California Activists Harassed Twice While Protesting Red-Light Cameras

February 21, 2011 @ 4:32PM

California Activists Harassed Twice While Protesting Red-Light Cameras

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The red light cameras that are sweeping cities across the country are pretty much scams because the companies who sell them end up splitting the fines with the municipalities.

It’s really nothing but a shakedown between a private corporation and a government entity.

And sadly, most of us believe there’s nothing we can do about it.

However, one Photography is Not a Crime reader living in California has been doing his best to inform people that they do not have to pay these fines.

And naturally, he’s been harassed by police for doing so, including two occasions where he was ordered to stop videotaping (more on that later).

“These are not really tickets,” said Benjamin Bartholomew, who lives in Northern California. “They are ‘notice of traffic violations’.

“You don’t really have to pay it. You can just ignore it and they can’t do anything about it.”

Bartholomew refers to a website called Highway Robbery that goes into more detail in how citizens can protect themselves from these scams.

Essentially, if the notice of violation you receive does not contain the address of local courthouse on it, then it’s not a real ticket, according to the site.

I wish I would have known this last October when I received one of these notices because I surely would not have paid it.

But I did pay the $158 fine (plus a $4 “convenience fee”) because they sent me a photo with my car clearly running the red light. The license plate was visible, but not the driver.

However, the notice states the following:

“If you assert that the vehicle was in the care, custody or control of another person, you must provide the name, address, date of birth, and if known, the driver’s license number of the person who leased, rented or otherwise had care, custody or control of the vehicle at the time of violation.”

“We know people who have gotten them and they just throw them away and years go by and nothing happens to them,” Bartholomew said.

Intrigued, I dug up the notice of violation I received last year and sure enough, it specifically stated: “do not send payment or affidavit to the Clerk of the Court. Payment or affidavit must be sent directly to the City of Coral Gables.”

However, the address listed for the City of Coral Gables is a P.O. Box in Tempe, Arizona - about 2,400 miles away from Coral Gables City Hall.

It turns out the main company that makes these machines, Redflex Traffic Systems, is based in Arizona, although it is not clear if they are the ones contracted with the City of Coral Gables.

I was still a little skeptical about just being able to ignore these notices and have them go away, so I contacted one of my attorneys, Arnold Trevilla, who specializes in DUIs and criminal law.

He said the notices are more like parking tickets than moving violations, which is how they can get around having the cop not making you sign the ticket.

“You may not have parked illegally but if you don’t pay it, your car is going to get a boot on it,” he said.

He said that ignoring the notice of violations would result in your license tag getting suspended. And if you decide to fight them, they turn into moving violations.

He said it’s cheaper to just pay them and acknowledges they’re just money-makers for the cities.

However, a recent South Florida Sun-Sentinel article states that the red-light cameras are not generating the millions the municipalities hoped they would and that the state legislature might just pull the plug on them.

I find that doubtful, but we’ll see.

Meanwhile in Baltimore, a news station discovered that 2,000 red light camera citations were signed by an officer who had been dead. The signatures were supposed to confirm that the photos were reviewed by an officer to determine that a violation did occur.

And in Tennessee, almost 200 citations were refunded when it was proven that the timing of the traffic light was off. The light would remain yellow for three seconds instead of the required four.

Anyway, back to Bartholomew.

A few weeks ago in Rocklin, California, he and his brother were standing on a street corner protesting these cameras. They were wearing Guy Fawkes masks and holding up signs.

“It was purely for political theater,” he said. “We walked to where the Redflex camera was and just stood underneath it. We weren’t jumping or yelling.”

After a few minutes, a man dressed in street clothes started yelling at them from the other side of a fence. Bartholomew and his brother walked over to him and met the man at a break in the fence.

The man never identified himself as a police officer, but ended up pulling their cell phones from their hands and patting them down for weapons.

They didn’t get video of the incident, but they did get audio, which can be heard here.

The unidentified man then berates them for wearing masks in front of a bank.

Bartholomew said the bank was on the other side of the fence and he had no idea it was there, but the brother removed their masks anyway to show they meant no harm.

The man then told him he confiscated their cell phones because they could have been guns.

“I should have insisted on getting his name and badge number, but I didn’t,” he said.

Bartholomew later reported the incident to the Rocklin Police Department, who said that was the first they heard of the incident.

In a prior incident, Bartholomew had an altercation with a uniformed officer from Marysville who lied to him on two occasions.

Here is how Bartholomew describes the lies on Youtube:

Cpl. Christopher Miller tells two clear and definitive lies in an attempt to gain what he wants, control and compliance.

The first lie is made around the 2:00 mark when he says that Fire Fighters get a special permit in order to walk into the street during their "Fill The Boot" fund raising, something that clearly causes danger to motorist. According to the local Governments of Marysville and Yuba City California, no such permit exists.

The second lie is made at the end of the video 3:45 mark when he tell us it is a lawful order to tell us to stop filming him. I comply with this lie only because I know I had an audio recording on a laniard still going and news reporters standing less then 20 feet away there, hopefully preventing them from using violence against us.

That video is below. And here is an article about their protests that made it in the Appeal-Democrat, their local newspaper.

Comments

Zhaliberty

1 year ago

Bartholomew needs to send you a copy of his Notice of Traffic Violation. It never even asks for money. Money is never even mentioned. Just asks you to implicate yourself or someone else. I believe after they get this signed affidavit, they then issue the "ticket" or actual citation.

Bergman

1 year ago

If that is the actual wording, then signing it is self-incrimination. Self-incrimination cannot be compelled due to the fifth amendment, and refusal to self-incriminate is never valid evidence of a crime, nor can it generate (by itself) reasonable suspicion or probable cause of a crime.

If the actual wording amounts to a signature being self-incrimination, then there cannot be any legal penalty for not signing.

Guy Fawkes

1 year ago

Hopefully if something similar happens again they will first demand a badge number and ID, and if refused such refuse all cooperation, and even phone the cops if the individual harassing them becomes belligerent. Anyone can claim to be a cop, and even if that douche WAS a real cop they now have no recourse for complaint as he provided them with no ID. Of course "Am I being detained", and "I do not consent to a search" are also phrases they need to learn by rote.

Michael Kerney

1 year ago

Any fool can claim to be a cop. Too much of that going around lately.

Shorting the yellow light timing not only lets the business boost their profits (not that there's a conflict of interest in the private company profiting from more citations being issued, oh no) but also tends to increase rear-end accidents at those intersections - decreasing safety, for profit.

Jon Quimbly

1 year ago

"The first lie ... The second lie ... "

All cops lie, period. The Supremes granted cops a waiver so that they can gain compliance and confessions from unwilling subjects. It's legalized coercion, plain and simple.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2842/what-can-the-police-lie-ab...

Richard Keech

1 year ago

That "unidentified cop" sounds suspiciously like a scam that I've seen here in London where a person either claims to be a cop or simply acts convincingly enough like one for the "mark" to think that they are. The "cop" then confiscates property of some sort, phones, recent purchases, sometimes even house or car keys gaining their address at the same time for "the records" and then disappears selling the goods later or going straight to the marks house and burgularing it while they know the person is occupied with whatever story they spun. When reported to the real police, they (the real cops) often know nothing about it or have just heard about several similar circumstances in the same vicinity

I'd say that the first "cop" was simply an opportunistic theif

Check the program "The Real Hustle" they did this scam once

benjamin bartholomew

1 year ago

Our phones were returned to us and our best guess is that the gentlemen was a rentacop working for the bank.

Bergman

1 year ago

Private security can't legally confiscate anything. If they try, it falls under the same laws as any other mugging.

AaronM

1 year ago

"The man never identified himself as a police officer, but ended up pulling their cell phones from their hands and patting them down for weapons."

I hate to say it, but I suspect the brothers Bartholomew were taken by a quick-thinking crook who played them for fools. It's important that when someone confronts you, claiming to be an authority figure, that you keep your wits about you well enough to understand when something doesn't seem right, and not let "the man is keeping me down" get in the way of clear thought.

benjamin bartholomew

1 year ago

Our phones were returned to us and our best guess is that the gentlemen was a rentacop working for the bank.

AaronM

1 year ago

The bank won't 'fess up to sending him out to give you a hard time, huh? Well, at least you got your telephones back. Glad that you weren't fleeced.

Sutherlands

1 year ago

Here in Arizona, we had speed enforcement cameras on the highway, and you COULD simply ignore them. The law here requires them to be delivered by a person. If you don't sign the ticket (admitting guilt, or that you would at least show up in court) they would send a process server to your house. If you manage to ignore that person until 4 months after you got the notice, it becomes invalid, and I've never heard of them re-issueing a ticket just to try and deliver it again.

Demon93

1 year ago

Here in California they send out two types of notices, not just the one mentioned in this article and the one only mentioned by the Bartholomew brothers. One says Notice of Traffic Violation at the top. It's because they got a clear picture and video of the license plate, but not the driver. Those you can ignore. The other says Notice of Traffic Citation. They have a clear picture and video of both the license plate and the driver and have compared it to a DMV photo. You are busted. Throw this one out and good luck registering your car. It may not catch up to you the first time your registration is due, but it will the next time. There is no law in California saying that a ticket has to be mailed registered mail either. They only have to prove they mailed it to your home of record listed in the DMV. It's your responsibility to update a change of address with the DMV when you move.

benjamin bartholomew

1 year ago

Here is a copy of the type of notices we are talking about.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=42674&id=183106261712547

John Boanerges

1 year ago

Perfect solution is to not register (donate) your vehicle with (to) the state in the first place. When they photo my rear end, as they do every time I go through the EZPass on theft highways, who are they going to send the notice to? Yep, not once in hundreds of occasions have I gotten any such. I like to think that somewhere they are saying "here he is again" and they rip up their paperwork. Now, I never run red lights. I USED to be a cop and know full well what so often happens to red-light runners. YouTube is replete with accident videos if you can learn from the mistakes of others. Now SPEED cams, well, I might well have appeared in a few of them but not any tickets in the mail from them, either. They don't know who I am or where I reside because I never told them. Well, SOME of them know because I DO occasionally get arrested for this fun but the no-drivers-license yahoo group has all the resource material one needs to beat these tickets. Of course, I am retired and have the time to do so. Even so, my address never gets shopped around to the EZPass idiots and, if it does, I have answers for them, too. I like to think that my activities in court make it easier for other courageous ones. Now, the cowards that go along to get along with the state, well, they just might deserve what they get. Just saying. My blog is johnboanerges.blogspot.com, BTW.

Glyph

11 months ago

We've been dealing with this stuff for the last few years here in AZ. Once during a protest, DPS sent a dozen vehicles to a camerafraud.com speed camera protest. There have been arrests, and at one point we had to hold our protests on Thursdays (as opposed to the weekends) so our members wouldn't have to spend the weekend in jail.

When you screw with a city's ca$h flow, cops are ALWAYS soon to follow.

Glyph

11 months ago

When you screw with a city's ca$h flow, cops are ALWAYS soon to follow.