Posted on 02/06/2002 1:21:34 AM PST by sarcasm
Two men have filed a class-action lawsuit seeking refunds of all fines paid under Denver's photo radar program to enforce speed limits. They contend that everyone who paid fines after getting photo radar tickets since the program began in 1998 should get their money back. With interest. They think there are more than 160,000 people who have paid photo radar fines. The plaintiffs, Dean Blanken of Lakewood and Thomas Godwin of Denver, also sued the private operators of the program under contract with the city, Lockheed Martin IMS and ACS State and Local Solutions. "The photo radar program under which Lockheed, ACS and the city have earned millions of dollars is illegal and in violation of (state law)," the lawsuit said. It follows a judge's ruling last month that the city's photo radar program was illegal. Denver County Court Judge Mary Celeste threw out four photo radar tickets. She said the program violated city law by delegating police powers to private photo-radar contractors, and violated state law because the city paid the contractors based on the number of tickets issued. Celeste's ruling didn't affect any other photo radar tickets. However, Denver officials, foreseeing a likely deluge of such rulings in the future, suspended the photo radar program for restructuring to make it legal. The class-action lawsuit, filed late Monday, contends the program is illegal for the same reasons Celeste found. People who got photo radar tickets cannot sign up to participate in the lawsuit at this stage. If the case goes forward as a class action, authorities will obtain the names of ticketed people from city records and contact them. City officials could not be reached for comment Tuesday on the lawsuit. Staffers in the city attorney's office said lawyers who could comment were away at meetings, and Andrew Hudson, spokesman for Mayor Wellington Webb, did not return a call. The lawsuit said Denver netted about $3,049,000 on photo radar in 2000 after paying the private operators about $3 million. This year, the program is budgeted to ticket about 14,000 people per month. Fines are capped by law at $40, but are doubled in school and construction zones.
February 6, 2002
I vaguely remember recently reading a story about how New York state's revenue from traffic tickets was way down due to redeployment of police to NYC after September 11th. I'd be very interested to see just what the traffic accident statistics were for that period when they were not writing tickets.
No more phone calls..................we have a winner.
No more phone calls..................we have a winner.
Exactly. I love how the officials always proclaim how suprised they were at the number of speeders. That sirs, is a classic indication of an artificially low speed limit, held down by the local revenue hounds!
I wanna see if I can beat my all time high of 59mph! It's awfully difficult to accelerate that quickly with this little 4-banger, and it will definitely need to be done on dry pavement for the best traction..... what's Don's max-out on that thing?
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