Red-light camera violations go unpunished Would cost $1,800 a year By Jennifer Muir Orange County Register February 10, 2008 Thousands of drivers who ignore their red light camera tickets are receiving an unusual gift from Orange County courts: Their cases disappear. No fine. No points on their driving records. Meanwhile, the drivers who face up to their mistake and respond to their tickets face a $346 fine, driving school and sometimes, a spike in their insurance rates. "It's not a real good message to get out there to the public," Superior Court CEO Alan Slater conceded in an interview. An Orange County Register investigation has found that police and court workers throughout Orange County rarely complete the time-consuming process required to punish red-light violators. Court records indicate that as many as 25,000 motorists have received a free pass since 2004, although records are so vague that calculating an exact number is impossible. Most police departments do not follow up on unpaid tickets, the Register found, and the court has failed to provide most departments with the information they need to do so. Some departments said they were unaware they needed to do any follow up work at all. As a result, cities have forfeited as much as $3.5 million since 2004, a Register analysis found. Because of the failure to follow up, taxpayers in some cities are subsidizing the cost of the red light cameras. When the cost of paying the camera vendors is subtracted from ticket revenue, Costa Mesa appears to have lost more than $250,000 for the year ending October 2007; Laguna Woods appears to be short $22,000. And those numbers don't include the cost of city personnel. Slater said the Register's questions have prompted the court to consider changing its policy to ensure that people who don't respond will be fined. But former grand jurors told The Register they raised similar issues in 2005. "They knew they had problems at the time," said Dave Kasabo, the grand juror who headed the 2005 red light camera investigation. "I was just shocked the courts and police departments were not really interested in making a profit." Members say they were blocked from including anything related to court procedures in their report because the Grand Jury doesn't have the legal authority to investigate Superior Court, which is a state agency. Still, the jury reported that some 33 percent of red light camera tickets were never paid and that "citations are not easily tracked to ensure collection or resolution." The report did not elaborate on what was causing the revenue shortfall or how the court's tracking system worked. Slater acknowledges that he discussed problems with the processing of red light camera tickets with grand jurors three years ago. Since then, he said, the court has focused on improving its overall case management and collections systems. "It's not our role to prosecute the case," Slater said. "I think the grand jury was addressing the fact that we weren't going to sit on cases for an unlimited amount of time. If the police departments weren't going to pursue them, we were going to purge them." He blames problems with red light camera processing on a new breed of traffic tickets with different rules than other citations. And he said that police agencies share blame because many have not wanted to track down the people who don't respond to the notice they receive in the mail. Seven Orange County cities use red light cameras at a total of 36 intersections. Santa Ana monitors more intersections and doles out the most red-light citations in the county, about 20,000 to 30,000 a year. Costa Mesa, Garden Grove and Fullerton have programs less than half that size. The other cities, Laguna Woods, San Juan Capistrano and Los Alamitos are smaller still. Huntington Beach is considering adding a red light camera program. Court officials said only one of the police departments – Fullerton Police -- regularly seeks out unresponsive motorists and takes the necessary steps to punish them. Police in San Juan, Laguna Woods and Costa Mesa told The Register they have been following up on cases and filing the required paperwork. But court officials characterize their participation as sporadic at best. Los Alamitos police said the court has never told them they needed to do anything more than they do now to make sure motorists are held accountable. "We didn't know there was a mechanism to follow up on the cases," Los Alamitos Police Chief Todd Mattern said. In December, after the Register began asking about the process, the court began providing all of the police departments with the information needed to track down the people who don't pay, Slater said. A TOUGHER APPROACH California hands out harsher penalties for running a red light and getting caught on camera because here, it's a moving violation. In most other states, the citation is an infraction tied to the vehicle; the owner is held responsible regardless of who was behind the wheel. Courts and police process the citations much like parking tickets. Those who don't pay face a fine and can't renew their car registration until they resolve the case with the court. In California, drivers caught running a red light on camera face higher fines, a point on their driving record and a possible increase in their insurance rates. "If you talk to anyone else in the country and you mention the fines here, they blow over backward," said Sarah Howie, of Nestor Traffic Systems, one of the two red light camera vendors with contracts in Orange County. "It's mainly because here, it's criminal." If motorists don't respond to the citation, California courts can tack on late fees. They also can pursue punishment through the Department of Motor Vehicles by temporarily suspending the motorist's driver's license, DMV spokesman Steven Haskins said. But proving exactly who was driving makes that process complicated. Here's how it works: A red light camera company hired by each city uses the license plate number on the car that ran the light to pull DMV records for the car's owner. A police officer reviews the photo or video to determine whether a crime occurred before the citation is sent to the car's owner and filed in court. Some courts, such as San Diego, require an additional step before an officer can file the case. Police must verify that the age and gender of the person ticketed is the same as the person caught running the red light. When there is no age or gender match in San Diego, police can either discard the ticket or investigate further to see if they can identify who was driving. Sometimes they'll compare the red light runner's photo with DMV photos of other people living in the same house, San Diego Police Sgt. Joe Bane said. "We don't send it to court unless you match the photo," Bane said. "They're very stringent in the courts as far as what can be filed." But in Orange County and several others jurisdictions across the state, the court doesn't require police to verify that the person in the photo is the person ticketed. The vehicle code doesn't require it, Slater says. Instead, the ticket packet mailed to each motorist includes a form asking the car's owner to identify the person who was driving. Giving up the real driver is not required by law, despite what the paperwork implies. The court expects that motorists will appear before a judge if they're not the person pictured. The judge can decide whether the person standing in the courtroom looks like the person in the photo. But thousands of people caught in Orange County don't respond to the citation and don't show up in court. And most of them get away with it. The Orange County court requires police to sign an affidavit swearing they did the comparison before a person can be sanctioned for not responding. Most police departments don't do that. Without the police affidavit, there's no conviction: Those cases don't go to collections and can't be sent to the DMV for driver's license restrictions. GOING TO COURT Malcolm McDonald, 59, already was having a bad day when he headed to Ganahl Lumber in Los Alamitos last August. He had planned to start construction on a client's deck in Long Beach that morning, but the supplies had been delivered to the wrong house. He was on his way to buy replacement lumber when the left-turn signal at Katella and Los Alamitos Boulevard changed to yellow. He followed the car in front of him through the intersection. It was impossible to stop safely, he says. McDonald doesn't dispute that he ran the red light – there was no question about it after he watched a video of his driving in court. But he didn't see any signs posted between where he exited the 605 freeway and the intersection. So he started researching whether he could beat the ticket. He read the vehicle code, researched the law during three trips to the Long Beach Public Library and spent six hours at the court. When his case was finally heard in West Court Jan. 22, Commissioner Kenneth Schwartz offered to reduce the fine if he pleaded guilty. McDonald refused. "I really did legitimately think I was right," he said. "There were certain things in place there that made me feel as though I was not guilty on a technicality." McDonald argued that the city didn't properly post signs to notify motorists of the cameras and that a private company was operating the photo enforcement system, which is against the law. A Los Alamitos Police officer showed Schwartz pictures of photo enforcement signs posted near the intersection and testified that an officer, not a private contractor, reviews the citation and makes a final decision about whether to file the ticket. Schwartz ruled in the officer's favor. When McDonald learned after his trial that others had ignored their ticket and escaped punishment, he was angry. "It's ridiculous," McDonald said. "If they're going to do this, they have to follow the rules just like we do. And if they don't, it's not right. People in authority tend to ignore that fact, unfortunately." TOO BUSY Police across the county say that red light cameras have reduced the number of accidents and increased traffic safety. They also credit the cameras with freeing up officers to enforce other laws and protecting them from the dangers that arise when chasing after motorists who run red lights. But until recently, few cities followed a process for holding ticket evaders accountable. Officer Gary Fratus helped launch Santa Ana's photo enforcement program in late 2002. In 2005, he worked with the courts to track down ticket evaders. The court periodically would send him a list of tickets that had been inactive for more than 60 days. He and other officers would perform photo comparisons for the people on the list and then file an affidavit in court when the photos matched. But just a few months later, the court stopped sending Santa Ana the list. Fratus believes a new employee took over red light camera cases and wasn't aware of the process. Fratus didn't request the list from the new employee. "We were just getting too busy and didn't have enough manpower," Fratus said. "It's not the court's fault … They rotate through people, and I don't think that they even know about their court policy." Slater tells a different story. He told the Register that Santa Ana, along with San Juan Capistrano and Laguna Woods, said they were not interested in receiving information to track down ticket evaders. The Orange County Register asked each police department to count the number of unpaid tickets sent to them by the court in 2006 and 2007. Only Fullerton was able to come up with the reports. Costa Mesa police say they regularly follow up on inactive tickets and that they did not have the lists because they have no need to keep them after using them. When Deputy Joe Cope took over running San Juan Capistrano's program in September, he obtained an old list of unresponsive citations from the court to learn how the process works. But he concedes the department hasn't been regularly following up on those cases. "Because of staffing, we don't sit and try to identify all those people," Cope said. "It's something we should do. We just don't have the manpower to do it." Lt. William Griffin, who has been chief of police services in Laguna Woods for nearly two years, says he's not aware of the department refusing lists from the court. A deputy does follow court procedure to track down people who don't pay, he says. But he couldn't quantify how frequently that happens. "We have a great relationship with the court," Griffin said. "If there's a misunderstanding, we need to discuss it." Los Alamitos' police chief said he never knew the court required additional paperwork at all. Garden Grove Police officer Tim Murray said his department didn't know there was a mechanism to hold motorists accountable until mid-2007, when he learned that departments in Northern California had been restricting people's driver's licenses when they didn't respond to their tickets. Since then, he said he has been working with the court to iron out the process for seeking and punishing ticket evaders. In the future, he said, people who don't respond to red light camera tickets in Garden Grove will be reported to the DMV. Fullerton is the only city that the court could confirm has been regularly pursuing people who evade red light camera tickets. The court flagged approximately 500 inactive citations for Fullerton in 2007. Of those, about 90 resulted in driver's license holds. FINDING A SOLUTION David Kasabo's manila file has been growing since his term on the 2005 grand jury ended. He's been collecting documents detailing photo enforcement problems ever since the court "stymied," in his words, the grand jury's attempt to identify procedural failures. "It was really difficult," Kasabo, 70, said. "I had no authority to talk to anyone." Kasabo was most concerned that cities were missing out on the revenue from unpaid tickets and that the court and police departments were doing little to recoup the cash. He also felt the courts should employ a private collections agency to pursue unpaid citations. The court handles its collections in-house. A portion of the 2005 report sought to quantify how much money cities were losing from unpaid citations. Kasabo calculated that about 33 percent of the tickets issued by the five cities included in the study slipped through the cracks. But that number includes citations where the drivers are found innocent and cases that are dismissed in addition to motorists who ignore them. Not much has changed since then. In the 12-month period ending October 2007, the cities collected on about 66 percent of citations issued, nearly $5.3 million. About 33 percent went uncollected for the same reasons, a Register analysis found. Records obtained from the court by The Register give a more accurate account of how much money cities could be losing because of ticket evaders. Under the court's policy, 9 percent of the citations filed between 2004 and 2006, or 15,985, have been or will be dismissed because the cases have been inactive for a year. If all of those citations were paid in full, the cities would collect another $2.2 million. Of course that's unlikely as some cases are dismissed and some fines are reduced. At the end of 2007, 9,779 citations were inactive. Court spokeswoman Carole Levitzky said that many of those cases remain open and eventually could be resolved. Slater admits he has known since the policy was created that some people are getting away with not paying red light camera tickets. Still, he said judges created the policy because they didn't think it was fair to sanction someone who might not have run the red light. "There was a lot of concern among the bench that to do otherwise might violate people's constitutional rights when they may not have been the person driving the car," Slater said. "It had to do with the fairness of having an outstanding violation on someone who might not be the violator." It wasn't until the beginning of this year, after the Orange County Register began asking about the process, that the court began sending every police agency a list of unresponsive motorists. "I felt if we were doing the reports, we ought to send them to everyone and let them make the decision," Slater said. The move has prompted Santa Ana to resume following up with inactive citations, Fratus said. And now the court's judicial council is reviewing their policy for red light camera cases. They are considering fining people who ignore their tickets regardless of whether police have confirmed the driver's identity. Court officials warn that they can retrieve inactive cases from their database and that a new court policy could call for old cases to face fines as well. Some of the police officials responsible for prosecuting the tickets also vowed to be more diligent. "I don't feel that people who accept their responsibility should (be punished), while others who don't want to should get away with it," said Garden Grove's Murray. "I don't think that's right." Contact the writer: 714-796-7813 or jmuir@ocregister.com Copyright 1999-2008, California Coastal Coalition Phone: (760) 944-3564