This is Google's cache of http://ieweekly.com/2008/08/feature-stories/running-red-stacking-green/. It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on Aug 8, 2012 02:01:00 GMT. Running Red, Stacking Green 0 Posted August 14, 2008 Scott Bledsoe was driving west down Columbia Avenue in Riverside on a brisk Wednesday evening in April when he slowed to make a right turn onto Main Street. Bledsoe, a Florida native who has lived in the mountain community of Crestline for the last three years working as mortgage underwriter, failed to make a complete stop. A huge flash of light startled him as he turned. Bledsoe had just been popped by a Red Light Photo Enforcement camera; a picture of his license plate was recorded and sent to a database. Yet, though clearly caught red-handed by an electronic surveillance device, on July 16 it all went away in a flash. Bledsoe had his citation dismissed by a commissioner of Riverside Superior Court in Moreno Valley without incurring any punitive action whatsoever. How and why Bledsoe got the dismissal offers a peek into the troubled and murky waters that surround the controversial traffic citation programs that have been implemented in hundreds of cities across the United States, including several in the Inland Empire. Proponents staunchly maintain that the cameras provide a huge boost to law enforcement in their efforts to reduce automobile fatalities, while detractors say that technical and legal discrepancies make most citations issued unsupportable in court. And in the middle of this, a company based in Australia is making millions of dollars from the haphazard driving habits of Americans, even as they try to manipulate legislation to keep the profits flowing and crush their competition. The Red Light Photo Enforcement cameras have much in common with red flags. * In Crestline, the post office generally does not deliver mail to individual addresses, so residents use PO Boxes instead. This minor distinction proved to be a major factor in Bledsoe’s particular court case. When his citation was sent, the mailing address printed on the envelope was Bledsoe’s physical address, not his PO Box. Because of this, he never received the citation. Only when an alert postal employee observed another letter with the same residential—and thereby erroneous—address, did Bledsoe finally receive official word of his citation. The second letter was a courtesy letter issued by the court. At this point, Bledsoe decided to fight the ticket. “At first I tried to demur, to try to not plead guilty,” Bledsoe explained. When his motion to demur was denied Bledsoe entered a not guilty plea and received a trial date. At this point, Bledsoe utilized his mortgage underwriting experience, as well as several years as a legal assistant for a law firm, to pore over contracts and documents related to the case. He contacted the Riverside Public Works Department and under the California Public Works Act, asked for and received the Exclusive Agreement between the city and Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. for the city’s Photo Enforcement Program. In essence, he was looking at the contract between the city and the service provider as well as a booklet of Business Rules the company provides for the city. Upon further examination of the documents, Bledsoe found what he considered several items of interest that seemed to violate various California Vehicle Code sections. Bledsoe made a list of these things—ranging from Proof of Service to Operational Guidelines to something called “cost-neutrality”—and filed a motion to see if any of them might lead to a dismissal of his citation. Bledsoe eventually had his day in court, but not after he requested—and was granted—a new commissioner, Robert Nagby, to hear his case. Nagby gave Bledsoe the option of postponing the trial until Nagby had a chance to look over all of Bledsoe’s motions. Bledsoe decided not to delay the matter any further. Nagby concluded that the address mishap was in violation of Vehicle Code Section 40518 and dismissed the case for that reason. Nagby declined to rule on the rest of Bledsoe’s arguments, leaving many of his questions unanswered. * Red Light Photo Enforcement has been controversial since its inception. The basic tenet—that a piece of machinery can replace a physical body in issuing traffic citations—is abhorred by many who feel they have the right to at least contest a ticket before they sign it. And the legalities of outsourcing law enforcement to a private company has been repeatedly challenged in courts and forced state legislatures to write laws either making it easier or harder for these companies to operate. A website devoted exclusively to pointing out defects of the red light programs, www.higwayrobbery.net, offers numerous examples of how the tickets can be fought in court. Yellow-light intervals (the time it takes to go from yellow to red—what some motorists call “pink”), “churning” (a rolling right turn on a red light), and “snitch tickets” (in which the police department sends what looks like a citation in the mail in an attempt to find out the identity of a driver) are all hot-button issues on the website. So is something called “cost-neutrality.” In a cost-neutral contract, the service provider offers a fixed fee for each intersection installed with one of their cameras, though if the revenue for the month falls short of these fees, the city is only obligated to pay what revenue it has and can roll over the debt to the next month. If there’s more revenue generated the ensuing month, that money goes to service provider to relieve the debt. Critics, defense lawyers and some judges think this constitutes a “pay-per-ticket” scheme that is illegal in California. Cost-neutral contracts are a pricing strategy much favored by Redflex, the service provider which contracts with the city of Riverside. Highwayrobbery.net says that Redflex is also a big proponent of “churning” citations and “snitch tickets,” tactics that boost revenues. * It’s not like nobody saw all this coming. In 1998, in response to an epidemic of fatal crashes caused by red light runners, the University of South Florida examined the pros and cons of implementing photo enforcement programs. The study has proven unusually prescient. Among the potential advantages of the program were reductions in red light running and fatalities, bigger revenues, and increased safety. Amid the potential disadvantages were having to deal with legislative issues, complexities in choosing which intersections and camera vendors, time lags between infractions and citations, and the issue of citing the vehicle owner versus the vehicle driver at the time of the infraction. All of these disadvantages have wound up being argued in court. And in some parts of the country, the verdicts have not been kind to red light programs. Thenewspaper.com is a website that specializes in stories involving photo enforcement as well as speed camera enforcement programs. In recent weeks the site has reported on myriad court cases and initiatives across the country challenging the programs. In Indiana, the state Attorney General has declared red light cameras illegal. The state of Washington will put an initiative on the ballot in November establishing a Congestion Relief Fund, and revenue from red light tickets is one source of the fund. (The site says if the measure passes, the red light programs would likely be scuttled since a similar matter in North Carolina shut down many of its own red light programs.) In Ohio, an initiative banning red light programs outright in Cincinnati was ready to be placed on the ballot until a vote by the Cincinnati City Council against using surveillance systems rendered it unnecessary. In Iowa, the state Supreme Court is listening to arguments that contest the ability of municipalities to try criminal offenses in civil court, mirroring a similar ruling in Minnesota, which requires all traffic laws in the state to be uniform. Closer to home, two court rulings have provided mixed results. A decision in June by the 4th Appellate Appeals Court in California struck down several arguments for voiding red light programs, ruling that the programs are not speed traps, they do not violate privacy laws, and that since the legislature passed a law banning contingency fees, any such claims brought forth by the plaintiffs were no longer applicable. However, the appeals court did not rule on cost-neutrality. One court did, though. In January of 2007, an Orange County judge dismissed a citation, ruling that the city of Los Alamitos and its service provider’s contractual agreement—a deal with Redflex—violated Vehicle Code section 21455.5(g)(1) [as of 2013, 21455.5(h)], a code that was specifically written to prevent private companies from being paid per ticket. Judge Nelson Nagai ruled despite the fixed fee provisions, Redflex’s contract skirts the statutory requirements provided in the code. Nagai wrote, “by the contract’s express language, compensation can be 100% of the revenue generated” by red light citations and “embolden the supplier to store more data and develop broader criteria” for its client city’s consideration. This judgment is an important one because the same language can be found in Riverside’s contract with its service provider, the hugely successful Redflex. * Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. of Scottsdale, Arizona is a wholly owned subsidiary of Redflex Holdings Limited, an Australian company started in 1995. It has traded on the Australian Stock Exchange since 1997. From its humble beginnings as a research and development firm, Redflex has transformed itself into the unquestioned leader of the burgeoning United States Red Light Photo Enforcement movement, servicing close to 200 cities across the country. California is by far Redflex’s biggest market, with 68 client cities including several in the Inland Empire such as Riverside, Moreno Valley, Grand Terrace, Rancho Cucamonga, Upland and Highland. Redflex has experienced a financial windfall from its red light programs—or “solutions,” as they term it—so staggering that in 2007 they divested themselves of all their other subsidiaries to concentrate solely on photo surveillance . . . which includes the first speed camera programs in the United States. It’s easy to see why. According to a Financial Performance Summary for fiscal year 2006-07, Redflex saw a 41% increase in their traffic revenue from $31 million to $44 million, after they secured 59 new client cities. Clearly there’s big business in bad driving, and Redflex’s financial success is matched only by their aggressive marketing. In a January 2006 investor briefing, V.P. of Sales & Marketing Aaron Rosenberg detailed several “Market Drivers” essential to prolonged growth. Among them were Municipal Budget Deficits, Decreased Public Safety Funding, Increased Traffic Complaints, Increased Aggressive Driving and Sustained Population Growth. All of these Market Drivers seem particularly suited towards California. Rosenberg’s tactics proved so profitable that in July 2008 he was promoted to Executive V.P. of Business Development. Redflex is also acutely aware of the problems facing them in various state legislatures and how a negative ruling might hit them hard in the pocketbook. Flush with cash, Redflex has a pugnacious strategy whereby, according to their Financial Summary, “there has been a need for ongoing investment into legal and legislative activities during the financial year” and that aggressive competition necessitates the need for lobbyists “to assist in the sales effort and to provide input into legislative outcomes that could affect the photo enforcement business.” In other words, a foreign-based company is paying big money to ensure that the legislative climate across the United States is amenable to their profit-making cameras. Both Redflex and the city of Riverside are reluctant to speak of these issues, preferring not to comment on the cost-neutral aspects of the contracts, or how measures like those in Washington or Minnesota, if implemented in California, would put a red light on their own programs. Numerous phone messages were not returned at time of print. * In a recent Press-Enterprise story, Riverside Public Information Director Austin Carter praised the efforts of the city’s Red Light Enforcement program, citing statistics that show considerable improvement in traffic safety, that broadside accidents are way down in intersections where cameras have been installed and that despite losing money the first year, Riverside is on track to show a profit this year, even as the red light tickets themselves are diminishing. The minimum fine in Riverside County for running a red is $387. For someone like Scott Bledsoe, the troubling aspect is that cities are going way too far in their quest for public safety and stockpiling their coffers. “When we monitor people, when we are making money off people’s driving habits, this is not a good thing.”