Alabama Speed Trap Town's PD Called Out On Its Bullshit By Nearby Sheriff, Limps On Without Most Of Its Officers

from the please-let-the-door-hit-you-in-the-ass-repeatedly dept

No one cuts cops more slack than other cops. You really have to be an impressive kind of awful to lose the support of your Thin Blue Line brothers and sisters.

But the police department in Brookside, Alabama has managed to do exactly that. For years, no one had heard of or cared that the town of Brookside even existed… and that possibly includes a percentage of the town's 1,253 inhabitants.

That all changed when a new sheriff rolled into town, so to speak. It wasn't a sheriff (because the county already had one) but a new police chief, Mike Jones. Where town leaders may have seen nothing more than a vacancy in its two-employee department, Jones saw opportunity. He soon turned Brookside into Nottingham, Alabama, patrolling nearby highways to hit drivers passing by the small town with multiple fines and fees. Officers also engaged in unnecessary towing of vehicles over minor traffic violations, and apparently made up laws to justify stops, seizures, and traffic citations.

Chief Jones was hired in 2018. From 2018 to 2020, fines and fees from traffic citations rose 600%. This windfall went directly to expanding the revenue stream. Chief Jones hired seven more officers, obtained two drug dogs, one MRAP, and the disdain of nearby law enforcement officials. He also incurred the wrath of an untold number of Alabama residents, who were soon making trips to Brookside to attend once-a-month traffic court sessions -- sessions that resulted in Brookside officers being forced to route traffic and oversee parking for this monthly influx of out-of-towners.

The county sheriff had already received several complaints about the traffic enforcement extortion being performed by Brookside officers, who often operated in unmarked vehicles while wearing uniforms that gave no indication which law enforcement agency employed them. A nearby district attorney called the town a "black hole" where drivers are subjected to rights violations, harassment, and bogus citations.

National exposure caused this real life Boss Hogg to resign his position as police chief. And the Brookside PD is experiencing something most law enforcement agencies never do: criticism from their supposed brothers in arms.

As a local lawmaker held a second town hall to focus on policing in the tiny town of Brookside, the stories kept coming. Many told about being stranded on the side of the road. People spoke of stolen money, seized guns, towed cars and lost jobs. People shared stories of getting 11 or even 12 tickets in one traffic stop.

And the sheriff of Jefferson County, Mark Pettway, encouraged them to fight the charges in court.

“If you have a ticket and have not gone to court yet,” he told the crowd, “when you do go to court, plead not guilty.”

Again, he said, “When you go to court, plead not guilty.”

When other cops are telling civilians how to beat the rap, you know you've fucked up. The fact that "multiple state agencies" are now investigating the department is another clue.

It's not just cars Brookside cops were after. They'd take any property they could get their hands on.

One man, Jordan Cole, said Brookside was investigating his brother for car theft but ended up seizing his family’s home and arresting his elderly and disabled mother on a charge of hindering prosecution.

“They made us leave and we were told that if we step foot back on the property, we would be arrested,” Cole said. He said his family had to find somewhere else to live and ended up renting a run-down mobile home.

So far, the small town's governance has yet to turn on the PD. In fact, the town's officials have refused to step down, offering their far-from-tacit approval of the abuses that went on under Chief Jones. Not that their endorsement of the PD matters at this point. The exposure of the PD as a group of thieves and thugs wandering nearby roads has been enough to result in the resignation of most of the police force. Brookside will have to adjust to being just another insignificant dot on the road map, rather than an insatiable predator willing to convert residents of other towns into ATMs the PD's band of thieves could hit again and again.

Filed Under: alabama, brookside, speed trap

Ohio Appeals Court Says Speed Trap Town Must Pay Back $3 Million In Unconstitutional Speed Camera Tickets

from the hey-New-Miami,-your-rights-end-where-citizens'-rights-begin dept

Drivers sent tickets by New Miami, Ohio speed cameras will be getting a refund. The state appeals court has upheld the ruling handed down by the lower court last spring. At stake is $3 million in fines, illegally obtained by the town.

The Ohio Court of Appeals on Monday delivered a heavy blow to New Miami's attempt to block a court-ordered refund of $3,066,523 in speed camera citations. The village insisted that the lower court (view ruling) got it wrong and that the village should not be forced to pay back any amount on the grounds of sovereign immunity. Not so, said the unanimous three-judge panel.

"While it is true that New Miami has the authority to enforce its traffic laws, it must do so in a constitutional manner," Judge Michael E. Powell wrote for the appellate court. "New Miami does not have the authority to do so in an unconstitutional manner."

This is the end of six year legal battle over New Miami's speed cameras. The lower court had problems with the lack of options made available to ticket recipients to challenge speeding tickets. It also had problems with New Miami's cozy relationship with the speed camera company, which provided free cameras in exchange for a percentage of collected fines. This fostered an unhealthy relationship between the two, leading to the town becoming most famous for being a speed trap. The company saddled New Miami with a minimum of 100 operating hours per camera each month. This led to spike in tickets and a healthy thirst for continual cash infusions on the part of New Miami's governance.

The Appeals Court addresses New Miami's last-ditch attempt to salvage the $3 million it obtained unconstitutionally. The town tried to go the "sovereign immunity" route, claiming it could not be held responsible for monetary damages arising from a civil suit. The court explains handing out refunds isn't the same thing as issuing a check for monetary damages. From the order [PDF]:

[P]laintiffs are seeking the recovery of the specific amount of penalties they paid pursuant to the unconstitutional ordinance and that were therefore wrongfully collected by New Miami. That is, Plaintiffs are seeking the return of specific monies that had once been in their possession and so belonged to them "in good conscience," and thus have asserted a claim for the return of the very thing to which the class was allegedly entitled in the first place. Santos, 2004-Ohio-28 at ¶ 13-14. The action seeking restitution by Plaintiffs "is not a civil suit for money damages but rather an action to correct the unjust enrichment of" New Miami. Id. at ¶ 17. As the Ohio Supreme Court plainly held, "A suit that seeks the return of specific funds wrongfully collected or held by the state is brought in equity" and "is consequently not barred by sovereign immunity."

The government also tried to claim the speed camera funds were not unjustly obtained. It argued it had a legal right to impose fines for traffic violations. The court agrees the town can indeed do that, but points out it has to comply with the Constitution when it does.

New Miami claims that this is not a case where Plaintiffs are seeking reimbursement for services rendered or money "wrongfully collected." New Miami asserts that the penalties paid by Plaintiffs were not "wrongfully collected" because New Miami has the authority "to operate traffic programs and collect penalties for violation of traffic laws." Apparently, it is New Miami's contention that because it has legal authority to collect penalties for violation of its traffic laws, Plaintiffs' claim is necessarily for money damages based upon a denial of due process in the collection of those penalties. While it is true that New Miami has the authority to enforce its traffic laws, it must do so in a constitutional manner. New Miami does not have the authority to do so in an unconstitutional manner.

Hopefully, this will be the end of New Miami's run as "the little speed trap that could." It's been told otherwise -- twice. It can't. Not the way it's been doing things. If the town wants to assess fees for traffic violations, fine. But it has to provide an avenue for recipients to challenge tickets. Its cozy relationship with the camera company prevents that. And its contractual obligations pervert the incentives, moving it from public safety to generating revenue.

Filed Under: ohio, pay back, speed cameras, speed trap, unconstitutional

Court Orders Small Ohio Speed Trap Town To Refund $3 Million In Unconstitutional Speeding Tickets

from the brace-for-a-revenue-drought dept

The state of Ohio has had its problems with speed cameras. Back in 2010, the city of New Garfield refunded $100,000 in fines collected in violation of its speed camera policy. The city told the public that drivers would only be ticketed for driving more than eleven mph over the speed limit [... which makes one question the purpose of its speed limits]. Plenty of drivers got dinged for exceeding the speed limit by less than the arbitrary cutoff, resulting in the mass refund.

Not that this will necessarily keep anyone from being ticketed, speeding or not. In the same year, an Ohio court ruled that an officer's guesstimate of someone's speed is just as reliable as radar or speed cameras when it comes to testimony. Given how many speed cameras have ticketed parked cars and brick walls, this is somewhat of a "close case" when it comes to testimonial accuracy.

The Newspaper -- which stays on top of every speed/traffic cam-related development [note: they really HATE traffic cams in France…] -- reports that New Miami, Ohio, is being forced to hand back every cent of its speed camera take as the result of a court decision.

New Miami, Ohio broke the law, it was caught, and now it will have to repay $3,066,523 worth of tickets. That was the judgment rendered Wednesday by Butler County Court of Common Pleas Judge Michael A. Oster Jr.

"If the government has created an unconstitutional law/ordinance that has taken people's money without affording them the necessary due process protections, should not justice demand, and the law require, restitution of that money to the people?" Oster asked at the opening of his ruling. "Once the complexities of the law are analyzed, the answer is simple: Yes."

As the court sees it, the system set up by the town eliminates a crucial Constitutional right. It's very likely the town knew its actions were unconstitutional, but it probably never assumed it would have to refund $3 million in ill-gotten revenue.

New Miami, Ohio, is more speed trap than town, as the court order [PDF] explains:

The Village of New Miami is in St. Clair Township located just north of the city of Hamilton. New Miami is less than one square mile in size (.95 square miles) and has a population of 2,249 people based on the 2010 United States Census Bureau. US. 127, a major north-south highway, runs through the Village and is the primary location where the speed cameras were located.

Despite its blink-and-you'll-miss-it size, the village still issued an incredible amount of tickets, thanks in part to its freebie contract with camera provider Blue Line Solutions (BLS). The contract it signed required the cameras (of which there were at least two) to be in operation for a minimum of 100 hours a month. This isn't unmanned time, as the camera system requires an officer to pull a trigger and capture an image of the speeding driver to send to the processing company that issues the tickets.

BLS gave the town the cameras for free, under the assumption the investment would pay off with operating times of 100 hours per month minimum per camera.

After review by a Village of New Miami police supervisor, the ticket is mailed to the registered owner and a fine of $95 is included.

The village and Blue Line Solutions, LLC split each $95 fine with one another. The village keeps 65 percent of the $95 fine while the private camera company keeps 35 percent.

The speed cameras as free for the village, provided to the village by the private contractor under the five year deal.

To ensure the revenue flow wasn't disrupted by angry drivers and/or insurance companies, the town rewrote its statutes to cut both the criminal justice system and insurance companies out of the equation.

Village of New Miami records show the small Butler County village created its own speeding law in 1991, allowing the village to charge speeding violations under a civil ordinance instead of under the state’s uniform traffic statute.

Under the village ordinance, drivers caught speeding in New Miami would not be subjected to the state’s point system, which would suspend a driver who accrued 12 point violations in a two year period. As a result, insurance companies would not know the conduct of the drivers they cover.

None of that matters now that the court has found the village's system unconstitutional and the town responsible for paying back members of this class action lawsuit. And this $3 million will all be coming from New Miami. The camera manufacturer has no liability if the cameras are deployed unlawfully. That's all on the municipality, which will probably have to screw its own residents to issue refunds on the hundreds of bogus tickets as the money it's unlawfully collected over the years hasn't just been sitting around collecting interest.

Filed Under: new garfield, new miami, ohio, refunds, speed cameras, speed trap, tickets
Companies: blue line solutions

Dept. Of Law Enforcement Investigates Notorious 'Speed Trap' Town Whose Seven Officers Wrote Up More Than 11,000 Tickets Last Year

from the two-mile-stretch-of-highway-no-longer-expected-to-'make-it-rain' dept

Law enforcement should not be viewed as a revenue generator. If a local police force is naturally self-sustaining, great. But if anyone starts thinking money first, all sorts of problems develop and the public becomes nothing more than wealth in search of extraction. Asset forfeiture is the most common abuse. People with too much cash in their possession will find it removed. If a cop (or a dog) thinks he smells drugs, vehicles are seized, bank accounts are frozen and homes go on the auction block.

This lower level perversion of this turns small towns with plenty of through traffic into Nottingham Forest, only with the local PD stealing from everybody and keeping it. Waldo, FL, a town of 1,000 that stretches along two miles of Highway 301, has the following for speed limits:

A small segment of highway that runs through Waldo requires drivers to speed up and slow down six times: 65 mph becomes 55 mph; 55 becomes 45; then goes back to 55; then back down to 45; to 55 again and eventually, 35 mph.

AAA itself has called out the town for its ridiculous speed limit changes and has even posted a billboard outside the town limits to warn drivers. Now, the state has stepped in to take control of Waldo's traffic enforcement.

The situation simmered for years until this month, when Police Chief Mike Szabo was suspended on 12 August, apparently in response to an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement into suspected improprieties in the way officers write tickets.

Mike Szabo, who exited with allegations of demanding officers to write 12 tickets per shift, was replaced by Corporal Kenneth Smith. Smith, however, wasn't a capable replacement.

The officers also leveled allegations at the 26 August meeting against Cpl Kenneth Smith, who had been picked to fill in for Szabo. The officers complained that Smith had, among other things, mishandled evidence. The city council then suspended Smith.

The town appears to be finally righting years of wrongs, but only because the state is now involved. During the last several years when the police were contributing nearly half of the city's $1 million budget through traffic enforcement, no one seemed to be making much noise. And the amount of tickets issued to keep the city half-afloat borders on inconceivable.

In 2013, Waldo’s seven police officers filed 11,603 traffic citations, according to records obtained by the Gainesville Sun newspaper. That compares with 25,461 citations in 2013 for much larger Gainesville, which has 300 officers and 128,000 residents…

That's not law enforcement. That's just a scam wearing a uniform. Six speed limit changes in two miles is ridiculous under any circumstances, but even more so when the fluctuations are clearly there to trap anyone who misses a single sign. The state Dept. of Transportation actually sets speed limits but notes that those responsible considered input from Waldo's PD when putting these into force. According to a somewhat defensive statement from the Florida DOT, foot traffic to schools and a popular flea market justified the speed limit fluctuations. "But it's up to [Waldo] to enforce the speed limits" lobs the ball back into the Waldo PD's court, but it's barely enough to clear the net. Yes, Waldo could issue more warnings or turn the run through town to a straight 35 mph, but it's had no reason to do so until now, after years and years and hundreds of thousands of tickets.

It's not clear how the town will make up this revenue "shortfall" in the future, but judging from the brief glimpses and curt "no comments" issued, it's none too happy. Whatever pain this causes for it in the future, it's earned. The city was perfectly fine with turning drivers into compelled donors for years. Now, it's going to need to get by on half the budget and let its police officers return to being police officers rather than a revenue stream.

Filed Under: florida, kenneth smith, law enforcement, mike szabo, police, speed trap, waldo

Police Banned From Enforcing Traffic Laws In Oklahoma Town Over Abuse Of Traffic Tickets For Money

from the Radar-Gun-once-again-selected-as-Officer-of-the-Year! dept

When police departments begin viewing themselves as revenue generating entities rather than law enforcement entities, it has a deleterious effect on the public, which is now viewed as potential income, rather than citizens. If the incentives become perverted, the department will as well. Everything from "booking fees" to forfeiture laws are prone to abuse, especially when the municipality becomes just as addicted to the cash flow.

An Oklahoma town with the population of 410 is in the news precisely because of this abuse. It seems the Oklahoma Dept. of Public Safety (DPS) isn't happy with the outsized cash haul a single police department has raked in over the past few years.

The Oklahoma Department of Public Safety announced Jan. 13 that Stringtown's police department no longer would be allowed to enforce traffic laws on state and federal highways that run through the town.

After an investigation -- which had been requested by the state attorney general's office -- it was determined that Stringtown generated too much revenue through police-related activities.

State law prohibits cities and towns from generating more than half of their revenue through the collection of traffic fine payments.

According to the most recent audit of Stringtown's finances, the town generated $483,646 in fines during fiscal year 2013. That figure represents 76 percent of all Springtown revenue.

The year before, traffic fines accounted for about the same amount of cash, or 73 percent of all revenue in fiscal year 2012.

Springtown's reputation precedes it. A town that would barely register on a map is one of Oklahoma's most notorious speed traps. And this recent smackdown by the DPS is one of several.

In the mid-2000s, Stringtown police officers were stripped of their authority to write tickets along U.S. 69, causing the department to effectively shut down. Several other towns, including Big Cabin, also had action taken against them around the same time.

It was investigated in the late 1990s, with the end result being an increase in the town's speed limit in order to better match the surrounding areas. A former Transportation Dept. spokesman also said the town's PD had been investigated in the 1980s for the same reason.

So, why can't the Springtown Stringtown PD be taught? Well, it's because the town itself has come to rely on the influx of income its police department provides. But rather than limit itself to a reasonable amount of money and living within the sort of means most towns with a population of 400 would, Springtown Stringtown began viewing law enforcement as a growth industry.

In the early 1980s, Stringtown had just three full-time city employees. After the end of the decade -- six years after Stringtown officials decided to process their own speeding tickets -- the town employed 20 full-time workers, six of them full-time police officers.

The money from speeding tickets also built a new city hall and police station, something that's definitely a luxury for a town that would otherwise be fortunate to bankroll two full-time police officers.

The citizens of Stringtown seem to have bought into the city's delusion that it "needs" 20 employees and six cops.

OHP Captain Jeff Sewell says that's a problem for small towns, like Stringtown, with a population of 410.

"They have no other means for revenue. They had a store there, the store shut down. They had an eating place, it shut down. So they really don't have a place. Nobody puts any businesses up there," Sewell said.

But there is one corner store where employees are concerned about the lack of law enforcement.

"You know, people breaking in, you know, breaking stuff, stealing stuff," store employee Cindy Smith said.

The town is mostly dead and yet, the PD's supporters somehow think a super-prolific speed trap is the proper way to revive it. Smith's worry about people "breaking in" to the one store still alive in town seems misplaced. If the PD's ticket revenue is to be believed, everyone was passing through Springtown Stringtown too quickly to be bothered to pull a smash and grab at what seems to be one of the only surviving businesses in the city limits.

Stringtown has been relying on its police force to balance the town's books for more than 30 years now, despite being forced to go "cold turkey" multiple times. The DPS may have cut off its supply again, but history has proven the town has run out of revenue generation ideas that don't involve a 6-person PD -- stationed in a town of 410 -- ticketing as many drivers as possible.

Filed Under: department of public safety, oklahoma, speed trap, stringtown, traffic

DC Police Chief Says It's 'Cowardly' To Monitor Speed Traps With Your iPhone

from the real-men-prefer-ignorance dept

Jeff Nolan points us to the news that Washington DC's police chief is denouncing users of an iPhone app to monitor speed traps/speed cameras/red light cameras as being "cowardly." Apparently, real men prefer ignorance about where the police are hiding to give them tickets for driving a couple miles per hour over the speed limit. The app actually sounds pretty useful, alerting users if they're near one of the cameras or a known speed trap. The creator of the software makes the most salient point:

"If police come against us, it's going to make them look like they are only [after] revenue"

Indeed. Shouldn't the police be happy that a software product is helping people slow down or avoid running red lights? How could that possibly be seen as a bad thing... or "cowardly"?

Filed Under: cowardly, dc, iphone, redlight cameras, speed cameras, speed trap, speeding