 Cover
Story |
February 17, 2005
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by lyle e davis
by lyle e davis
At least nine cities in
California are sending out fake red light camera tickets, to get you to identify
the driver, so that they
can send the real driver
a real ticket. In North San Diego County the cities are Escondido, Vista, and
Encinitas.
Most people, not having
heard anything about it in the press, receive the fake ticket and respond with
the information.
The Traffic Violation Notice
Police agencies say that
there are two types of mailings. One, the ‘Traffic Violation Notice’ - which is
the ‘fake red light camera ticket.’ It closely resembles a real ticket, and is
written, bilingually, in mandatory wording ("must complete" and "debe completar,"
and that the incident is called a "citation" or "boleta" even though nothing has
been filed with the court.) but there are several clues as to which is which.
If your "ticket" does not
have the address and phone number of the court on it, or if it says, "Do not
contact the court," it's not really a ticket at all. It's a fake, normally
generated by either the police or the RedFlex operators. The other danger here
is that it could have been printed up by a clever confidence man who hopes you
will give him your credit card number.
The ‘notifications’ are
fully bilingual, in English and Spanish, and police agencies readily admit that
they are written in ‘strong language’ with the hope and intent that the
recipient will ‘nominate’ or identify the driver of the vehicle that is
obviously not the registered owner.
They also report that
rental car agencies will immediately nominate the drivers of the subject
vehicles.
The Traffic Citation
The second type of
mailing is an actual citation. A citation is a bonafide traffic violation
ticket. It means . . ‘you’ve been caught dead to rights.’
We publish the two types
of ‘notice’ and ‘citation’ in this article so that you might see and recognize
the difference.
How It Works
The vendor behind the red
light camera system is RedFlex, headquartered in Arizona.
The intersections with
cameras mounted operate by way of sensors embedded in the concrete, prior to the
crosswalk. These sensors trigger the cameras if and when (a) the light has
turned red and, (b) the vehicle(s) have passed beyond the lead sensor and thus
have entered the intersection after the light has turned
red. The cameras do not activate unless the light has already
turned red.
We have seen the system
work, thanks to the Escondido Police Department and Police Officer, Traffic
Investigator, and Motor Officer D. J. Zacchilli. The system is impressive, well
planned, and clearly can and should play a role in both cutting down on those
who run red lights and identifying those who violate the law and/or contribute
to collisions. We saw several that were amazing for the clarity of the video,
showing vehicles, in at least one case, traveling in excess of 65 miles per
hour. In another we witnessed an actual collision caused by someone who ran a
red light.
The sensor system, the
cameras, all are connected to a DSL computer link which, in turn, is connected
to RedFlex in Arizona. Their operators view the videotapes of the violators
daily, and have a clear view of (a) the vehicle entering the intersection after
the light has turned red, (b) the rear license plate, and (c) the front view of
the vehicle, which, in most cases, gives a clear photo of the driver. There are
12 seconds of video to view. Both RedFlex and police agencies want clear photos
so they can make accurate identification. They process the tapes and apply a
three-step quality control process to determine if they are able to identify the
driver.
RedFlex sends back the
video to the law enforcement agency with a list of clear violations and clear
photo identification; they also indicate to the agencies those videos where the
photo is too blurry to be sure of who it is, there is a gender disparity between
registerd owner and the driver, too wide of a difference in ages, or for other
reasons. The local police operator then checks for more complete data with DMV
records. If he is unable to identify the driver then he may advise RedFlex to
issue a “Notice of Violation.’ If the registered owner of the vehicle shows up
to contest the ‘notice of violation,’ and refuses (which is his legal right) to
identify or ‘nominate’ who the driver is, then the officer will likely dismiss
the case as not having sufficient strength to persuade a judge or traffic
commissioner as to the guilt of the alleged violator.
Why Do They Do It?
The incentive for issuing
“Notices of Violation” is that it costs the law enforcement agency nothing.
RedFlex, however, bills the law enforcement agency $89 each time a legal
citation is issued due to the red light camera system.
If they send a “Notice of
Violation” and it winds up getting them the information they need to issue a
bona fide citation then they have recovered the money they had to advance to
RedFlex. If the ‘Notice of Violation’ doesn’t work, they’re not out anything.
Police agencies we talked
to in researching this story said, however, that they not only don’t care that
much about the fees paid to RedFlex, they seldom know how much revenue is
derived from the system. This includes even the Chief of Police in Escondido,
Duane White.
“If I want to know how
much revenue we’ve derived from the red light camera operation, I have to call
the Escondido Finance Department,” he said.
The system in Escondido
is so new, just having started in October 2004, that very few meaningful
statistics and revenue stream data are available.
“What happens more
often,” says Officer Zacchilli, “is when a driver receives a citation, he
decides he wants to contest it. He comes down to the station, we show him the
videotape and he rather sheepishly then acknowledges he clearly sees he was in
violation. He usually then just either goes to Traffic School, if he qualifies,
or pays the fine.”
The city of Escondido has
based its use of red light cameras on a goal of reducing collisions rather than
on how many tickets were issued for red light violations. Accordingly, they
have assigned red light cameras to intersections where there were the highest
number of collision statistics, at an approximate cost of $100,000 for each
location. (Other cities may well opt to focus more on high traffic violation
sites).
In
Escondido, red light cameras are located at:
Valley Parkway and Centre City
Valley Parkway and Escondido Boulevard
2nd
Avenue and Escondido Boulevard
2nd Avenue and Juniper
Future plans have in mind
Broadway and Valley Parkway.
There are also signs at
the various entrances to the city that say “Photo Enforced.” This is fair
warning that the camera system is installed within the city but not necessarily
at that particular event. That tends to slow people down in that area as well
as they assume there are cameras operating there. Police do nothing to divert
that assumption. They’re rather pleased at the decrease in collisions.
Left Turn Lanes and Cameras
Escondido does not
monitor left turn lanes, or right turn lanes, for that matter, with cameras.
“We’re more concerned
with the through-traffic violators,” says Officer Zacchilli. That’s where the
collisions, particularly serious collisions, are more likely to happen. So, we
focus there.”
Vista
It’s a slightly different
story in Vista, where traffic and other laws are enforced by the San Diego
County Sheriff’s Department. We spoke with both Lieutenant Grant Burnett, and
Lieutenant Hernando Torres, Field Lieutenant for the Vista Patrol, San Diego
County Sheriff’s Department, a 21 year veteran.
The working relationship
and technology with RedFlex is pretty much the same with all law enforcement
agencies. There are, however, slight differences in the language on the ‘Notice
of Violation’ forms sent out, and there are differences as to what is enforced
and where. All agencies are interested in through-traffic intersections, but
Vista also monitors left and right turn lanes.
This could be important
financially as there are legal arguments that the setting of timing of the
lights can influence whether or not a motorist is more or less likely to violate
a law.
For example, there's a
big incentive for the cities, and the camera companies, to set the yellows very
short. Here in California our legislature passed a law three years ago setting
a minimum yellow for straight-through traffic. While the mandated
straight-through minimums are on the short side, nonetheless it has caused the
lucrative enforcement to shift to left and right turns, for which the minimum
yellow is just 3.0 seconds. But there's no evidence that people turning left or
right cause the horrible accidents that the authorities say they want to
prevent. If one accepts that it's a reasonable goal to decrease left-turn
runners, there's an alternative to heavy ticketing. An examination of the Mesa,
Arizona, Ticket Counts table demonstrates that left turn violations go way down,
and stay down, when drivers are given a reasonable amount of yellow. And for
straight through movements, the Ticket Counts table on the Costa Mesa,
California, Documents page shows that just a few tenths of a second longer
yellow makes a significant decrease in the number of tickets.
With specific reference to the straight through red light camera operations,
Lieutenant Torres confirms the procedure as outlined earlier in this article.
He also points out, as did the Escondido Police department, that a fairly large
number of violations are dismissed.
Lieutenant Torres : “Just as an example, they might have 5000 cases a month
from all the
San Diego jurisdictions.
They may well reject 3000 and send 2000 back to the area law enforcement
agencies. Then, the various law enforcement agencies examine the videos and
determine how many valid videos we have. We will often further reject additional
videos because we don’t believe there is sufficient identification of the driver
that it would stand up in court.
As far as any
notification forms, other than official traffic citations, those are initiated
by RedFlex. They may have an address of Vista, Encinitas, or Escondido . . .
but they are initiated there . . . not by local law enforcement.
Lieutenant Torres also
said that the proposal and related documents were all submitted to city
attorneys for the various cities involved, and then to the courts, to ensure
that they would be recognized and accepted by the courts.
One
difference between Escondido and Vista is that Escondido does not utilize the
RedFlex camera system on left and/or right hand turn lanes, Vista does. We
asked Sheriffr’s Sergeant Martinez of Vista for the amount of time Vista
allocated both for straight through red light operations as well as left/right
hand turn lanes. At press time, he had not returned our calls with the
requested infrormation. He claimed, however, that they were above the
recommended times posted by CalTrans.
Can The System Be Defeated?
There are a number of vendors, particularly on the Internet, who claim their
product can defeat the red light camera operations. They usually involve either
a transparent license plate cover that has a built in prism which allegedly
bends the vision the camera has of the plate and renders it not readable. Most
police agencies and several tv stations have demonstrated that this method does
not appear to work.
Of
late, there has been an aerosol spray can offered by
http://www.phantomplate.com/reflector.html
An
examination of this site shows that, indeed, the Denver Police Department
cooperated with the company and demonstrated that their product does, indeed,
block the camera’s view of the license plate. This demo was picked up by a
number of television news stations and shown repeatedly, both here and abroad,
in Australia and Holland, for example.
The
principle behind this is that the aerosol spray coats the license plate with
crystals that overexpose the license plate by absorbing the light from the
camera flash thus leaving a white space instead of the license plate numbers.
We contacted Vista, Escondido, and El Cajon law enforcement. Vista had no
experience with the new product, nor did El Cajon. El Cajon had, however,
cooperated with Leonard Villareal, then with KGTV, Channel 10, in testing a
similar product as well as the transparent license plate cover, both of which
failed, neither of which were this product.
If
you wish to investigate this product, you may go to the website listed above,
but, as always ‘Caveat Emptor,’ (Let the Buyer Beware).
For
a demonstration of how the RedFlex Camera system works in Escondido, please see
the three photos as shown on Page 12.
Sources:
http://www.highwayrobbery.net/redlightcamsticket.htm
http://www.highwayrobbery.net/redlightcamsdocsElCajonmain.html
http://www.highwayrobbery.net/redlightcamsdocsVistamain.html
The
official format for a real ticket
http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/forms/documents/tr115.pdf
is on the website
of the Judicial Council of California.
Escondido
Officer D. J. Zacchilli
839.4451
Vista:
Lt. Hernando Torres
940.4551
El Cajon Police
Department
Agent Steve Reilly - El Cajon Traffic Enforcement
The
Red Light Camera Operation
A
Typical Example
In the photo above the vehicle approaches the intersection of Centre City
Parkway from E. Valley Parkway, Escondido. You can clearly see that the red
light has come on, BEFORE the vehicle enters the intersection. The vehicle has
crossed the sensors that activate the camera once the red light comes on.
In the above photo, the car is clearly in violation of the law. It has entered
the intersection . . .the red light clearly displayed. In the bottom photo, a
collision is imminent as the vehicle approaces for a near broadside collision
with the truck.
Notice also the rain slick streets. Add running a red light on wet streets and
the combination could be fatal. The driver of this vehicle received a citation.
Photos courtesy of the Escondido Police Department.
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