Speeding Ticket

The harsh, bright light flooded the courtroom as if to banish even a shadow from lurking. The walls were white and unadorned.The Maryland flag hung from a broken pole, limply leaning in the face of the constant pain that paraded before it.From the back of the courtroom, a baby began to cry. If he had known what was about to happen, he would have cried even louder.This was not a murder trial. It was not the trial of a thief or an armed robber or any of the other vermin that prey upon decent citizens.

Baltimore issued more than 16,000 speed camera tickets in less than two months this year before shutting the troubled program down over a programming error, according to figures posted by the city. The numbers offer a detailed statistical look at the recent performance of the program targeted this year by state lawmakers. Officials started issuing the $40 tickets for the first time this year on Feb. 20, the figures show. But they announced on April 16 that they had again stopped citing drivers amid reports that one of the city's new cameras had been programmed with the wrong speed limit, resulting in hundreds of erroneous tickets.

An Aberdeen police officer who accepted free haircuts from a woman in exchange for getting her 1993 speeding ticket dismissed in District Court was convicted of bribery in Harford Circuit Court yesterday.Charles David Dvorak, 33, of the 300 block of Kane St. in Baltimore was given a three-year suspended sentence and placed on supervised probation for two years after entering an Alford plea before Judge William O. Carr.In making the Alford plea, Mr. Dvorak did not admit guilt but conceded the evidence was against him.Mr.

Probably nothing else needs to be said about the Ticketmaster issue, especially after the well-written letter from Barbara Blumberg ("Ticketmaster is a scalper by another name," March 6). However, it should be pointed out that Ticketmaster is just one more e-business, like Microsoft, that sells a product that costs almost nothing after its initial development costs are recovered and charges phenomenally high rates. And like Microsoft, it has recovered its development costs long ago and has the capacity to generate incredible profits - well beyond those possible in brick and mortar businesses.

A Carroll County circuit judge is awaiting trial, charged with driving while his license was suspended.Luke K. Burns Jr., 63, was charged Dec. 13 with negligent driving, failing to control speed and driving while his license was suspended, after he drove over a curb and ran into a road sign in a minor accident in Westminster.State Motor Vehicle Administration records show that Burns' license was suspended Feb. 8, 1996, after he twice had not appeared in Baltimore County District Court to stand trial on a speeding ticket he received Aug. 11, 1995.

Citing two affidavits from African-American motorists who say they were harassed by state troopers, the American Civil Liberties Union said yesterday that the Maryland State Police are violating a settlement agreement that prohibits traffic stops based solely on race.William J. Mertens, a lawyer for the ACLU, is urging U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake to put the state police force on trial for violating a 1995 court agreement. The state paid $12,500 each to four black plaintiffs who alleged discrimination and agreed to institute a policy of nondiscrimination in traffic stops under the settlement.

A state trooper who won a commendation for her role in a 1991 shootout asked an Anne Arundel Circuit judge yesterday to reverse her demotion for allegedly trying to fix a speeding ticket for a Washington Capitals hockey player two years ago.Trooper Kimberly Brooks was demoted from trooper first class to trooper and suspended for 15 days in October 1995 after a police trial board found she offered hockey tickets to another trooper to drop speeding charges against...

Little did we know it, but Maryland drivers have been under scrutiny. Saranath Lawpoolsri and Jingyi Li have been observing us, and what they've found out about our driving isn't very flattering. It turns out that we're a rather thickheaded lot. You can give us speeding citations and we just go out and earn more - as if they were merit badges. That's what Lawpoolsri and Li concluded after conducting a study of how Maryland drivers respond to the most basic form of traffic law enforcement.

Letters, calls and the roar of the crowd:Richard N. Dixon, House of Delegates, Annapolis: I read with interest your article [on getting a speeding ticket.]You will be interested to know that I introduced a bill in the 1991 Session of the Maryland General Assembly to provide safe driving points for those people who have outstanding driving records accumulated over a number of years.My bill specifically would have allowed a maximum of five good driving points which could have been used against a speeding ticket.

As the Baltimore County Council debates the details of a bill to implement speed cameras, two things should be clear to everyone. First, anyone who drives more than 11 mph over the posted speed limit in a school zone deserves a speeding ticket. Second, whenever the government tells us that speed cameras "are not about the money," it's time for us to hide our wallets. Baltimore County's speed camera program is designed to change driving behavior by issuing tens of thousands of tickets, resulting in the collection of millions of dollars in fines.

How many speed camera tickets has Baltimore City issued so far this year? How many red-light camera tickets? City officials won't say. Five weeks ago, Khalil Zaied, deputy chief of operations in the mayor's office, told members of the City Council that the lucrative automated camera enforcement network had started coming back online. More than a month had passed since the system went offline, the result of a troubled transition from one contractor to another. "What we have is now 10 speed cameras out on locations," he said Feb. 4. "We have approximately 15 of the red-light cameras on board right now also.

For Joe Stumpf, it appears persistence has paid off: The city has promised to refund him the $40 fine he paid after receiving an erroneous speed camera ticket. It took the city Department of Transportation 10 weeks - during which time Stumpf fired off several emails - but the agency told him Wednesday he could expect a check in the next couple of weeks. “I tell you, it's been frustrating,” said Stumpf, who lives in Anne Arundel County and works as a machinist near M&T Bank Stadium.

District judges in Baltimore threw out just over half of the 3,000 speed camera tickets they considered last year after hearing appeals from motorists, city records show. By contrast, in the second half of 2011 (the city didn't provide records for the first half), judges upheld barely 30 percent of the driver challenges heard. And in 2010, only a quarter of ticket recipients who appealed won in court, based on limited figures given by the city. It's not clear why judges as a group have increasingly sided with motorists - and against the machines that have cranked out more than 1.6 million $40 citations in the city since late 2009.

Baltimore police officials said Thursday the department is doubling to 25 the number of officers available to review speed camera tickets — one of several moves intended to help prevent the issuance of erroneous citations, which has cast a cloud over the city's program in recent months. Meanwhile, city transportation officials said Baltimore's new speed camera vendor, Brekford Corp. of Hanover, has delivered some new cameras and is scheduled to replace all 83 of the city's existing cameras by late March, about a month sooner than anticipated.

A "perfect storm of errors" caused the city of Baltimore to issue a speed camera citation to a stationary vehicle, the Police Department's chief spokesman said Thursday. Spokesman Anthony Guglielmi acknowledged that Officer Christopher Izquierdo should not have validated the citation, which alleged that a Mazda wagon was going 38 mph even though a video clip from the camera and two time-stamped photos given as evidence clearly show the car stopped at a red light. State law requires every citation to be approved by a sworn law enforcement officer, and in the city that is the final step before a ticket is mailed out to the vehicle's owner.

More than 40 percent of all speed camera tickets issued to drivers in Maryland highway work zones have been doled out between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., times when crews often aren't on the job. That picture emerged when The Baltimore Sun graphed, hour by hour, all million or so work-zone citations generated by the State Highway Administration between December 2009 and June 30. Over 24 hours, the tally rises and falls like a wave. The highest number of tickets was issued between 11 a.m. and noon - nearly 102,000.

For Tfc. Richard Wolfe, a good day means not writing a speeding ticket or warning.But that's a rare day. The veteran trooper can't recall many good days in 13 years as a resident trooper at the Westminster barracks. As the barracks' top traffic enforcer in Carroll County, Wolfe makes more than 3,000 traffic stops annually, averaging nearly 300 written tickets and warnings a month.The numbers are double those of his colleagues, but Wolfe said fellow troopers do more criminal investigations and have less time to monitor traffic.

Obey Speed LawsWilliam I. Weston (letter, Jan. 2) who did not get a ticket, argues that speed limits are unnecessary and should not be enforced. I, who did get a speeding ticket, disagree.To have laws which are not enforced creates a public attitude of disrespect for law, and this contributes to the decay of society.If the speed limits are unnecessary or unwise, then they should be changed rather than ignored. Perhaps Mr. Weston could suggest how to change the speed laws in a way which would meet with the approval of the majority of the law-abiding citizens.