I see the whole thing being turned into a revenue source, with no thought about fixing the problematic intersections. Just take pictures of the carnage, extract money. The $400 tickets for rolling right turns is another example of how distorted this has gotten.

Encinitas forgot to put up some of the required warning signs. (See Defect #4, on my site.) The trials of these tickets are heard on Fridays, and in the sessions of Aug. 1 and 8, a number of tickets were dismissed when a pro per defendant (on the 1st) revealed the problem and then, on the 8th, a lawyer raised the issue on behalf of her clients. So far, although it is early in the game (this story hasn't made it into the press yet), it is looking like there may not be a general refund /cancellation of tickets. It may be necessary for each defendant to take their ticket to trial, and raise the issue. Thus the need for the story to get out.

Since for the city, the court, and the camera company, there is a lot of money involved, I can imagine the city sending over its prosecutor who could try to convince the judge that a couple missing signs doesn't rise to the level of "offending once's sense of justice," which is the federally-derived test for whether criminal evidence should be excluded because of an error by the city. I can also imagine that if the present judge (actually a commissioner) did not come around to the city's view, they might try to substitute a different judge.

The defendant who discovered the missing signs and revealed it in court has a set of pictures he took, one of which even shows a sign that was evidently delivered to the location where it was to be put up, but then was left lying off to the side of the road and eventually surrounded by weeds. (A city has the option to post signs at each camera-enforced intersection, or, at the main entrances to town. Encinitas chose to post the entrances.) The two "missing" locations were:

Hwy 101 northbound
Birmingham west off I5 (left lying in the weeds)

I have copies of most of the defendant's pictures, and my task is to sort thru them and pick a few, which I will post on my site. I did something similar, when an intersection in Inglewood was found to be missing some of its signs.

The city probably has had time to put the signs up, by now, but were you to go out to those locations, you could still get pictures showing the very fresh/shiny appearance of the signs and the pavement or cement around their base. And maybe a "crop rectangle" in the weeds nearby (on Birmingham).

The lawyer who got tickets dismissed on the 8th is Elizabeth Aronson (760) 685-8242. She does a lot of traffic ticket work, and probably would be happy to talk for attribution. Her website is http://www.sandiegotraffictickets.com/ I don't know if the defendant who discovered all this is OK with me giving his contact info out. But if you want him to contact you, I will pass a message.

On the law enforcement side, the court appearances noted above were handled by a woman named Hahn, probably a deputy sheriff.

Other red light camera/photo enforcement stories that might be of interest are listed on my site, in the Journalists section, at: http://www.highwayrobbery.net/redlightcamsjoin.htm#Action3.5

I hope you find this of interest.

Regards,

Editor of the Site

SPEED cameras may be coming. In Feb. 2008 a bill was introduced to permit them. It may be coming to a State Senate committee hearing in August. If you would like to help stop the bill, see the Hot Legislation section on the Action page, at http://www.highwayrobbery.net/redlightcamsjoin.htm#Action5.
Warn your CA and AZ friends about Snitch Tickets. They're sneakily different from a REAL ticket! Read about them on http://www.highwayrobbery.net/redlightcamsticket.htm#Fakes

Please be sure to read the big green Confusing Courtroom Terminology box on the Your Ticket page, at http://www.highwayrobbery.net/redlightcamsticket.htm#misunderstood