First fallout of  TrueCar.com’s run-in with regulators: TrueCar suspended its service in Colorado. In an e-mail sent to dealers, a Colorado TrueCar account manager told his flock that the suspension is voluntary while TrueCar tries to work out with the state how to “conform to the rules of the road in your state.” In the e-mail, obtained by Automotive News [sub], TrueCar account manager Thuy Adomitias writes:

“We feel comfortable that we will be able to address any regulatory issues by Jan. 17, at which point we will be reactivating our service, including automatically reactivating your account.”

Colorado was not the only state that put TrueCar under the magnifying glass.  Regulators and dealer associations in several other states had contacted TrueCar. However, TrueCar did not extend the suspension to other states.

TrueCar said it will comply with all state laws and will change its Web site and methods if necessary.

Car companies have deep pockets, therefore, they get sued all the time for the silliest things. A good deal of what you pay for the car goes to paying lawyers. Those of the car company, and especially those who start class action suits. When the suit is won or settled, the lawyers get a fat cut of the award, and the customers get a coupon for a free oil change or other valuable stuff.

A woman from Los Angeles has plaintiff lawyers very worried.

According to the Los Angeles Times, “Heather Peters is an angry consumer who knows she has little chance of winning a war with Honda Motor Co. and its army of high-priced lawyers.”

But what if that army of high-priced lawyers is disarmed and must stay home? Heather Peters has devised a strategy that cuts out the lawyers.

For years, there have been class action suits over the fuel economy of Honda’s
Civic hybrid. Plaintiffs said they were duped into buying an expensive car that doesn’t get the stated EPA mileage. In a proposed class-action lawsuit settlement, trial lawyers would get $8.5 million. Civic owners would get as little as $100 and rebate coupons for the purchase of a new vehicle.

Heather Peters won’t settle with Honda. Instead, she will plead her case at the Small Claims Court in Torrance. According to California law, neither party is allowed to bring a lawyer to  Small Claims Court. Peters will sue on January 3^rd, because in 2012, California raises the Small Claims limit to $10,000. Peters will be asking for the maximum.

She is also asking Honda owners to follow her example. She set up her DontSettleWithHonda.org website and a DontSettleWithHonda Twitter account. The site state-by-state instructions for filing these lawsuits.

According to the LA Times, 200,000 Civic hybrids were sold over six years. Used car buyers are eligible as well, which could bring the number of claimants to half a million.

“This could create a lot of problems in the industry,” said Aaron Jacoby, the Los Angeles defense attorney who heads the automotive industry group at the Fox law firm.

If revolutions can be started with Twitter, then surely groups of claimants can find each other and plan a united, but separate assault.

Mass filings could tax the resources of a company, which has to send an employee to the hearing if the state does not allow lawyers. Most of all, they could make plaintiff’s attorneys look for other deep pocket targets.

She may need a little help with the video presentation. Or maybe that’s part of the strategy.

Al E. Forrest sat in the driver’s seat of a 2003 Ford Explorer with another man in the passenger seat as two police officers came up on either side of the vehicle. According to Officer Kevin George’s testimony, he just wanted to see if the Explorer driver was okay. The officers had no suspicion of any criminal activity prior to approaching the Explorer. When George poked his head into the driver’s window, Forrest looked surprised to see a cop staring at him through the window. George said this was a sign of “nervousness.” When George saw money in Forrest’s left hand, he ordered the man out of the SUV. This was the beginning of the legal problem for the Columbus officer.

“We note initially that the police needed no suspicion of activity, legal or illegal, in order to walk up to or approach the Ford Explorer,” Judge G. Gary Tyack wrote for the appeals court. “What a person willingly displays in public is not subject to Fourth Amendment protection. However, Officer George went far beyond approaching the vehicle.”
Forrest did not immediately get out of the Explorer. Instead, he rolled up the window and removed the keys from the ignition. Unsatisfied with this response, George pulled open the car door and yanked Forrest out. George had no warrant and had still not observed any illegal activity. Because of this, a Franklin County Court of Common Pleas judge suppressed evidence obtained from arresting Forrest. The state appealed. The three-judge appellate panel found the prosecution’s claim that exceptions to the Fourth Amendment applied to be entirely unpersuasive.

“The state argues probable cause to arrest and then search incident to arrest are present, but both fail because they are premised on Forrest’s wrongfully refusing to obey the order to step out of the vehicle,” Judge Tyack wrote. “The officer, however, had no basis to order Forrest out of the vehicle because he lacked reasonable articulable suspicion of criminal activity when Officer George reached across Forrest’s body to grab his hand and pull him out of the vehicle. Since there was no lawful arrest, the search and seizure cannot be justified as a search incident to a lawful arrest.”

With the suppression motion upheld, the state has no case against Forrest. A copy of the decision is available in a 30k PDF file at the source link below.

Source:  Ohio v. Forrest (Court of Appeals, State of Ohio, 12/6/2011)

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]

A pair of senior police officers in Brindisi, Italy were arrested Tuesday in a speed camera bribery scheme. The owner of a BMW X6 blew the whistle on officers Giuseppe Manca and Antonio Briganti after a speed camera accused him of driving 160km/h (99 MPH) on state route 16, where the limit is 110km/h (68 MPH).

The driver faced a fine of between 500 to 2000 euros (US $650 to $2615) plus license points. The officers offered to make the conviction disappear for payment of 250 euros (US $327) in cash. The officers were able to erase the conviction from the speed camera logs to prevent detection of their tactics.

The attempt at secrecy failed when the BMW found he was out of cash. The driver’s account of what transpired is supported by surveillance video showing one of the policemen escorting him to a bank in the village of Pezze di Greco to withdraw money. Judge Paula Liaci ordered Briganti and Manca to be placed in preventative detention.

Meanwhile, the public prosecutor in Grosseto conducted four raids on the offices of speed camera companies in Capagnativo and Scarlino. Investigators uncovered irregularities in the way speed camera contracts were handed out in those jurisdictions between 2005 and 2007. Previously, local police handled speed camera operations, but prosecutors insist forgery, corruption and bid rigging led to the decision to contract out the photo ticketing services.

Investigations into Italian speed camera fraud have been in the works for years. Earlier this month, seven were arrested in Frosinone for rigging speed camera contracts. In March, the Guardia di Finanza announced five indictments in Brescia. In August 2009, speed cameras were shrouded in black plastic as up to 200 officials faced charges in Caserta. In September, a judge ruled that a group of 15 mayors, cops, speed camera company employees should stand trial on fraud charges.

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]

A while ago, we showed you a video of an angry Shanghainese woman, towing a tow-truck away. Alas, the video was staged. This time, it’s serious. Or so they swear over at Carnewschina, and at the TV station in Liaoning Province that showed on the evening news what happened when the police wanted to tow a Buick Excelle. The Buick’s driver, a resolute woman, had different ideas.

The Buick was already hitched, but on the wrong end. Using the fact that the Excelle is a front-wheel-drive, the woman could liberate it from the claws of the tow truck, and drive away. What is interesting to watch is how the police in the alleged police state reacts.

If the woman would have bumped an American cop with the door, and then shoved him, she would be in cuffs. If she would have kept on driving with an American cop standing in front of the car, she would have found herself tased, bundled up, arrested, and in a world of hurt. In China, she simply drives away.

They have her number and will catch up with her later.

The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit on Tuesday rejected a class action lawsuit filed against the speed camera program in the nation’s capital. Motorists Henry Dixon and Cuong Thanh Phung argued the city violated their constitutional guarantee to equal protection of law by treating drivers pulled over for speeding more harshly than drivers mailed photo tickets for speeding.

The US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled against Nixon and Phung, finding no violation of the Fourteenth Amendment (through the Fifth Amendment) because drivers apprehended for speeding by police officers are not similarly situated to motorists photographed and accused of speeding by a photo radar device. The district judge reasoned that the camera is unable to confirm that the owner was the driver, so the greater punishment should not be imposed. The three-judge appellate panel agreed with the lower court’s conclusion, but for a different reason. The speed camera law can stand under the “rational basis test” used to insulate government actions from constitutional challenge.

“The District’s disputed traffic enforcement policies neither burden a fundamental right nor target a suspect class,” Judge Harry T. Edwards wrote for the appellate court. “Therefore, in attacking the rationality of the District’s legislative classification, appellants have the burden to negative every conceivable basis which might support it. Appellants have not met this burden.”

Drivers who exceed the speed limit by 30 MPH — and this could include driving as little as 55 MPH on a wide, six-lane boulevard — are subject to a $300 fine and ninety days in jail if pulled over by the Metropolitan Police Department. If, on the other hand, American Traffic Solutions decides a vehicle is speeding, the company can only issue a civil ticket.

“The District has decided that the best way to deter speeding is through the creation of some variability and uncertainty in the city’s enforcement schemes,” Edwards wrote. “The wisdom of such a determination is not the appropriate subject of equal protection review.”

Washington’s cameras have issued more than $312 million in citations since 1999. The appellate judges found aspects of the program that increase that revenue actually help the city’s legal case.

“Because automated traffic enforcement (ATE) does not require police officers to pursue, detain, or arrest speeding motorists, it is axiomatic that the District’s use of this enforcement system substantially increases the number of speeding motorists who will be detected and face a monetary penalty,” Edwards wrote. “It is true that the owner of a vehicle who receives a citation may request a hearing to demonstrate that he or she was not driving the car when the speeding violation occurred. But the District has good reason to assume that most persons who are cited via the ATE will not contest the fine, either because they are actually guilty of speeding or because objecting is not worth the aggravation.”

A copy of the decision is available in a 45k PDF file at the source link below.

Source:  Dixon v. District of Columbia (US Court of Appeals, DC Circuit, 12/20/2011)

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]

As long as a police officer cites his own safety as the reason, he may frisk any motorist during a traffic stop and remove objects from his pockets, according to a ruling handed down Tuesday by the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. A three-judge panel evaluated whether Officer Joe Moreno was following the law when he searched driver Ivan Rochin after he was pulled over in Albuquerque, New Mexico for driving with an expired registration.

“No one likes being pulled over for a traffic violation,” Judge Neil M. Gorsuch wrote for the court. “Still, for most drivers the experience usually proves no more than an unwelcome (if often self-induced) detour from the daily routine. But not every traffic stop is so innocuous. Sometimes what begins innocently enough turns violent, often rapidly and unexpectedly. Every year, thousands of law enforcement officers are assaulted — and many are killed — in what seem at first to be routine stops for relatively minor traffic infractions.”

According to the latest available Federal Bureau of Investigation crime statistics, six officers were killed while pursuing a ordinary traffic infractions in 2009. That represents 0.0008 percent of the 706,886 sworn officers nationwide. Four of these patrolmen were gunned down as they approached the stopped vehicle, and only one was shot while standing at the offender’s vehicle window.

In this case, Rochin happened to match the description of someone wanted for a drive-by shooting. Moreno ordered him out of the car and performed a pat-down search that turned up glass pipes containing drugs. Rochin objected that it was absurd for the officer to remove the pipe from his pants on “officer safety” grounds, but the court ruled such a search was objectively reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.

“A reasonable officer could have concluded that the long and hard objects detected in Mr. Rochin’s pockets might be used as instruments of assault, particularly given that an effort to ask Mr. Rochin about the identity of the objects had proved fruitless,” Gorsuch wrote. “To be sure, the pipes Mr. Rochin turned out to have aren’t conventionally considered weapons. But a reasonable officer isn’t credited with x-ray vision and can’t be faulted for having failed to divine the true identity of the objects.”

The court upheld Rochin’s conviction. A copy of the decision is available in a 20k PDF file at the source link below.

Source:  US v. Rochin (US Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit, 12/13/2011)

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]

After performing a thorough performance audit, Denver, Colorado’s city auditor is no longer convinced of the value of red light cameras and speed cameras. The Denver Police Department (DPD) deputized the Dallas-based firm Affiliated Computer Services (ACS, a division of Xerox) to issue red light tickets at four intersections and speeding tickets throughout the city with five roaming vans. The program has little more to show for itself than a profitable bottom line.

“Unfortunately, DPD has not demonstrated that the photo radar program has a positive impact on public safety,” City Auditor Dennis J. Gallagher wrote. “Because these programs were sold as public safety enhancements but are widely viewed as a cash grab, it undermines public trust to maintain photo enforcement programs that are profitable but whose safety impact has not been conclusively shown. If this situation persists, then the photo enforcement programs should be shut down.”
The audit noted the speed van program has been operating since 2002 without any objective measurement of the impact on safety. Instead, city officials relied on the report of the number of violations generated by ACS as the sole measure of effectiveness.

“A reduction in violations does not necessarily entail a significant reduction in speed, nor does it indicate a decrease in accident rates or pedestrian injuries,” the audit report noted. “Further, a 2006 internal DPD assessment suggests that DPD believes driver’s habits adjust as citizens become familiar with the locations of the photo radar vans. Therefore, a decrease in violations does not directly correlate to a sustained decrease in speeds after photo radar is deployed to a different location.”

Photo radar generated $3.6 million in revenue in 2010 and that amount is expected to top $7 million by the end of 2011 because ticketing operations expanded to seven days a week. With the red light camera program, certain types of accidents did decrease at the camera intersections, but the audit pointed out the city could not legitimately credit the improvement to cameras.

“At three of the four intersections with red light cameras, the number of right angle accidents was decreasing before the red light cameras were installed,” the report explained.
The full safety impact is impossible to gauge because city leaders increased the duration of the yellow lights, enlarged signal heads and installed countdown timers at the intersections where cameras were installed. The engineering improvements helped make the intersection safer, but also reduced the number of violations issued. To boost the number of tickets, ACS and Denver began ticketing people who stopped at red lights — but their car was photographed protruding a few inches beyond the stop bar. No other jurisdiction in the state tickets drivers who fully stop at red lights.

“Program revenues spiked largely due to more precise stop line enforcement,” the audit explained, “By April 2011, ACS was able to dramatically increase the number of incidents captured by the red light cameras due to the upgrades.”

These extra picky violations are the sole reason Denver’s red light cameras are profitable.

“DPD should also be aware that while program revenues recently increased in Denver, if DPD or Denver policymakers change the violation point to better align with practices in other municipalities, program revenues may decline to the point where they do not meet the budget for the program,” the audit explained.

In its response to the report, Denver police insisted it was impossible to conduct a study that would satisfy the auditor’s concerns. The most the department would do would be to have ACS conduct a study to justify continuing the ACS program by June 30, 2013.

A copy of the audit report is available in a 4mb PDF file at the source link below.

Source:  Denver Photo Enforcement Program (Denver, Colorado City Auditor, 12/15/2011)

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]

The Florida legislature’s authorization of red light cameras last year was superfluous, a divided state Court of Appeals panel ruled yesterday. The majority sided with the city of Aventura in overturning a Miami-Dade County Circuit Court decision from last year that found Aventura had jumped the gun by giving American Traffic Solutions (ATS) a green light to mail out automated tickets without waiting for the state’s permission.

Florida law does not allow a city to adopt an ordinance in conflict with a state statute. The majority argued a provision requiring traffic officers only to issue traffic tickets for violations they personally observed is not in conflict because the same officers can “observe” the infraction on video under the Aventura photo ticketing ordinance.

“The ordinance allows for a traffic control infraction review officer, who although sharing the qualifications of the type of officer referenced in section 316.640(5)(a), is instead appointed by the city pursuant to the ordinance and for the distinct purposes of viewing recorded images and issuing corresponding citations in accordance with the ordinance,” Judge Angel A. Cortinas wrote for the majority. “Accordingly, we find the trial court erred in its determination that section 48-26 allowed the cameras to serve as the sole basis for issuing a notice of violation in direct conflict with section 316.007, Florida Statutes.”

The majority also noted that the state legislature authorized the use of red light cameras in 2010, without mentioning that lawmakers specifically rejected attempts to include retroactive language legitimizing camera programs that started before 2010.

Judge Leslie B. Rothenberg disagreed with her two colleagues with a dissent that noted the state specifically abolished municipal courts. She argued Aventura created a different standard of proof and liability for red light violations with penalties conflicting with those set by the legislature. The state punishes the driver with a $60 fine, but the city goes after the vehicle owner with a fine of up to $500. These standards are judged by a Aventura’s own special master, not through a judicial officer established by the legislature.

“The city is essentially utilizing the state’s uniform traffic control devices (traffic lights), approved and regulated by the state for enforcement of the state’s uniform traffic control laws, to punish violators through the city’s own enforcement program and to pocket the revenues it collects for its own benefit,” Rothenberg wrote in her dissent. “This is exactly the sort of inconsistent application of traffic laws and traffic penalties the people and legislature of this state sought to preclude by abolishing all of the municipal courts and enacting a uniform statewide traffic control system.”

A copy of the decision is available in a 140k PDF file at the source link below.

Source:  Aventura v. Masone (Court of Appeals, State of Florida, 11/30/2011)

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) succeeded Monday in having a license plate with the slogan “Choose Life” blocked in North Carolina. US District Court Judge James C. Fox granted the liberal group’s request for a preliminary injunction against issuance of the plate while the lawsuit makes its way through the court.

On June 30, Governor Bev Perdue (D) signed a law giving motorists the choice of paying $25 extra to have the plate instead of the standard-issue “First in Flight” logo on their license plate. Other available show a preference for individual NASCAR drivers or carry messages such as “Play Tennis,” “Save the Sea Turtle,” “I’d Rather be Shaggin’,” “Support Our Troops” and “Kids First.” The ACLU argues that the lack of an plate expressing support for abortion violates their First Amendment rights.

Half of the states offer Choose Life plates, which have withstood some, but not all, legal challenges. The US Courts of Appeals for the Sixth, Eighth and Ninth Circuits upheld the constitutionality of the plates in Tennessee, Missouri and Arizona, while the Seventh Circuit struck down the plate in Illinois. The legal issue centers on whether the plate represents governmental speech as opposed to individual speech. The attorney general’s office argued the legislature is directly accountable for the message it chose.

“Each of the voting members of the General Assembly on either side of the issue regarding these plates took a stand which they knew could mean the difference as to whether they might be re-elected or not,” Special Deputy Attorney General Neil Dalton wrote in a brief to the court. “By taking this action they knew that some North Carolina license plates would bear the message ‘Choose Life’ and that no North Carolina license plates would bear the ‘alternative’ messages sought by the opponents of the ‘Choose Life’ plate.”

Judge Fox sided with the ACLU which argued that the legislature prevented individual speech when it specifically rejected amendments to the legislation that would have authorized a competing “Respect Choice” plate.

“The state should not be allowed to use its authority to promote one side of a debate while denying the same opportunity to the other side,” ACLU of North Carolina Legal Foundation spokesman Katy Parker said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing our arguments in this case, and hope the court agrees that the First Amendment prohibits the blatant type of viewpoint discrimination the state has proposed through this one-sided license plate scheme.”

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]

Wintertime is coming, mama, the windows are filled with frost. So I went over to the nearby strip mall to get some thermal underwear. That doesn’t rhyme even half as well as Dylan’s most forced rhymes, but it’s really what happened. There’s a C.W. Price store in the mall. It used to be a location of the A.J. Wright chain that went under, and from the looks of things, all they needed to change were the signs. C.W. Price carries pretty much the same overstocked and distressed merchandise as A.J. Wright. Not quite as depressing as shopping at Big Lots but definitely not the Somerset Collection. While I was at the store of course I had to check out the cheap R/C cars that they had on sale for $6.99 and $7.99 with the other Christmas toys. At first glance they looked like Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Bugattis and Ford GTs. Actually, at second and third glance they still looked like those cars, scale models accurate down to the Veyron’s distinctive black hood, horseshoe Bugatti grille and exposed mid-mounted W16 engine.

Not-a-Bugatti

Nowhere, though, do the words “Ferrari”, “Lamborghini”, “Bugatti”, or “Ford” or those companies’ badging appear anywhere on the R/C cars or on the packaging. In some unintentional irony filtered through the joys of “Chinglish”, the Ford GT does have a decal at the top of the windshield that reads “FAMOUS CAR”.

Can I write anything funnier than reality?

Welcome to the wonderful of Chinese manufacturing where out the front door your vendor sells you your patented or licensed goods and out their back door they sell essentially the same products, only without branding, to dollar store distributors. It’s not a new story. Years ago Georgena Terry, founder of Terry Precision Bicycles for Women, found knock offs of her patented woman’s bike saddle on sale in the US that, based on the molding markings, had to have been made by her own supplier in China.

Legitimate Lamborghini? 

My guess is that something similar happened with these R/C cars. Xiangda Toys Factory, and Hunson Trading Co. are the brand names on the toys. What little that I could find out about the companies is that Xiangda makes R/C toys and the Hunson distributes R/C toys and other toys to dollar stores in North and South America. The Hunson labeled toys carry the XTR brand, which I’m guessing stands for Xiangda Toy Racing.

Here’s what I think is going on. If Xiangda or Hunson want to reply, we’ll give them an opportunity to do so. I think that Xiangda is the manufacturer and the Hunson is the distributor of all of these, regardless of how the specific toys are branded. On the multitudinous Chinese goods trading sites, you can find Hunson offering toys branded with names like Lamborghini so it’s possible that one or both of the companies has a legitimate license to make scale models. The toys could be complete knock offs, but they appeared, as I said, to be fairly accurate in terms of body shape, so they just as likely could have been molded with tooling made to produce licensed goods. I’m guessing that someone thought that they could make a few extra yuan by diverting some goods to market without the additional cost of paying a royalty fee.

There appears to be little risk. After all, this is being done in plain sight. Since they don’t sell the cars branded with the real car company names, as long as those brand names never appear on shipping manifests or customs documents nobody will ever be the wiser. Bugatti, Ferrari and Lamborghini’s licensing agents and lawyers don’t typically shop in stores like C.W. Price. Ford’s lawyers might have driven by the Price store on Telegraph in Redford, on their way to the Glass House in Dearborn, but again, they’re not likely shopping for their kids’ toys at dollar stores and deep discounters. Though it’s likely to be under the radar of white shoe law firms and their clients, dollar stores and deep discounters are still big business. There are over 20,000 stores operated by the three largest dollar store chains. Licensing deals typically pay 7-12% of wholesale prices as royalties. That means that for every one of these R/C cars that are distributed, somewhere between 25 and 50 cents doesn’t get paid to a car company that is rightfully theirs. That may not sound like much but when you consider that these toys are shipped over by the container load the IP infringement from quasi knock offs like these must represent significant sums of unpaid royalties.

Scale model radio control Fauxrrari

Of course, these days cars’ shapes are protected under intellectual property laws just as surely as Ferrari’s prancing horse and Lamborghini’s pawing bull are protected trademarks. My day gig is custom machine embroidery and I’ve gotten cease and desist letters from car companies unhappy about my embroidery designs that portray their cars. They were overreaching but it seems to me that while artists and photographers might have some leeway and fair use rights to create original art depicting a protected car design, there’s no doubt that if a car’s shape is copyrighted, making and selling scale models of that car would be infringing on the car company’s intellectual property, with or without a logo decal.

It happens with race cars too. When A.J. Wright was still in business, during the holiday season they’d sell R/C Formula One cars that looked just like the Ferrari and McLaren F1 cars, down to the coloring of the sponsors’ decals. Only if you looked closely the sponsors’ names were close but actually fictional, and nowhere did it say the team names or F1. It reminded me of a store that would advertise selling “names like Hitachi and Sansui” and when you get there they are selling knock off brands named Hatichi and Sunsai.

This isn’t going to stop. As long as there’s a market for quasi knockoffs and as long as the Chinese government and Chinese industries benefit from those knock offs they will continue to be made. If General Motors couldn’t get Chery to stop making the QQ, a copy of a real car, Ford isn’t going to get Xiangda to stop making scale model Famous Cars.

The US Supreme Court earlier this month heard oral arguments in a case that will set the legal boundaries for police GPS surveillance of automobiles. Last year, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled that police were wrong to spend a month tracking the every move of Antoine Jones, who was arrested on October 24, 2005 for drug possession (view opinion). A tracking device had been attached to Jones’s Jeep without judicial approval. The high court judges engaged in heated debate about the rights of motorists in connection with the Fourth Amendment.

“It seems to me the heart of the problem that’s presented by this case and will be presented by other cases involving new technology is that in the pre-computer, pre-Internet age much of the privacy — I would say most of the privacy — that people enjoyed was not the result of legal protections or constitutional protections; it was the result simply of the difficulty of traveling around and gathering up information,” Justice Samuel Alito summarized. “But with computers, it’s now so simple to amass an enormous amount of information about people that consists of things that could have been observed on the streets, information that was made available to the public.”

The administration, represented by Deputy Solicitor General Michael R. Dreben, argued that police do not need to obtain a warrant because location information could have been obtained this information through ordinary surveillance methods. That means anyone could track even supreme court justices without violating their privacy.

“So your answer is yes, you could tomorrow decide that you put a GPS device on every one of our cars, follow us for a month; no problem under the Constitution?” Chief Justice John Roberts said. “Your argument is, it doesn’t depend how much suspicion you have, it doesn’t depend on how urgent it is. Your argument is you can do it, period. You don’t have to give any reason. It doesn’t have to be limited in any way.”

Roberts suggested the process of obtaining a warrant serves as an effective limit. Scalia seemed to suggest that state legislatures were best suited to decide what limits should be placed on police tracking, not the courts. Other justices worried about the implications of allowing unrestricted tracking.

“[It's] an easy way, to pick someone up for speeding when you suspect something far worse but have no probable cause,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said. “It’s all in the computer. The police can say, we want to find out more about X, so consult the database, see if there is an indication that he was ever speeding in the last 28 days.”

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy compared the GPS tracking to the use of speed cameras and red light cameras for tracking purposes.

“Lots of communities have, including Washington, cameras on — at intersections on stop lights,” Kennedy said. “Suppose the police suspected someone of criminal activity and they had a computer capacity to take pictures of all the intersections that he drove through at different times of day, and they checked his movements and his routes for five days. Would that be lawful?”

Justice Elena Kagan suggested constant police surveillance of an individual is obviously a violation of privacy.

“If you think about this, and you think about a little robotic device following you around 24 hours a day anyplace you go that’s not your home, reporting in all your movements to the police, to investigative authorities, the notion that we don’t have an expectation of privacy in that, the notion that we don’t think that our privacy interests would be violated by this robotic device, I’m — I’m not sure how one can say that,” Kagan said.

The justices are expected to arrive at a decision by spring.

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]

Maryland state law prohibits municipalities from paying contractors to operate speed camera and red light cameras on a per-ticket basis. In an October 27 ruling, the Court of Special Appeals found that localities are free to ignore this legal requirement.

A group of motorists in 2008 filed a class action lawsuit against Montgomery County, the cities of Rockville and Gaithersburg, and Chevy Chase Village because each paid Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) $16.25 for each ticket the company issued, in violation of the statute.

“If a contractor operates a speed monitoring system on behalf of Montgomery County, the contractor’s fee may not be contingent on the number of citations issued or paid,” state code section 21-809 states.

According to the county’s original contract, ACS was to “install and support all traffic camera equipment” and “supply an automated violation processing services solution that is capable of supporting high volume program operations.” Montgomery County was first given authorization to use cameras over the veto of then-Governor Robert L. Ehrlich (R) in 2006 and the grant was later expanded to all other jurisdictions in 2009. The motorists argued they have the right as private citizens to pursue a claim against the state government to remedy an illegal act. The General Assembly took no action to bar such suits. The appellate court insisted the legislature only allows fighting a ticket in a lower court and that broader challenges taken to a circuit court are not allowed.

“Although appellants argue that it is impractical to bring an action challenging the propriety of a contingency fee in the district court, we see no other way to interpret the plain language of this provision — appellants are permitted to raise any defense in the district court regarding the legality of the citation,” Shirley M. Watts wrote. “Appellants, therefore, had the opportunity — which they failed to exercise –to challenge in the district court the speed citations they received, presenting the argument that the contracts between appellees and ACS were unlawful.”

Prince George’s County district court judges have already stated that they will not consider evidence that a driver is innocent of a speed camera accusation at trial. On September 4, 2008, Montgomery County changed the wording of its contract to state: “Contractor provides vehicles and equipment, but does not operate the speed monitoring system.” The appellate court accepted this as sufficient, even though there is no difference in the way the system is operated.

“We are aware of appellants’ insistence that the amendments to the contracts between appellees and ACS do not resolve the contention that ACS is an operator of the speed cameras,” Watts wrote. “We discern, however, no basis to look beyond the plain, unambiguous language of the contracts, which specifically provides that appellees and not ACS are operators of the speed cameras in Montgomery County.”

A copy of the decision is available in a 100k PDF file at the source link below.

Source:  Baker v. Montgomery County (Court of Appeals, State of Maryland, 10/27/2011)

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]

The Federal Highway Administration this week turned down the state of Georgia’s request to relax the occupancy requirement on the new Interstate 85 high occupancy toll lanes (HOT lanes) in Gwinett County. In October, the state imposed the toll on the existing carpool lane, raising the number of occupants qualifying for a free ride from two to three.

The initial $5.50 on top of the occupancy change proved too much and traffic ground to a halt in the general purpose lanes while the toll lanes remained relatively unused. In a panic, Governor Nathan Deal (R) moved on October 6 to slash the toll and request a waiver from the Federal Highway Administration to drop the occupancy requirement back down to two.

Groups opposed to the tolling are now redoubling their efforts to pressure state officials to cancel the project they see as an absolute failure. The Stolen Lanes coalition held a town hall meeting on Saturday featuring two state senators convinced that the tolls ought to be removed. The State Road and Toll Authority (SRTA), in a written response to a set of coalition questions, emphasized that the tolls are only meant to reduce congestion.

“The Express Lanes project was never intended to be a revenue generating system,” the agency’s letter stated. “Though we do not expect any excess revenue for several years, a final determination of the use of excess funds has not been made at this time. We are collectively working with other transportation agencies both at the state and federal level to determine how those funds would be utilized in the future, if and when excess revenues occur.”

Chris Haley, a co-founder of the Stolen Lanes group, insists the HOT lanes are making congestion worse, and not better, so the system ought to be scrapped entirely.

“In my opinion, a system to ‘collect money to pay for a system to collect money to pay for a system’ is clearly an example of government run amok,” Haley told TheNewspaper.

SRTA officials touted the issuance of 108,000 Peach Pass toll transponders as evidence that drivers are slowly embracing tolls and insisted that the HOT lanes need more time to prove themselves. Only 23,762 were used on I-85, and the number includes 6231 “toll-exempt” passes, 2761 passes for “emergency” vehicles, and 791 government passes.

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]

Prince George’s County, Maryland judges are tired of complaints that photo enforcement citations are inaccurate or otherwise invalid. To speed proceedings on “speed camera day” when automated citation cases are heard, at least one judge is cautioning motorists not to bother attempting to prove their innocence, regardless of the merit of their argument.

“This is a speed camera violation session,” District Judge Jean S. Baron said on November 9. “The only defense the court is going to accept is if you were not the driver of the vehicle and you have the name and the address of the person who was driving and you present that to the court under oath, I will accept that as a defense. Please don’t tell me that you know you couldn’t have been going that fast or there’s something wrong with the equipment.”

Will Foreman, owner of Eastover Auto Supply, has infuriated local prosecutors by offering a mathematical proof that his delivery vehicles were incorrectly accused of speeding. He used the photographs taken by the speed camera vendor Optotraffic to create a time-distance calculation showing his vehicles could not possibly have traveled at the velocity alleged. To counter this, Optotraffic press spokesman Mickey E. Shepherd, who is not a scientist, would present evidence at trial that the camera equipment verifies its own accuracy.

“There’s someone here from the jurisdiction who testifies that the equipment was calibrated and validated — or it is self-calibrating — then I’m not going to be able to accept that as a defense,” Judge Baron said. “Keep that in mind. Now if you want to accept responsibility and enter a guilty plea, I will take that into consideration and in all probability I will give you a probation before judgment and greatly reduce the fine. Now that’s up to you” (listen to the judge’s full statement).

Foreman’s concern about camera accuracy is echoed in correspondence between the town of Cheverly and Optotraffic. Cheverly this month stopped letting Optotraffic issue photo tickets and switched to Brekford, an upstart rival to the established players American Traffic Solutions (ATS) and Redflex Traffic Systems of Australia.

“Not only are the cameras still not functioning properly, they now are producing violations for invisible vehicles going 76 miles per hour and bicycles going 38 and 57 miles per hour and now violations with just a part of a vehicle in only one photo,” Town Administrator David Warrington wrote in a July 26 letter to Optotraffic. “Finally, we continue to get false speed readings for vehicles that have an irregular size such as buses and trucks with ladder racks. Rather than have meeting to have Mickey tell us ‘that it’s technical’ we would like you to have an explanation for the equipment problems provided to us in writing. I look forward to hearing from you in the next ten days.”

On September 23, Judge Gerard F. Devlin prohibited Foreman from introducing the letter as evidence. Judge Devlin then took matters a step further by jailing James Bradford, 71, for contempt for saying “I was not speeding” after Devlin told him to stop repeating an argument he rejected (listen to the exchange in court).

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]

Private citizens can arrest other motorists suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI), the Louisiana Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday. A three-judge panel considered the case of Tracy L. Common who was stopped in Westwego by Gretna Police Detective Brian Rico at 9pm on December 31, 2006. Rico was off-duty and outside his jurisdiction.

That night, Rico saw Common’s Chevy S-10 pickup truck swerving on the road and felt the driver was seriously impaired. He activated the lights on his unmarked car and conducted a stop without waiting for the local police to arrive. When Common hopped out of the car, Rico conducted a pat-down search which turned up 50 pills and $1100 in cash. A later search of his car by local police uncovered $2000 and some marijuana.

Though Rico was a police officer, the court assumed he was acting as an ordinary citizen, citing the 2008 appellate case Louisiana v. Lavergne which upheld a DUI traffic stop performed by a volunteer firefighter from Texas.

“Our brethren on the First Circuit held that the defendant’s erratic driving was sufficient to justify a stop for the felony offense of aggravated obstruction of a highway of commerce, which authorized a private citizen to make the arrest,” Judge Susan M. Chehardy wrote for the Fifth Circuit panel. “In this case, as in Lavergne, Detective Rico observed the defendant driving erratically when his vehicle swerved across three lanes of traffic on the Westbank Expressway and nearly collided with Detective Rico’s vehicle…. Here, as in Lavergne, we see no error in the finding that a private citizen who witnessed aggravated obstruction of a highway is authorized to arrest a defendant.”

State law allows private citizens to make arrests for felony offenses, and driving in a way that endangers human life qualifies under the highway obstruction statute. As a result of Rico’s search, Common was found to be in possession of MDMA or ecstasy, for which he was sentenced to seven years of hard labor. The sentence was later upgraded to ten years after the lower court learned it was Common’s fourth felony conviction. Common argued the evidence should be thrown out because it violated his constitutional rights. The court disagreed.

“Evidence seized pursuant to a search by a private citizen, acting in his capacity as a private citizen, is not excluded under the Fourth Amendment because the amendment only protects individuals against governmental intrusion,” Chehardy wrote. “Thus, the pills confiscated by the private citizen would not be excluded under the Fourth Amendment.”

The judges found procedural errors with the penalty imposed, so they ordered him resentenced. A copy of the decision is available in a 500k PDF file at the source link below.

Source:  Louisiana v. Common (Court of Appeals, State of Louisiana, 11/15/2011)

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]

In a decision with wide-ranging implications for people who might check their email on an iPhone while stopped at a traffic light, the California Court of Appeal ruled Monday that it was a crime to use a phone at any time behind the wheel of a stationary or moving vehicle.

Three days after Christmas in 2009, a motorcycle cop in Richmond pulled up to a red light and noticed Carl Nelson, driver of the stopped car next to him, appeared to be making a cell phone call. Nelson put down the phone as soon as he saw the officer. Nelson said he was just checking his email while waiting for the light to turn green. The Golden State banned the use of handheld cell phones while driving in July 2008.

“A person shall not drive a motor vehicle while using a wireless telephone unless that telephone is specifically designed and configured to allow hands-free listening and talking, and is used in that manner while driving,” the law states.

A subsequent update to the statute made it also illegal to read or write an email while driving. Nelson was fined $103, and he challenged the fine by arguing that he was not “driving” when he used the phone. He added that if the prosecutors were correct, drivers stuck in dead-stop traffic for hours behind a major accident would not be allowed to make a call while the road is cleared.

“One can [use] a cell phone while stopped at a red light (because it is safe to do so) without having used it while moving the vehicle to the red light and without using it when one resumes one’s voyage after the traffic light turns green,” Nelson argued. “Thus, the fact that one is using a cellular phone while stationary simply cannot give rise to a reasonable inference that one was using the phone before or after the period that one was stopped at a red light.”

The three-judge appellate panel was not persuaded. It argued that the word “drive” applies even when the vehicle is stopped at a traffic light, citing a number of cases interpreting search and seizure and drunk driving laws.

“Any mom or dad driving kids to school can expect to stop while parents in cars in front of them are unloading their kids,” Justice James A. Richman wrote in a concurring opinion. “A shopper driving to a store near Lake Merritt in Oakland may have to stop while a gaggle of geese crosses the street. A couple going for a Sunday drive in West Marin County may have to stop for a cattle crossing. And, of course, all of us are expected to stop for red lights, stop signs, crossing trains, and funeral processions. In short, all drivers may, and sometimes must, stop. But they do so while ‘driving.’ Just like defendant.”

The court majority went on to argue that allowing cell phone use in motionless vehicles would create a safety hazard.

“Were we to adopt defendant’s interpretation, we would open the door to millions of people across our state repeatedly picking up their phones and devices to place phone calls and check voicemail (or text-based messages) every day while driving whenever they are paused momentarily in traffic, their car in gear and held still only by their foot on the brake, however short the pause in the vehicle’s movement,” Justice James Lambden wrote. “This could include fleeting pauses in stop-and-go traffic, at traffic lights and stop signs, as pedestrians cross, as vehicles ahead navigate around a double-parked vehicle, and many other circumstances… Drivers paused in the midst of traffic moving all around them (behind them, in adjacent lanes, in the roadway in front of them) would likely create hazards to themselves and public safety by their distracted use of their hands on their phones and devices.”

A copy of the decision is available in a 220k PDF file at the source link below.

Source:  California v. Nelson (Court of Appeal, State of California, 11/14/2011)

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]

Although the city council in Redmond, Washington has decided to cancel its red light camera contract, the city continues to block the effort to let voters have a say in the decision. In court papers filed Monday, local activists cited election results in the cities of Bellingham, Longview and Monroe to convince King County Judge Laura C. Inveen to reconsider her October 11 ruling that it would be a “useless act” to put an advisory measure on the ballot.

“Under the local initiative process, the city clerk had a clear duty to transmit the petition to the county auditor,” Judge Inveen ruled. “That mandamus will not lie to compel the useless act of transmitting the initiative to the county auditor where the initiative is invalid according to the Court of Appeals’ recent decision, American Traffic Solutions v. Bellingham.”

On September 14, local activists Scott Harlan and Tim Eyman submitted petitions containing 6050 signatures calling for a vote on a red light camera and speed camera ban. Though the number of unverified signatures was more than sufficient, Redmond refused to transmit the petition to the county auditor for validation of the signatures, with Inveen’s approval. Daniel Quick, attorney for the initiative’s sponsors, argued that a refusal to process a petition violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution and Article I of the Washington State Constitution.

“Striking down the initiative at such an early stage infringes on the rights of the Redmond voters that signed petitions with the expectation that their voices would at least be heard,” Quick wrote. “If the initiative is validated, state law requires that the city adopt the initiative or put it on the ballot for a public vote. Regardless of what the city chooses to do with the initiative, the mere process of validation will spur further discussion and further debate on the issue.”

Inveen had cited Bellingham appellate ruling (view ruling) as her authority for calling the Redmond vote useless. However, the appeals court refused to block the vote (modified to an advisory measure) and two-thirds of the city rejected the use of automated ticketing machines.

“Even an initiative that has no legal effect retains political effects, making it a ‘useful,’ not a ‘useless,’ act,” Quick wrote. “The voters in Mukilteo were allowed to vote on ticketing cameras. The voters in Bellingham were allowed to vote on ticketing cameras. The voters in Longview were allowed to vote on ticketing cameras. The voters in Monroe were allowed to vote on ticketing cameras. Every initiative in every other city where sponsors submitted signatures, those signatures were counted and the initiative resulted in a public vote. In none of these cases did a court stop the people from having their signatures counted and having their voices heard.”

Initiative sponsors are worried that the longer signature verification is delayed, the more people who signed the petition will change their address. Beyond a certain point, the measure may not qualify simply because of intentional legal delays.

“This is the first initiative in Redmond’s city history,” Quick wrote. “If the city succeeds in stopping the initiative at such an early stage, it will deter future citizens from exercising their right to initiative, something that is supposedly guaranteed by Redmond’s city charter.”

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]

Though we owe Jalopnik a few well-deserved raspberries for this week’s inane tease-n-reveal of some wildly overhyped and under-delivering “renderings” of the 2014 C7 Corvette (look it up if you must), we’ve actually got to tip our hats to the Gawker site for finding a truly relevant petition at the White House website. The petition’s goal?

Stop using Homeland Security funds to seize imported vehicles, and change the DOT/EPA exemption to 15 years.

The Department of Homeland Security spends a shockingly disproportionate amount of its budget not on security initiatives, but on customs seizures. In particular, importers of grey-market vehicles have been targeted by monies taxpayers have intended to be used to secure our country against terrorism and terrorist activity. We call upon the Executive Branch to immediately cease this wasteful activity, and furthermore to change the DOT/EPA exemption time on grey-market vehicles from 25 years to 15 years (to match the vehicle regulations of Canada), recognizing that the 25-year rule was enacted due to support from special interests such as Mercedes Benz North America.

This is the kind of cause that we can absolutely get behind. In fact, if TTAC and Jalopnik combined can’t get under 22,000 readers to sign it… well, it will be Jalopnik’s fault. They’re a much bigger site. Seriously though, please sign this. There’s no guarantee that this will change anything, but as long as future generations can grow believing that they too might be able to someday import some awesomely clapped-out foreign jalopy that will demand all of their spare time and money just to stay running, well… the world just might become a better place.

Done signing the petition? Why not tell us what 15 year-old car you would import if you could?

Drivers cannot be pulled over if they peel out from an intersection with a bit of tire squeal, Alaska’s second-highest court ruled Thursday. In countries like Australia, a similar chirp of the tires could lead to the impounding of the vehicle under “anti-hoon” laws that generate millions in revenue. A three-judge panel in The Last Frontier was more forgiving when considering the fate of Vernon Burnett who was pulled over after midnight on September 20, 2009.

Alaska State Trooper Lucas Altepeter saw Burnett’s truck stop, then spin its tires one-third of the way through the intersection while turning left in the city of Bethel. Burnett made no driving errors, but Trooper Altepeter decided to stop him anyway, as he had “never seen somebody accidentally lose traction and spin their tires as fast and as far as this particular vehicle did.” The trooper believed he could write a citation for the tire spinning alone. A district court judge agreed, saying the the spinning was sufficient proof of negligent driving. The appellate court sided with Burnett.

“Under (state law), a person commits the offense of negligent driving if they drive in a manner that creates an unjustifiable risk of harm to a person or to property, and if their conduct actually endangers a person or property,” Judge David Mannheimer wrote for the court. “Altepeter did not assert that Burnett’s driving endangered Burnett or anyone else, or that Burnett’s driving put property at risk.”

Prosecutors countered that spinning tires represented a potential threat to everyone on the road, and that the trooper had reasonable suspicion to effect a traffic stop, or issue a safety warning to the driver. The three-judge panel found this line of argument unpersuasive.

“A person can not be convicted of negligent driving for creating a theoretical or speculative danger,” Mannheimer wrote. “The statute requires proof of actual endangerment.”

The appellate court also rejected the safety warning concept as there was no evidence Burnett was pulled over because he needed assistance or because intervention was needed to protect the public. The last ditch effort of prosecutors was the claim that a peel out gives rise to the reasonable suspicion that the driver is intoxicated. No testimony was given to back up this claim. Similar claims have also been rejected in cases before the New Hampshire Supreme Court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

“Because we conclude that the traffic stop of Burnett’s vehicle was unlawful, the evidence obtained as a result of this traffic stop must be suppressed,” Mannheimer concluded. “And because the primary evidence of Burnett’s impairment was obtained as a result of this traffic stop, Burnett’s conviction for driving under the influence is reversed.”

A copy of the decision is available in a 275k PDF file at the source link below.

Source:  Burnett v. Alaska (Court of Appeals, State of Alaska, 11/10/2011)

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]

The US Supreme Court ruled 27 years ago that police could not forcibly enter someone’s home over suspected drunk driving. The Fourth District US Court of Appeals in an unpublished decision is looking to change the precedent. A three-judge appellate panel considered the case of Alan J. Cilman who had filed a false arrest lawsuit after Officer M.A. Reeves busted down his door, without a warrant, on October 3, 2004.

Earlier that day, Cilman had left Neighbors Restaurant where he watched a football game and had dinner and drinks. Reeves claimed Cilman drove out of the Neighbors parking lot at a “high rate of speed.” Reeves followed, noting that Cilman had run a stop sign, failed to signal and accelerated quickly in turns. Accounts differ over whether Reeves turned on his police lights before Cilman made it to the driveway of his home, which was not far away. Reeves got out of his cruiser as Cilman was walking briskly to the door. Reeves told Cilman to stop, but he did not say the man was under arrest. Cilman told the officer to get off his property as he went inside and locked the door.

Reeves waited for backup, then kicked in Cilman’s door and arrested him for being drunk in public and evasion without force — not driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI). Prosecutors later dropped those charges. The US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia agreed that kicking in Cilman’s door without a warrant was a violation of the Fourth Amendment, but a jury awarded Cilman $0 in damages as compensation. Officer Reeves appealed the judge’s finding that he had violated the Constitution, because under state law he would be forced to resign if found guilty of a second constitutional violation.

In the 1984 US Supreme Court case Welsh v. Wisconsin, the high court ruled that “police may not make a warrantless entry into a home to make an arrest for DUI.” The US Court of Appeals panel ruled this precedent did not apply because Virginia imposes a higher fine and longer jail sentence than Wisconsin for DUI.

“No controlling Supreme Court or Fourth Circuit precedent speaks to a person’s right to be free from a warrantless entry into his home in circumstances like those in the case at hand,” the appellate judges ruled in a per curiam decision.

Cilman charged that Vienna’s police exhibited a pattern of Fourth Amendment violations, but the appellate panel dismissed this by calling the reports “isolated, unprecedented incidents.” The judges reversed every judgment in Cilman’s favor and ordered the case dismissed in its entirety.

A copy of the ruling is available in a 50k PDF file at the source link below.

Source:  Cilman v. Reeves (US Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit, 11/4/2011)

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]

When American cops drive around with expensive iron, they claim they impounded it from a drug dealer fair and square, and all is good.  For some odd reasons, China hasn’t come to the level of vehicular expropriation yet. Their police gets its car the old fashioned way: They buy it. Imagine the consternation of the people in the port city of Tianjin, when they spotted a new Mini Cooper in police livery.  That car is imported, and a basic version starts at around $45,000.

Carnewschina reports that angry citizens asked the police why a Mini Cooper when the standard issue Santana would have done nicely. The received the runaround first, then were told that the car was a “gift from the factory.” There is no Mini Cooper factory in China. In the meantime, the small car went viral in China.

Police in Fengchenggang tried to avoid similar run-ins with the citizenry, and stuck a Honda CR-V emblem on their Mercedes-Benz ML350. The Chinese know their cars, and that picture went viral also.

Automated ticketing vendor American Traffic Solutions (ATS) filed suit Tuesday against Knoxville, Tennessee for its failure to issue tickets for turning right on a red light — and that is costing the company a lot of money. A state law took effect in July banning the controversial turning tickets, but the Arizona-based firm contends the law should not apply to their legal agreement with the city, which anticipated the bulk of the money to come from this type of tickets.

Municipalities were disappointed in August when Attorney General Robert J. Cooper Jr shot down the argument that this statute somehow did not apply to existing contracts, writing that “the parties have no vested right in a particular level of revenue” (view opinion). ATS disagrees.

“Because of the uncertainty caused by the attorney general’s opinion, Knoxville has been compelled to cease issuing citations to the owners of vehicles detected making illegal ‘right turns on red’ by traffic cameras based on the attorney general’s opinion,” ATS attorney C. Crews Townsend wrote. “In 2010, right-turn-on-red violations accounted for substantial fines collected by Knoxville pursuant to their respective ordinances. A portion of these fines were remitted to ATS pursuant to the agreement. This was a critical component of the agreement’s consideration supporting the parties’ contractual rights and obligations.”

ATS bases its argument on the “legislative history” of the new law. Many friendly state lawmakers assured the company that a grandfather clause would be slipped into the bill. The final, adopted version contained no such language exempting existing photo enforcement programs from the law’s provisions. ATS insists the lack of this provision is hurting the company’s bottom line.

“Without a court order clarifying that Public Act 425 does not impact the agreement, the injury to ATS will remain significant, immediate and continuing,” Townsend wrote. “If, as the attorney general has opined, Public Act 425 applies to existing contracts, including the agreement, then Public Act 425 has substantially impaired the agreement. Indeed, Knoxville has ceased prosecuting certain violations as required under the otherwise existing, valid, and enforceable agreement, and is causing ATS to lose substantial revenue.”

ATS asked the Chancery Court for Knox County to declare the right turn law unconstitutional because it discriminates against traffic camera companies.

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]

Washington State ballot initiative guru Tim Eyman vowed Wednesday to put even more pressure on municipalities he sees as dependent on automated ticketing revenue. Eyman is feeling good after voters on Tuesday rejected cameras by comfortable margins in three of three contests on Tuesday. Larger jurisdictions are now in his sights.

“For us, it’s full steam ahead,” Eyman told TheNewspaper. “I’m gung-ho to do a couple more cities and keep the ball rolling. I’ve never found a more effective way to lobby the legislature than to say, ‘You either do it, or we’re just going to pick you off one city at a time.’”

Last year, 71 percent of voters in Mukilteo approved a measure outlawing cameras. On Tuesday, 65 percent of the voters in Bellingham, 65 percent in Monroe and 59 percent in Longview felt the same way. Local politicians in some jurisdictions are starting to realize the public is not on their side. Last week, Redmond’s city council voted 7-0 to allow its red light camera contract with American Traffic Solutions (ATS) to expire on January 31, 2012.

“Collision data indicate that the impact of traffic safety cameras on collisions in Redmond is inconclusive,” Police Chief Ron Gibson wrote in a memo to the city council.

Voters in Redmond had submitted a valid petition to order the issue placed on the ballot earlier this year, but ATS convinced a judge to block citizens from petitioning their government, even in an advisory-only vote. Lawsuits on the issue remain pending from the county court level all the way up to the state supreme court. The ongoing litigation is racking up substantial legal bills for the municipalities that decided to fight the citizens’ initiatives in court. In Longview, legal costs have nearly exhausted the city’s share of the profit generated by cameras.

“If I don’t get a Christmas card from Stoel Rives law firm, which is representing several of the cities, I’m going to be hurt,” Eyman said.

In most cases, efforts to block initiatives have backfired showing an unseemly coordination between the private vendors and municipalities. Groups like Campaign for Liberty, which co-sponsored the anti-camera initiatives, are using the votes to convince lawmakers in Olympia to repeal the authorization they gave to photo enforcement.

“There’s just no other way to uncover how sleazy the companies are and how unpopular the cameras are than doing these citizens’ initiatives,” Eyman said.

An ATS executive lost his job after he was caught acting as a “sock puppet” posting pro-camera comments on online forums as if he were a local resident. In Lynnwood, emails were released showing police officials sought to do favors for ATS in hopes of landing a lucrative job with the firm. City councilmen like Ted Heikel, the primary defender of cameras in Lynnwood, lost his seat Tuesday.

“If you’re a politician in bed with the red light camera companies, it’s bad for your political career,” Eyman said. “It’s making all the pro-camera politicians look bad.”

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]

Voters in eight cities in three states cast ballots Tuesday to decide whether red light cameras and speed cameras should be used in their communities. Seven of the races went against the use of photo ticketing.

The night’s first results came from Ashtabula, Ohio where 60 percent of residents approved an amendment to the city charter stating that the city “shall not use any traffic law photo-monitoring device” unless a police officer personally issues the citation.

“I feel that the citizens of Ashtabula stood up,” Mark Leatherman, chairman of the Citizens of Ashtabula Camera Committee told TheNewspaper. “We had the police chief attacking and fighting citizens on this issue on Facebook. We stuck to our guns to get this passed.”

Leatherman and fellow volunteers held twenty rallies in support of the ballot measure, ensuring that voters understood that a “yes” vote meant no more cameras. In Garfield Heights, officials were far more aggressive in pushing cameras. Voters in the city had struck down photo enforcement last year, but the city council proposed a charter amendment permitting photo monitoring devices “in school zones and/or park and recreation areas only.” This idea found even less support than the cameras received last year. Fifty-four percent opposed the school zone speed cameras.

Redflex Traffic Systems of Australia kicked in at least $108,000 to fund the Safe Roads Ohio front group to campaign for cameras in both Garfield Heights and South Euclid — the equivalent of $15 per vote. This compares to the unfunded effort in South Euclid to put a stop to the cameras, which won 55 percent of the vote.

In East Cleveland, local officials went to the most extreme lengths of any contest to date to badger voters into supporting cameras. Off-duty police officers, in uniform and with their police cruisers parked on the curb, were ordered to go door-to-door to convince residents to vote to return the cameras. Last month, Mayor Gary Norton mailed layoff notices to thirty-six cops and fourteen firefighters, claiming the city would have to fire them if it lost the photo ticketing revenue. The strong-arm tactics worked, as the city picked up 54 percent of the vote.

In Washington State, municipalities and vendors like American Traffic Solutions (ATS) turned to the courts in an attempt to keep anti-camera initiatives off the ballot. As a result, most of the measures appeared as “advisory” votes that allow the city council to make the final call on camera use. In Longview, 59 percent of voters approved Initiative Measure Number 1, which was submitted as a complete ban on cameras but was watered down into a requirement that camera use be subject to advisory votes. Residents split on two city-proposed measures that stated red light cameras and speed cameras would continue to be used until May 1, 2012. Voters also elected anti-camera initiative co-sponsor Mike Wallin to the city council over speed camera proponent Steve Moon.

“Local activists in cities throughout the state began asking us (me, Nick and Tiffany Sherwood of BanCams.com, and Alex Rion of Washington State Campaign for Liberty) to help them rid their communities of camera surveillance from those obnoxious ticketing cameras,” Washington initiative guru Tim Eyman said in a statement. “Across the political spectrum, the citizens are rebelling against the unholy alliance of government and corporations profiting off the citizens with their taxation-through-citation scheme. The legislature made a huge mistake when they allowed cities to get hooked on camera profits and to get in bed with sleazy red-light camera companies. Olympia better start cleaning up the mess or else the people are going to do it for them.”

In both Bellingham and Monroe, the votes were 65 percent against the use of cameras. Dayton, Texas voters rejected red light cameras by the largest margin of the night, 70 percent.

Automated ticketing has lost in 22 of 23 ballot contests. Last month, voters rejected cameras in Albuquerque, New Mexico. During the 2010 midterms, voters in Houston and Baytown, Texas as well as Garfield Heights, Ohio rejected red light cameras. The vote in Mukilteo, Washington was 70 percent against the cameras and 73 percent in Anaheim, California. In May 2010, 61 percent of Sykesville, Maryland voters overturned a speed camera ordinance. In 2009, eighty-six percent of Sulphur, Louisiana rejected speed cameras. The November elections included three votes: 72 percent said no in Chillicothe, Ohio; Heath, Ohio and College Station, Texas also rejected cameras. In 2008, residents in Cincinnati, Ohio rejected red light cameras. Seventy-six percent of Steubenville, Ohio voters rejected photo radar in 2006. In the mid-1990s, speed cameras lost by a two-to-one margin in Peoria, Arizona and Batavia, Illinois. In 1997, voters in Anchorage, Alaska banned cameras even after the local authorities had removed them. In 2003, 64 percent of voters in Arlington, Texas voted down “traffic management cameras” that opponents at the time said could be converted into ticketing cameras.

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]