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Wednesday, September 10, 2014

DC Inspector General Finds Motorists are "Guilty Until Proven Innocent"

The DC Inspector General released a scathing report on the Districts ATE (Automated Traffic Enforcement) system and parking ticket system, which concluded that tickets were being issued based on insufficient evidence and that motorists were essentially being presumed guilty.

The report showed that in FY13 DC issued 1,731,861 parking tickets producing $82,847,664 in revenue, and 666,275 ATE (Automated Traffic Enforcement, speed and red light camera) tickets in FY 2013 producing $88,832,976 in revenue.


"One of the most insightful and provocative comments made to the OIG team came from a senior District official:
“One of the beauties of parking, it’s like the [Internal Revenue Service]. If you get a parking ticket, you are guilty until you have proven yourself innocent.... That has worked well for us.”
The attitude behind this twist on accepted jurisprudence – that the burden of proof rests with the ticketed motorist – is also seen in a number of the key findings of this report:
• MPD’s issuance of tickets even in those instances when it cannot conclusively identify the speeding vehicle ;
• MPD’s issuance of tickets when vehicle information gleaned from violation images does not match registration information linked to the license plate;
• DPW’s issuance of parking tickets even when “required” photographic evidence is not available to motorists; and
• DDOT’s failure to require TCOs to capture images of violations"
More 

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Take it to math.

Do you have any idea how much lawyers charge? $175 an hour in most cases.

Since our local speed cams, which can easily be proven inaccurate by anyone with a tape measure, math skills, and the lack of evidence from the citation itself, we still need to fill in the blanks.

First, if you fought the ticket in court,the judge has to have an attorney in the courtroom from Baltimore, or the county of origin of the contract company, in the courtroom to prosecute you should you "take it to court".

Daily, there are twelve of you.There is no monetary reason on earth that the camera company can afford to have an attorney in the courtroom every f-ing day to try to prosecute 12 measly cases per day.

As a result, when you take them to court, you will be blessed with a judge who has no one to prosecute frivolous cases in front of him, therefore HATING speed cams, and gets you out of there in a half hour

So, take it to court, without charges!

Anonymous said...

In the Socialist Republic of Maryland I received some real sound advice from the Motor Vehicle Administration : If you registration plates ever get stolen without your knowledge report it immediately to the police.

Sounds simple enough except when you leave the State - Trade in your vehicle and acquire out of state tags and at the dealership your old MD tags are stolen.

Learned 11 years later the my old tags were stolen and used on a vehicle not mind had a red light ticket and unpaid insurance fees amounting to $1,000.00.

No matter how hard I tried to make the MVA understand - they were to dense to receive it and claimed I should have reported the tags stolen.

Thanks to Mike McDermott he was able to break through and create light in the eyes of someone at the MVA and finally I was vindicated, however after all his hard work the MVA still listed me at the wrong where I have not lived in over 31 years

Anonymous said...

What did you expect?..It's DC. District of Communism.

Anonymous said...

We serve our government.