Trigger-happy traffic camera to cost Los Angeles county $ 500,000

[MORTARDUDE]

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[MORTARDUDE]

Trigger-Happy Traffic Camera to Cost County $500,000

A judge orders refunds after a crusader against the red-light devices spots a timing error.


By Jean Guccione and Megan Garvey, Times Staff Writers


The complaints of a retiree infuriated last year when his picture was snapped by a red-light camera set in motion an unlikely chain of events that ended Thursday with Los Angeles County ordered to pay at least half a million dollars in traffic-ticket refunds.

And officials say they cannot even begin to guess the final price tag in the case of the missing half-second at an East Los Angeles intersection.

It all began in August 2000, when county officials placed cameras at the busy intersection of Whittier and Atlantic boulevards. The cameras ? among five groups installed at intersections in the county to photograph motorists running red lights ? were set to catch cars that entered the intersection more than three seconds after the signal turned yellow.

Enter the retiree, one of a small but devoted group of Americans who wage a campaign against red-light cameras. His anger over being ticketed at a Culver City intersection with such cameras last year prompted him to create a Web site devoted to the issue, http://www.highwayrobbery.net.

In March, he said, he received an e-mail from someone who had been ticketed at Whittier and Atlantic and had seen the Web site. The e-mail asked what the man knew about that intersection.

So he went to the scene, armed with a video camera. He taped the light and took the tape home for analysis ? a practice he said he has used at other intersections throughout the area in the last few months.

He thought he had proof that the yellow light didn't meet state standards for length.

He said he complained repeatedly to the California Highway Patrol. County Department of Public Works officials went to the intersection to check his claims. They discovered that the light stayed yellow for 3.5 seconds.

Because the camera started snapping after three seconds of yellow, more than half of the 5,063 tickets issued over the cameras' 42 months of operation were invalid ? the drivers had been "caught" while the light was still amber.

The whole mess has nothing to do with the complainer's own citation ? which he is battling on appeal in Los Angeles courts. The man, a retired car-parts manufacturer, responded by e-mail to The Times and provided his phone number on the condition that he not be named. His Web site is traceable only to a San Diego business address that has no listed phone number.

"I'm involved in a lot of other political issues," he said, adding that he didn't want to be distracted from myriad gadfly activities by losing his anonymity. He spends every Thursday at the Culver City traffic court monitoring cases in the jurisdiction where he was ticketed, he said.

His complaint led to more than 2,000 traffic convictions involving the Whittier and Atlantic intersection being vacated Thursday by a Los Angeles judge. An additional 758 pending cases were dismissed.

Superior Court Judge David Sotelo ordered the county to refund fines paid by 2,014 motorists ? a ticket that cost $271 before Jan. 1 and $321 since.

Unfairly convicted motorists may also be eligible to recoup costs for lost work time, increased insurance premiums and traffic school, said Miguel Santana, a spokesman for county Supervisor Gloria Molina, who represents the affected area.

Letters in English and Spanish will be sent to all affected drivers next week, and checks will automatically be issued as soon as possible, county officials said.

Opponents of the cameras said Thursday that the latest snafu should serve as a warning about the flaws of system billed as a safety tool by government officials but seen as simply a revenue generator by foes.

"Get rid of the darn things and have human beings issue tickets," said Los Angeles attorney Michael S. Klein. "You may not even know you got a ticket until it comes in the mail weeks later. At that point, there's no way to turn to witnesses and ask them if you really did run the red light."

County officials say no problems have been discovered at the other locations where cameras have been installed. The officials are working to resolve the fallout from the error, said Warren R. Wellen, senior deputy county counsel.

"This was human error," said Ken Pellman, spokesman for the Department of Public Works. "It was not a malfunction with the system."

CHP Commissioner D.O. "Spike" Helmick said his officers had stopped issuing tickets at Whittier and Atlantic until he could be assured that the equipment was working properly throughout Los Angeles County. The cameras are now back in use, he said.

Helmick blames the county for the blunder and said he demanded action: "I wanted those [fines] already paid to be refunded. And those not paid, to be dismissed."

Santana, Molina's spokesman, said their office was told that the timer was initially set wrong by a county worker but that the Dallas-based vendor, Affiliated Computer Services Inc., regularly tested the equipment, and "they gave us the OK."

Molina is asking for a report on the incident.

"It looks like the responsibility might be on both" the county and the company, Santana said. "If the vendor has a role in this, it's our intent to hold them accountable as well."

Janis Langley, a spokeswoman for Affiliated Computer, said her company is "collaborating with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works and the California Highway Patrol to rectify the situation." She declined to comment on the cause of the problem or financial responsibility and referred questions to the Public Works Department.

The company has a contract with the county worth $69,000 a month to operate the cameras. Before July 2002, Affiliated's contract provided it $35 per paid ticket in addition to a guaranteed $56,200 a month.

This is not the first controversy over red-light cameras.

In 2001, a San Diego judge threw out nearly 300 citations after ruling them inadmissible in court because Affiliated's contract paid the firm a fee for each ticket. That gave the company a conflict of interest, the judge ruled.

San Diego suspended the red-light camera program but recently reinstated it, according to Langley, who said the cameras should be back in operation in the next few weeks.

The latest snafu ? and the fact that only one person appears to have come forward to complain ? was no surprise to opponents of such cameras.

"Police, the government, the towns are all saying red-light cameras are infallible," said Eric Skrum of the National Motorists Assn., a drivers rights group. "Why is anyone going to take time off of work to fight a ticket everyone says there is no way to win?"

Skrum's group recommends that yellow lights last no less than four seconds at urban intersections. The association argues that engineering changes, such as increasing the length of yellow lights, provide far greater safety benefits than red-light cameras.

At the Skechers store near Atlantic and Whittier, clerk Sergio Rueda said he had wondered about the cameras but never heard complaints in the neighborhood. "A couple months ago, it seemed like the cameras went off all the time," he said. "Especially at night it would be: flash, flash, flash. It would light up the whole store."