Dead Baltimore Cop Signed and 'Certified' Red Light Camera Tickets
from the zombie-tickets dept
Joseph was the first of a few of you to point us to the story of how the police in Baltimore have been sending out thousands of redlight camera tickets that were signed and certified by a police officer who died last fall. The law requires that each of the tickets be reviewed and certified by a human before being sent out. The fact that they were done so by someone who was deceased for many months would seem to suggest that no one was actually reviewing these tickets. The police department insists that it was just a "computer glitch," and that the tickets were reviewed and certified, but they seem to be saying "trust us." I would imagine that anyone who got one of these tickets is likely to be able to get out of it in court by pointing to the deceased officer's "certification."
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Filed Under: dead officer, redlight cameras, tickets
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Please...
Trust you? Absolutely not. After all, you're ZOMBIE COPS! You don't trust zombies, you place a bullet in their heads. I expect Woody Harrelson to show up shortly and take care of business....
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How? That's the grand scam. These people already paid up. It's not like they can escalate this to a higher court. It seems to me these tickets are being treated as tolls -- very expensive tolls. And sadly, people seem fine with it.
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Glitch
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Re: Glitch
I doubt the officer actually signs each one by hand. So likely it is "push this button to approve" and the ticket is issued. Officer dies, is replaced, nobody notices that they didn't update the name in the computer that is being applied to these tickets.
They may have been using the same login, and someone didn't change the user information, example.
There is plenty of ways and reasons for this to happen, none of which are nefarious or show that people aren't checking tickets. So the rest of the story is just sort of nothing. typical of Mike Masnick, focusing on a small technical error to throw out an entire system.
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The article seems to imply that an officer reviews the evidence and then gives the go ahead to the company which operates the red light system for the city, and that it was this company which failed to change the "signature" placed upon the corespondence. Why bother with the signature when it is fake?
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It isn't even clear if the "signature" was in fact a signature, a computer replica, or just the officers name in the box.
It really is just Mike jumping up and down in another dull anti-government rant.
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How is this not fraud?
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I guess they didn't fall for it...
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Re: I guess they didn't fall for it...
He told them he felt too good to work.
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How many less obvious tickets have gone through?
The only reason people noticed was because dead people don't certify tickets, or vote (obligatory Chicago reference not withstanding).
Personally, I think a complete audit of all the tickets needs to be done.
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Re: How many less obvious tickets have gone through?
Exactly. Someone is obviously impersonating an officer.
I am not familiar with the law in Maryland, but this should probably carry some sort of fine and/or jail time.
If Joe Citizen did the same thing, there'd be dire consequencies and he'd be told to "Get a lawyer and tell it to the judge."
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Failure like this should require an audit and re-certification.
Additionally, Citizens should be demanding their own independent audit of the records, down to paystubs of the "certifying authority"
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A Scam Coming Unglued.
That said, it seems quite likely that the Baltimore Police Department may be guilty of tens of thousands of counts of perjury or forgery, as the case may be. The implication is that the department handed out stacks of signed blank attestation forms for the commercial contractor to fill in. The commercial contractor didn't get the word that the officer in question had been killed, and went on using his name, just as they had been doing before his death. Obviously, to them, the officer in question was just a name on a piece of paper. It will probably emerge that someone at headquarters called the officer in a couple of years ago, and had him provide a dozen or so signatures to program an automatic check signing machine, or something like that. When they go through the documents the man is purported to have signed, he will probably prove to have been demonstrably elsewhere on many occasions, even before his death.
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Re: A Scam Coming Unglued.
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Re: A Scam Coming Unglued.
I'm sure that the documents and any supporting evidence will have been victim of a "computer glitch" also.
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New meaning for worked to death.
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The police..
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This is Baltimore
We don't wear shoes because they are comfortable here, we wear them to avoid picking up Syphilis.
A rare place, where crabs can both be eaten and inflicted.
we have dead cops writing tickets, and cars getting tickets when they were out of state.
We spend more money on a state dinners than we do on supporting victims of domestic Violence
and worse of all, we have the Orioles.
and a crime rate that makes most foreign wars look like kids play.
This is Baltimore
and I am not surprised.
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But if it was a citizen he would be already in jail.
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