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MEETING UPDATE
Meetings Fridays 7PM Logos Baptist 10833 S Halsted and Via Zoom ----- Join the Fight |
Mayor Lightfoot decided the way to raise revenue during the pandemic was to set up speed traps for the essential workers who had to drive. It turned out to be even worse than we feared. In the last 10 months of 2021 her 6mph over policy change took $59 Million Dollars in $35 Dollar Tickets from safe drivers. After trying to kill the amendment, that she had held in Rules for over a year, The Finance Committee had to be quickly adjourned June 16th to prevent an embarrassing loss. On the same day Alderwoman Mitts delayed a vote on expanding boots because it was going to pass against Lightfoot's wishes. Contact your Alderperson, before June 22, and tell them to vote with Alderman Beale to amend the policy back to the way it was. Fines are issued at 10MPH over rather than 6MPH. Tell Lightfoot she went too fast and end this misuse of power by letting the peoples representatives vote. |
LIGHTFOOT FIGHTS CITY COUNCIL EFFORT TO LIMIT $59M SPEED CAMERAS
Patrick Andriesen
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
JUNE 17, 2022
Lightfoot fights city council effort to limit $59M speed camerasChicago aldermen were ready to repeal the lower speed camera tolerance that generated $59 million in fines last year, but the finance committee chairman called off the meeting. Mayor Lori Lightfoot will use the delay to ‘twist peoples’ arms’ and keep the threshold low and lucrative.
Chicagoans nearly saw a repeal of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s lower automated speed camera ticketing policy June 16, but the chair of the city’s finance committee pulled a fast one to delay the vote.
Finance Committee Chairman Scott Waguespack reportedly recessed the panel after a two-hour hearing on speed cameras in anticipation that council members would vote to repeal the mayor’s policy.
The lower limit led to$59 million in tickets for going 6 to 10 mph over the limit and $89 million total for all speed camera violations in 2021, an Illinois Policy Institute investigation found. The cameras churned out more tickets than the city has residents.
Waguespack delayed the vote until 2 p.m., June 21, citing many questions his colleagues had that still need to be answered before the vote.
But Ald. Anthony Beale, the former head of the city’s transportation committee and a longtime opponent of the mayor’s lower threshold policy, said the tactic is about buying time to influence members behind the scenes.
“The administration wants time to twist peoples’ arms to vote against the ordinance,” Beale told the Chicago Sun-Times. “They were working the phones while we were in committee.”
Beale has argued against Lightfoot’s stricter speed ticketing policy since before March 2021, when cameras started issuing drivers a $35 ticket for going six to nine miles over the limit and a $100 ticket for speeding 11 mph or more over the limit.
A University of Illinois-Chicago study found the cameras issued tickets at disproportionate rates to minority communities.
The Illinois Policy Institute investigation also found traffic fatalities increased by 13% in the year after the policy went into effect, despite cameras issuing a ticket every 11 seconds. That casting further doubt on Lightfoot’s claim speed cameras were about improving safety rather than boosting city revenues.
Alongside Beale, Ald. Susan Sadlowski-Garza and Budget Committee Chair Pat Dowell voiced opposition to the stricter speeding standards at the hearing.
“I don’t believe in speed cameras. Never did,” said Garza … “They prey on people. ... It doesn’t change the way people drive. ... I have one camera that generated over $1 million dollars in a six-month period. It’s not making people go slower. We don’t have any traffic crashes around where the cameras are at. I have more traffic crashes on 130th, where there’s no cameras at all.”
The city has 160 speed cameras, with 27 each generating $1 million or more in fines. Two cameras topped $3 million each, both on the city’s impoverished South Side.
Oak Brook’s efforts to have red-light cameras removed fuel State Rep. Deanne Mazzochi’s bill to remove all cameras in Illinois
March 2021
State Rep. Deanne Mazzochi, R-47th, Elmhurst, who has supported Oak Brook’s efforts to have red-light cameras at 22nd Street and Route 83 removed, has introduced a bill that would ban all red-light cameras in Illinois.
House Bill 1718 was filed Feb. 11 and assigned March 9 to Transportation: Vehicles and Safety Committee. The Bill amends the Illinois Vehicle Code by repealing a section providing authority to use automated traffic law enforcement systems at intersections in which cameras are used to photograph or video record a motor vehicle’s failure to stop and yield as required by traffic control signals. The Bill also imposes limits on the power of local governments to use automated speed enforcement systems to provide recorded images of a motor vehicle for the purpose of recording its speed. Home rule communities would not be exempt from the provisions of the Bill.
“When red light cameras are not about motorist safety, but cynical revenue grabs; when red light cameras are implicated in pay-to-play practices, and those with the power of oversight like IDOT cannot be counted on to keep the players honest; and when our residents insist over and over again that they want them gone, but local elected officials either won’t listen or can’t help; then the only solution is either red light camera reform, or to end them altogether.”
Mazzochi said red-light cameras have been emblematic of Illinois government.
“They’re riddled with corruption and shine a light on slow bureaucratic processes,” she said. “Under the prior General Assembly leadership, the Senate would pass repeal bills, knowing (former Speaker of the House Michael) Madigan wouldn’t move them in the House and Madigan would allow repeal bills, knowing they would never move in the Senate, which is what happened with the last bill House bill I sponsored to ban red light cameras, which overwhelmingly passed the House with bipartisan support, only to die in the Senate”
Speed Camera Revenue Grab
CHICAGO (CBS) 2/27/20-- The grace period is nearly over for Chicago drivers. Starting on Monday, if one of the city’s speed cameras catches you going 6 mph to 9 mph over the limit, get ready for a $35 ticket.
As CBS 2’s Marissa Parra reports, it’s a controversial move that’s made for some unhappy Chicagoans and politicians.
Drivers beware, starting Monday the city will begin enforcing a lower threshold for speed camera tickets, following a 44-day warning period. Drivers who haven't received a speed camera ticket in the past eight years will get one more warning. However, anyone who has received a speed camera ticket since 2013 won't get any additional warnings after March 1.
Under the new restrictions, drivers caught on camera going 6 mph to 9 mph over the limit will get $35 tickets. Under current rules, motorists caught on camera going 10 mph over the limit already face $35 tickets, and those caught on camera going 11 mph or more over the limit are hit with $100 fines.
“Is that about public safety, or is it about revenue? I believe it’s about revenue,” said Ald. Anthony Beale (9th).
The city began using cameras to catch speeders in 2012, so chances are you’ve been caught at least once over the years.
“Too many times,” said Marvelal Goggins, of Roseland. “Over six tickets. Over $600, and that’s a lot of money.”
Since 2013, Goggins has shared a street with a speed camera on 127th Street.
However, the Chicago Department of Transportation has said the move was prompted by a 45% spike in traffic deaths in the city from 2019 to 2020, despite fewer cars on the roads due to the pandemic.
Beale said, while speeding is an issue, he doesn’t see how the difference of 4 miles an hour would do anything to keep people safe. He said the new rules are just kicking Chicagoans when they’re down.
“People are hurting right now,” he said. “We’re in a crisis. We’re in a pandemic. Now we’re just going to basically just compound the problems that people are already having."
During her first State of the City address in 2019, Mayor Lori Lightfoot was outspoken against what she called the city’s “addiction to a regressive fines and fees system.” announcing a series of changes aimed at reducing the burden on low-income drivers.
But she did an about face last year when she announced the new stricter rules for speed cameras as part of her 2021 budget plan, as she was facing a $1.2 billion shortfall for 2021.
A lot has happened in between her two different approaches to city fines, including a pandemic that left the city scrambling to make up for a daunting budget gap.
Asked what ideas he has for making up for the city’s $1.2 billion budget shortfall, Beale said, “You have to grow out of it. You can’t cut your way and you can't tax your way out of it.”
Many of the city’s speed cameras were disabled in school zones during the pandemic while schools have been doing remote learning.
The mayor’s office has continued to defend their decision to reduce the threshold for speed camera tickets.
City officials said, while there were fewer drivers on the roads in 2020 due to the pandemic, cars were going 8% faster on average than in 2019, and traffic deaths through the end of November were up 35% compared to the same time period in 2019. A spokesman for the Chicago Department of Transportation said there were 120 traffic deaths through the end of November 2020, compared to 89 during the same time in 2019.
You can view a map of the City’s speed cameras and Children’s Safety Zones by clicking here
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Starting March 1, 2021 if a speed camera catches you going 6 mph above the speed limit, you’ll get a $35 ticket in the mail. Lightfoot’s office said the controversial plan was about public safety, but critics said it was a regressive way to boost revenue as the city tries to close a $1.2 billion budget gap.
The city will launch a 44-day warning period starting Jan. 15. Cars caught going 6-10 mph will receive a warning in the mail.
The city will start issuing actual tickets March 1. Fines are $35 for those caught going 6-10 mph over the speed limit and will remain $100 for those going 11 miles or more over the limit.
COVID-19 isn’t a good time to start ticketing drivers for going 6 MPH over the speed limit my overall feeling is that Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s proposal to lower the the threshold for automated speeding tickets from the current 10 mph over the limit to six mph as part of the 2021 budget is not a great idea, at least during the COVID-19 pandemic. While doing so might be a win for traffic safety in the short term, the strategy raises some economic and racial equity concerns. Moreover, such a tactic is sure to be perceived, right or wrong, by many Chicagoans as an unfair money grab, which could lead to a renewed backlash against the cams and louder calls to abolish the program altogether, which would be counterproductive to safety.
As it stands in Chicago, you can go up to 9 mph over the posted speed limit without getting a speed camera ticket. Drivers clocked at exactly 10 mph over the limit get a $35 fine, while motorists going 11 or more mph over get a $100 ticket.
Under the proposed new rules, the first time you get caught driving 6 to 9 mph over the speed limit you would get a warning. After that you’d be issued a $35 ticket.
According to CDOT spokesman Mike Claffey, part of the motivation for the new rule is the increase in speeding during the pandemic, when traffic has been relatively light, and a correlating spike in fatal traffic crashes. While there were 72 traffic fatalities on Chicago streets from January through September 2019, there were 100 traffic deaths during the same period this year. Most of the increase has been among motorists: 28 out of the 72 fatalities in 2019 were car occupants, but this year that number has risen to 58, a 107-percent increase.
It’s worth noting that, unlike peer cities that have converted travel and parking lanes to emergency bus and bike lanes and pedestrian space during the pandemic, Chicago has done relatively little during the crisis to encourage non-car modes and calm traffic.
The default speed limit in Chicago is 30 mph. If the new rule was successful in limiting most drivers to 35 mph near speed cameras, that would, in fact, be a win for safety. Studies show that while pedestrians struck at 20 mph almost always survive, and those struck at 30 mph have a roughly 50/50 chance of survival, those struck at 40 mph almost always die.
Image: City of ChicagoAs such, the Active Transportation Alliance appears to be supporting Lightfoot’s proposal. “Even an incremental reduction in the speed of cars lessens the likelihood of a fatal crash, especially when a car strikes someone who’s walking or biking,” spokesman Kyle Whitehead told the Chicago Tribune. He added that the group would like to see income-based sliding-scale fines to make the tax less regressive.
That would be great, but it’s not clear that such a system would even be legal under current local laws. So it’s definitely not happening anytime soon.
[Update: After the publication of this post ATA contacted Streetsblog to clarify that the group does not support immediately implementing Lightfoot’s plan — see their statement at the top of this post.]
I don’t see the regressive nature of Chicago’s speed camera tickets (rich and poor people pay the same fees) to be such a problem under the existing fine structure. If you’re going 10 mph or more over the limit in a 30 mph zone, that’s really dangerous and egregious, and it’s pretty easy to avoid if you pay any attention to your speedometer, so it merits a significant fine.
36 to 39 mph in a 30 mph zone seems like more of a gray area to me. Yes, it’s more dangerous than 35, and in a perfect world no one would drive over the speed limit at all. Ideally, we would lower the default speed limit further to reduce the possibility of severe injury crashes, at least on residential streets.
But while going 10 mph or more over the speed limit is indefensible and deserves a punishment, going a bit more than 5 mph over isn’t nearly as egregious, and it’s probably really widespread. In my experience, staying exactly within 5 mph of the speed limit requires a lot more attention to your speedometer than avoiding going 10 mph over does. (Streetsblog Chicago cofounder Steven Vance disagrees: “I know how to drive a consistent speed without constantly monitoring the speedometer,” he claims.)
It’s not clear whether reining in people going a few miles over 35 would have much effect on the current traffic fatality spike. But, while the fee is avoidable, it does seem pretty obvious that the new rule would result in a lot more people getting $35 fines, which appears to be what Lightfoot is banking on.
That’s not a trivial amount if you’re a working-class person living in a South or West Side neighborhood with sub-par transit access and major public safety challenges, who feels you have no choice but to drive to an essential job and to do necessary errands. People who have the advantage of being able to work from home during COVID-19 are more likely to be middle class or wealthier. And during this airborne respiratory pandemic, many Chicagoans don’t feel safe riding the CTA. (But it’s worth noting that transit use has not been found to be a major source of viral transmission.)
Moreover, a traffic fine policy that would disproportionately impact people of color seems particularly tone-deaf in the wake of the recent Black Lives Matter protests, when there’s a renewed focus on rooting out racially inequitable enforcement.
Anti-cam activists protest on Archer Avenue in 2014. Photo: John GreenfieldAs such such, the optics of Lightfoot fining more people for less-harmful speeding violations right now would be really bad. The existing, relatively reasonable, speed camera fee structure has previously been widely portrayed by other politicians and anti-cam activists as nickle-and-diming taxpayers and balancing the budget on the backs of the working class. While lowering the threshold for tickets would have crash prevention and mitigation benefits, many more Chicagoans would see it as a transparent scheme by the mayor to use safety as an excuse to raise money to address the city’s $1.2 billion budget shortfall.
And as more people learn about this policy, there’s sure to be plenty of grandstanding by aldermen on the issue, and protests by the anti-cam crowd. At the moment, speed cams are relatively uncontroversial, but if that changes we could see a new movement to abolish the cameras altogether, which would mean more egregious speeding and serious crashes. Earlier this year the Illinois House passed legislation to ban red light cams in much of the state, so it’s not that far-fetched a scenario.
It would be great if no one ever drove six miles over the speed limit on Chicago streets. Maybe at some point it will be less problematic from an equity standpoint and politically safer to lower the speed cam threshold. However, during the current multi-pronged health/economic/racial justice crisis, I’m inclined to let sleeping dogs lie.
But there’s definitely room for differences of opinion on this issue, and even us Streetsblog Chicago staffers aren’t all totally on the same page about it. Steven indicated that he’d support the new fee structure if the revenue could be earmarked for street redesigns to improve traffic safety. But SBC assistant editor Courtney Cobbs said, “I think it’s a bad idea… If safety were really at the heart of it, we’d see the money go to redesigning roadways to limit speeding.”
I’m realize that many Streetsblog readers may disagree with Courtney and me on this matter. Feel free to make your argument for or against the proposal to start ticketing drivers going six or more mph over the speed limit in the comments section.
City reaches $38.75 million settlement in red light ticket lawsuit
July 20, 2017
Chicago's red light camera system grew to more than 350 cameras and has raised more than $500 million in $100 tickets since 2002. Tribune investigations beginning in 2012 have exposed corruption, failed oversight and inconsistent enforcement in the program.
John ByrneContact ReporterChicago Tribune
Privacy PolicyChicagoans who have winced at the flash of red light cameras while driving through intersections or spit invective upon finding familiar Revenue Department envelopes in their mailboxes might be in line for a bit of payback from the much-loathed automated camera ticket program.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration has agreed to a $38.75 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit alleging Chicago failed to give adequate notice to red light camera and speed camera violators.
Under the massive deal, more than 1.2 million people could be in line for payments of half of whatever they paid the city for their tickets. Those who qualify will receive letters in the mail in upcoming months notifying them they were part of the suit and telling them how to collect, according to attorney Jacie Zolna, whose firm brought the legal challenge.
The March 2015 suit claimed the city violated its own rules by failing to send a second notice of a violation before guilt was determined, and by doubling the fine for late payment of tickets sooner than allowed.
A couple of months later, the Emanuel administration responded by changing the city ordinance to eliminate the requirement for a second notice. In September 2016, the city passed an ordinance to give those who hadn't gotten second notices from 2010 to 2015 a do-over, sending notices giving people the right to request an administrative hearing to contest their tickets. Emanuel's lawyers argued that brought them into compliance.
Then-city Corporation Counsel Stephen Patton said the change "further bolsters our case" by addressing the argument that people who didn't get a second notice were wronged.
John Bills was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Aug. 29, 2016, for taking up to $2 million in bribes and gifts in return for steering tens of millions of dollars in red-light camera contracts to an Arizona company. (Nancy Stone/Chicago Tribune
But Zolna said the city trying to retroactively meet its own standards didn't cut it.
"When they passed that law and did that sneaky move, it just emboldened me," he said Thursday while discussing the settlement. "I decided I wouldn't let them try to do that."
In November 2016, a Cook County judge approved class action status for the suit, greatly increasing City Hall's exposure and helping drive a settlement.
On Thursday, city Corporation Counsel Ed Siskel said the Law Department is recommending the settlement because the city could be on the hook for more than $250 million if it lost the case. While the city has successfully defended against other ticket camera lawsuits, that type of possible judgment is too risky, Siskel said.
The agreement still needs City Council approval. The Finance Committee is slated to consider it Monday, and in the likely event it passes, it would go to the full council Wednesday.
Under the settlement, people who got tickets from 2010 to 2015 will be paid out of a $26.75 million pot. The city also will forgive another $12 million in motorists' unpaid tickets. In addition, the city will agree not to count the tickets toward violations that could get drivers' cars booted or their licenses suspended.
Zolna said his firm, Myron M. Cherry & Associates, will get a little less than one-third of the settlement.
Vishal Aggarwal of Naperville was part of the suit. Under the settlement, he's in line for $50 from the city for a $100 red light ticket he got in September 2014 on Foster Avenue in the Uptown neighborhood. Aggarwal said the money will be nice, but he's mainly happy City Hall is being held accountable for breaking the rules.
"Morally, the point is, if something's wrong, it's wrong," he said.
The settlement is just the latest problem for the city's troubled red light camera system.
Zolna's suit was among half a dozen cases that followed a Chicago Tribune investigation of corruption and mismanagement within the city's $600 million red light program. The series exposed a $2 million City Hall bribery scheme that brought the traffic cameras to Chicago as well as tens of thousands of tickets that were unfairly issued to drivers.
The investigation found malfunctioning cameras, inconsistent enforcement and millions of dollars in tickets issued purposely by City Hall even after transportation officials knew that yellow light times were dropping below the federal minimum guidelines.
Throughout the scandal, the Emanuel administration has been reluctant to issue refunds, in some cases forcing drivers to file paperwork and apply for a rehearing process some critics have called onerous.
Last year, former City Hall operative John Bills was sentenced to 10 years in prison for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to steer tens of millions of dollars in red light camera contracts to an Arizona company, Redflex Traffic Systems Inc.
According to testimony at his federal trial, Bills took a cash bribe of up to $2,000 for each of the 384 red light cameras that were installed while he oversaw the program.
A Tribune-sponsored study of the red-light program in 2014 found that nearly 40 percent of the intersections equipped with the cameras are likely making the streets more dangerous. The study found that the cameras caused a 22 percent increase in rear-end crashes, yet provided no safety benefit at intersections that never had a problem with right-angle crashes in the first place.
The city will use $10 million it will receive by year's end from a settlement with Redflex over the bribery scandal to pay part of the $26.75 million, according to city Budget Department spokeswoman Molly Poppe. The city will tap "available operating dollars first and using bond proceeds where necessary" to pay the balance, Poppe said in an email.
Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, who has railed against the red light and speed cameras, said the huge settlement underscores that the ticket programs are not about safety, but about "trying to balance the books on the backs of the people who can least afford to pay."
"What I can tell you is, 'I told you so,'" said Beale, City Council Transportation Committee chairman, when told of the settlement Thursday. "If you recall, years ago I said the whole red light camera issue was more about revenue than it was about public safety."
Chicago Tribune's Peter Matuszak contributed to this article
Patrick Andriesen
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
JUNE 17, 2022
Lightfoot fights city council effort to limit $59M speed camerasChicago aldermen were ready to repeal the lower speed camera tolerance that generated $59 million in fines last year, but the finance committee chairman called off the meeting. Mayor Lori Lightfoot will use the delay to ‘twist peoples’ arms’ and keep the threshold low and lucrative.
Chicagoans nearly saw a repeal of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s lower automated speed camera ticketing policy June 16, but the chair of the city’s finance committee pulled a fast one to delay the vote.
Finance Committee Chairman Scott Waguespack reportedly recessed the panel after a two-hour hearing on speed cameras in anticipation that council members would vote to repeal the mayor’s policy.
The lower limit led to
Waguespack delayed the vote until 2 p.m., June 21, citing many questions his colleagues had that still need to be answered before the vote.
But Ald. Anthony Beale, the former head of the city’s transportation committee and a longtime opponent of the mayor’s lower threshold policy, said the tactic is about buying time to influence members behind the scenes.
“The administration wants time to twist peoples’ arms to vote against the ordinance,” Beale told the Chicago Sun-Times. “They were working the phones while we were in committee.”
Beale has argued against Lightfoot’s stricter speed ticketing policy since before March 2021, when cameras started issuing drivers a $35 ticket for going six to nine miles over the limit and a $100 ticket for speeding 11 mph or more over the limit.
A University of Illinois-Chicago study found the cameras issued tickets at disproportionate rates to minority communities.
The Illinois Policy Institute investigation also found traffic fatalities increased by 13% in the year after the policy went into effect, despite cameras issuing a ticket every 11 seconds. That casting further doubt on Lightfoot’s claim speed cameras were about improving safety rather than boosting city revenues.
Alongside Beale, Ald. Susan Sadlowski-Garza and Budget Committee Chair Pat Dowell voiced opposition to the stricter speeding standards at the hearing.
“I don’t believe in speed cameras. Never did,” said Garza … “They prey on people. ... It doesn’t change the way people drive. ... I have one camera that generated over $1 million dollars in a six-month period. It’s not making people go slower. We don’t have any traffic crashes around where the cameras are at. I have more traffic crashes on 130th, where there’s no cameras at all.”
The city has 160 speed cameras, with 27 each generating $1 million or more in fines. Two cameras topped $3 million each, both on the city’s impoverished South Side.
Oak Brook’s efforts to have red-light cameras removed fuel State Rep. Deanne Mazzochi’s bill to remove all cameras in Illinois
March 2021
State Rep. Deanne Mazzochi, R-47th, Elmhurst, who has supported Oak Brook’s efforts to have red-light cameras at 22nd Street and Route 83 removed, has introduced a bill that would ban all red-light cameras in Illinois.
House Bill 1718 was filed Feb. 11 and assigned March 9 to Transportation: Vehicles and Safety Committee. The Bill amends the Illinois Vehicle Code by repealing a section providing authority to use automated traffic law enforcement systems at intersections in which cameras are used to photograph or video record a motor vehicle’s failure to stop and yield as required by traffic control signals. The Bill also imposes limits on the power of local governments to use automated speed enforcement systems to provide recorded images of a motor vehicle for the purpose of recording its speed. Home rule communities would not be exempt from the provisions of the Bill.
“When red light cameras are not about motorist safety, but cynical revenue grabs; when red light cameras are implicated in pay-to-play practices, and those with the power of oversight like IDOT cannot be counted on to keep the players honest; and when our residents insist over and over again that they want them gone, but local elected officials either won’t listen or can’t help; then the only solution is either red light camera reform, or to end them altogether.”
Mazzochi said red-light cameras have been emblematic of Illinois government.
“They’re riddled with corruption and shine a light on slow bureaucratic processes,” she said. “Under the prior General Assembly leadership, the Senate would pass repeal bills, knowing (former Speaker of the House Michael) Madigan wouldn’t move them in the House and Madigan would allow repeal bills, knowing they would never move in the Senate, which is what happened with the last bill House bill I sponsored to ban red light cameras, which overwhelmingly passed the House with bipartisan support, only to die in the Senate”
Speed Camera Revenue Grab
CHICAGO (CBS) 2/27/20-- The grace period is nearly over for Chicago drivers. Starting on Monday, if one of the city’s speed cameras catches you going 6 mph to 9 mph over the limit, get ready for a $35 ticket.
As CBS 2’s Marissa Parra reports, it’s a controversial move that’s made for some unhappy Chicagoans and politicians.
Drivers beware, starting Monday the city will begin enforcing a lower threshold for speed camera tickets, following a 44-day warning period. Drivers who haven't received a speed camera ticket in the past eight years will get one more warning. However, anyone who has received a speed camera ticket since 2013 won't get any additional warnings after March 1.
Under the new restrictions, drivers caught on camera going 6 mph to 9 mph over the limit will get $35 tickets. Under current rules, motorists caught on camera going 10 mph over the limit already face $35 tickets, and those caught on camera going 11 mph or more over the limit are hit with $100 fines.
“Is that about public safety, or is it about revenue? I believe it’s about revenue,” said Ald. Anthony Beale (9th).
The city began using cameras to catch speeders in 2012, so chances are you’ve been caught at least once over the years.
“Too many times,” said Marvelal Goggins, of Roseland. “Over six tickets. Over $600, and that’s a lot of money.”
Since 2013, Goggins has shared a street with a speed camera on 127th Street.
However, the Chicago Department of Transportation has said the move was prompted by a 45% spike in traffic deaths in the city from 2019 to 2020, despite fewer cars on the roads due to the pandemic.
Beale said, while speeding is an issue, he doesn’t see how the difference of 4 miles an hour would do anything to keep people safe. He said the new rules are just kicking Chicagoans when they’re down.
“People are hurting right now,” he said. “We’re in a crisis. We’re in a pandemic. Now we’re just going to basically just compound the problems that people are already having."
During her first State of the City address in 2019, Mayor Lori Lightfoot was outspoken against what she called the city’s “addiction to a regressive fines and fees system.” announcing a series of changes aimed at reducing the burden on low-income drivers.
But she did an about face last year when she announced the new stricter rules for speed cameras as part of her 2021 budget plan, as she was facing a $1.2 billion shortfall for 2021.
A lot has happened in between her two different approaches to city fines, including a pandemic that left the city scrambling to make up for a daunting budget gap.
Asked what ideas he has for making up for the city’s $1.2 billion budget shortfall, Beale said, “You have to grow out of it. You can’t cut your way and you can't tax your way out of it.”
Many of the city’s speed cameras were disabled in school zones during the pandemic while schools have been doing remote learning.
The mayor’s office has continued to defend their decision to reduce the threshold for speed camera tickets.
City officials said, while there were fewer drivers on the roads in 2020 due to the pandemic, cars were going 8% faster on average than in 2019, and traffic deaths through the end of November were up 35% compared to the same time period in 2019. A spokesman for the Chicago Department of Transportation said there were 120 traffic deaths through the end of November 2020, compared to 89 during the same time in 2019.
You can view a map of the City’s speed cameras and Children’s Safety Zones by clicking here
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Starting March 1, 2021 if a speed camera catches you going 6 mph above the speed limit, you’ll get a $35 ticket in the mail. Lightfoot’s office said the controversial plan was about public safety, but critics said it was a regressive way to boost revenue as the city tries to close a $1.2 billion budget gap.
The city will launch a 44-day warning period starting Jan. 15. Cars caught going 6-10 mph will receive a warning in the mail.
The city will start issuing actual tickets March 1. Fines are $35 for those caught going 6-10 mph over the speed limit and will remain $100 for those going 11 miles or more over the limit.
COVID-19 isn’t a good time to start ticketing drivers for going 6 MPH over the speed limit my overall feeling is that Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s proposal to lower the the threshold for automated speeding tickets from the current 10 mph over the limit to six mph as part of the 2021 budget is not a great idea, at least during the COVID-19 pandemic. While doing so might be a win for traffic safety in the short term, the strategy raises some economic and racial equity concerns. Moreover, such a tactic is sure to be perceived, right or wrong, by many Chicagoans as an unfair money grab, which could lead to a renewed backlash against the cams and louder calls to abolish the program altogether, which would be counterproductive to safety.
As it stands in Chicago, you can go up to 9 mph over the posted speed limit without getting a speed camera ticket. Drivers clocked at exactly 10 mph over the limit get a $35 fine, while motorists going 11 or more mph over get a $100 ticket.
Under the proposed new rules, the first time you get caught driving 6 to 9 mph over the speed limit you would get a warning. After that you’d be issued a $35 ticket.
According to CDOT spokesman Mike Claffey, part of the motivation for the new rule is the increase in speeding during the pandemic, when traffic has been relatively light, and a correlating spike in fatal traffic crashes. While there were 72 traffic fatalities on Chicago streets from January through September 2019, there were 100 traffic deaths during the same period this year. Most of the increase has been among motorists: 28 out of the 72 fatalities in 2019 were car occupants, but this year that number has risen to 58, a 107-percent increase.
It’s worth noting that, unlike peer cities that have converted travel and parking lanes to emergency bus and bike lanes and pedestrian space during the pandemic, Chicago has done relatively little during the crisis to encourage non-car modes and calm traffic.
The default speed limit in Chicago is 30 mph. If the new rule was successful in limiting most drivers to 35 mph near speed cameras, that would, in fact, be a win for safety. Studies show that while pedestrians struck at 20 mph almost always survive, and those struck at 30 mph have a roughly 50/50 chance of survival, those struck at 40 mph almost always die.
Image: City of ChicagoAs such, the Active Transportation Alliance appears to be supporting Lightfoot’s proposal. “Even an incremental reduction in the speed of cars lessens the likelihood of a fatal crash, especially when a car strikes someone who’s walking or biking,” spokesman Kyle Whitehead told the Chicago Tribune. He added that the group would like to see income-based sliding-scale fines to make the tax less regressive.
That would be great, but it’s not clear that such a system would even be legal under current local laws. So it’s definitely not happening anytime soon.
[Update: After the publication of this post ATA contacted Streetsblog to clarify that the group does not support immediately implementing Lightfoot’s plan — see their statement at the top of this post.]
I don’t see the regressive nature of Chicago’s speed camera tickets (rich and poor people pay the same fees) to be such a problem under the existing fine structure. If you’re going 10 mph or more over the limit in a 30 mph zone, that’s really dangerous and egregious, and it’s pretty easy to avoid if you pay any attention to your speedometer, so it merits a significant fine.
36 to 39 mph in a 30 mph zone seems like more of a gray area to me. Yes, it’s more dangerous than 35, and in a perfect world no one would drive over the speed limit at all. Ideally, we would lower the default speed limit further to reduce the possibility of severe injury crashes, at least on residential streets.
But while going 10 mph or more over the speed limit is indefensible and deserves a punishment, going a bit more than 5 mph over isn’t nearly as egregious, and it’s probably really widespread. In my experience, staying exactly within 5 mph of the speed limit requires a lot more attention to your speedometer than avoiding going 10 mph over does. (Streetsblog Chicago cofounder Steven Vance disagrees: “I know how to drive a consistent speed without constantly monitoring the speedometer,” he claims.)
It’s not clear whether reining in people going a few miles over 35 would have much effect on the current traffic fatality spike. But, while the fee is avoidable, it does seem pretty obvious that the new rule would result in a lot more people getting $35 fines, which appears to be what Lightfoot is banking on.
That’s not a trivial amount if you’re a working-class person living in a South or West Side neighborhood with sub-par transit access and major public safety challenges, who feels you have no choice but to drive to an essential job and to do necessary errands. People who have the advantage of being able to work from home during COVID-19 are more likely to be middle class or wealthier. And during this airborne respiratory pandemic, many Chicagoans don’t feel safe riding the CTA. (But it’s worth noting that transit use has not been found to be a major source of viral transmission.)
Moreover, a traffic fine policy that would disproportionately impact people of color seems particularly tone-deaf in the wake of the recent Black Lives Matter protests, when there’s a renewed focus on rooting out racially inequitable enforcement.
Anti-cam activists protest on Archer Avenue in 2014. Photo: John GreenfieldAs such such, the optics of Lightfoot fining more people for less-harmful speeding violations right now would be really bad. The existing, relatively reasonable, speed camera fee structure has previously been widely portrayed by other politicians and anti-cam activists as nickle-and-diming taxpayers and balancing the budget on the backs of the working class. While lowering the threshold for tickets would have crash prevention and mitigation benefits, many more Chicagoans would see it as a transparent scheme by the mayor to use safety as an excuse to raise money to address the city’s $1.2 billion budget shortfall.
And as more people learn about this policy, there’s sure to be plenty of grandstanding by aldermen on the issue, and protests by the anti-cam crowd. At the moment, speed cams are relatively uncontroversial, but if that changes we could see a new movement to abolish the cameras altogether, which would mean more egregious speeding and serious crashes. Earlier this year the Illinois House passed legislation to ban red light cams in much of the state, so it’s not that far-fetched a scenario.
It would be great if no one ever drove six miles over the speed limit on Chicago streets. Maybe at some point it will be less problematic from an equity standpoint and politically safer to lower the speed cam threshold. However, during the current multi-pronged health/economic/racial justice crisis, I’m inclined to let sleeping dogs lie.
But there’s definitely room for differences of opinion on this issue, and even us Streetsblog Chicago staffers aren’t all totally on the same page about it. Steven indicated that he’d support the new fee structure if the revenue could be earmarked for street redesigns to improve traffic safety. But SBC assistant editor Courtney Cobbs said, “I think it’s a bad idea… If safety were really at the heart of it, we’d see the money go to redesigning roadways to limit speeding.”
I’m realize that many Streetsblog readers may disagree with Courtney and me on this matter. Feel free to make your argument for or against the proposal to start ticketing drivers going six or more mph over the speed limit in the comments section.
City reaches $38.75 million settlement in red light ticket lawsuit
July 20, 2017
Chicago's red light camera system grew to more than 350 cameras and has raised more than $500 million in $100 tickets since 2002. Tribune investigations beginning in 2012 have exposed corruption, failed oversight and inconsistent enforcement in the program.
John ByrneContact ReporterChicago Tribune
Privacy PolicyChicagoans who have winced at the flash of red light cameras while driving through intersections or spit invective upon finding familiar Revenue Department envelopes in their mailboxes might be in line for a bit of payback from the much-loathed automated camera ticket program.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration has agreed to a $38.75 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit alleging Chicago failed to give adequate notice to red light camera and speed camera violators.
Under the massive deal, more than 1.2 million people could be in line for payments of half of whatever they paid the city for their tickets. Those who qualify will receive letters in the mail in upcoming months notifying them they were part of the suit and telling them how to collect, according to attorney Jacie Zolna, whose firm brought the legal challenge.
The March 2015 suit claimed the city violated its own rules by failing to send a second notice of a violation before guilt was determined, and by doubling the fine for late payment of tickets sooner than allowed.
A couple of months later, the Emanuel administration responded by changing the city ordinance to eliminate the requirement for a second notice. In September 2016, the city passed an ordinance to give those who hadn't gotten second notices from 2010 to 2015 a do-over, sending notices giving people the right to request an administrative hearing to contest their tickets. Emanuel's lawyers argued that brought them into compliance.
Then-city Corporation Counsel Stephen Patton said the change "further bolsters our case" by addressing the argument that people who didn't get a second notice were wronged.
John Bills was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Aug. 29, 2016, for taking up to $2 million in bribes and gifts in return for steering tens of millions of dollars in red-light camera contracts to an Arizona company. (Nancy Stone/Chicago Tribune
But Zolna said the city trying to retroactively meet its own standards didn't cut it.
"When they passed that law and did that sneaky move, it just emboldened me," he said Thursday while discussing the settlement. "I decided I wouldn't let them try to do that."
In November 2016, a Cook County judge approved class action status for the suit, greatly increasing City Hall's exposure and helping drive a settlement.
On Thursday, city Corporation Counsel Ed Siskel said the Law Department is recommending the settlement because the city could be on the hook for more than $250 million if it lost the case. While the city has successfully defended against other ticket camera lawsuits, that type of possible judgment is too risky, Siskel said.
The agreement still needs City Council approval. The Finance Committee is slated to consider it Monday, and in the likely event it passes, it would go to the full council Wednesday.
Under the settlement, people who got tickets from 2010 to 2015 will be paid out of a $26.75 million pot. The city also will forgive another $12 million in motorists' unpaid tickets. In addition, the city will agree not to count the tickets toward violations that could get drivers' cars booted or their licenses suspended.
Zolna said his firm, Myron M. Cherry & Associates, will get a little less than one-third of the settlement.
Vishal Aggarwal of Naperville was part of the suit. Under the settlement, he's in line for $50 from the city for a $100 red light ticket he got in September 2014 on Foster Avenue in the Uptown neighborhood. Aggarwal said the money will be nice, but he's mainly happy City Hall is being held accountable for breaking the rules.
"Morally, the point is, if something's wrong, it's wrong," he said.
The settlement is just the latest problem for the city's troubled red light camera system.
Zolna's suit was among half a dozen cases that followed a Chicago Tribune investigation of corruption and mismanagement within the city's $600 million red light program. The series exposed a $2 million City Hall bribery scheme that brought the traffic cameras to Chicago as well as tens of thousands of tickets that were unfairly issued to drivers.
The investigation found malfunctioning cameras, inconsistent enforcement and millions of dollars in tickets issued purposely by City Hall even after transportation officials knew that yellow light times were dropping below the federal minimum guidelines.
Throughout the scandal, the Emanuel administration has been reluctant to issue refunds, in some cases forcing drivers to file paperwork and apply for a rehearing process some critics have called onerous.
Last year, former City Hall operative John Bills was sentenced to 10 years in prison for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to steer tens of millions of dollars in red light camera contracts to an Arizona company, Redflex Traffic Systems Inc.
According to testimony at his federal trial, Bills took a cash bribe of up to $2,000 for each of the 384 red light cameras that were installed while he oversaw the program.
A Tribune-sponsored study of the red-light program in 2014 found that nearly 40 percent of the intersections equipped with the cameras are likely making the streets more dangerous. The study found that the cameras caused a 22 percent increase in rear-end crashes, yet provided no safety benefit at intersections that never had a problem with right-angle crashes in the first place.
The city will use $10 million it will receive by year's end from a settlement with Redflex over the bribery scandal to pay part of the $26.75 million, according to city Budget Department spokeswoman Molly Poppe. The city will tap "available operating dollars first and using bond proceeds where necessary" to pay the balance, Poppe said in an email.
Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, who has railed against the red light and speed cameras, said the huge settlement underscores that the ticket programs are not about safety, but about "trying to balance the books on the backs of the people who can least afford to pay."
"What I can tell you is, 'I told you so,'" said Beale, City Council Transportation Committee chairman, when told of the settlement Thursday. "If you recall, years ago I said the whole red light camera issue was more about revenue than it was about public safety."
Chicago Tribune's Peter Matuszak contributed to this article
2017 Red Light Community Meetings
Date Intersection Location Ward or Wards Meeting Host Location and Time
May 3, 2017 W. 71st Street and S. Western Avenue 17 and 18 17th and 18th Ward Monument of Faith Church
2750 W. Columbus Avenue
6:30 pm to 7:30 pm
May 8, 2017 N. Pulaski Road and W. Peterson Avenue 39 Peterson and Pulaski North Park Village Business and Industrial Administration Hall
Council 5801 N. Pulaski Rd
6:30 pm to 7:30 pm
May 9, 2017 E. 95th Street and S. Stony Island 7 and 8 7th and 8th Wards St. Ailbe's Catholic Church
9015 S. Harper Avenue
6:00 pm to 7:00 pm
May 10, 2017 W. Pershing Road and S. Western Blvd. 12 12th Ward McKinley Park Field House 2210 W. Pershing Road
6:30 pm to 7:30 pm
Date Intersection Location Ward or Wards Meeting Host Location and Time
May 3, 2017 W. 71st Street and S. Western Avenue 17 and 18 17th and 18th Ward Monument of Faith Church
2750 W. Columbus Avenue
6:30 pm to 7:30 pm
May 8, 2017 N. Pulaski Road and W. Peterson Avenue 39 Peterson and Pulaski North Park Village Business and Industrial Administration Hall
Council 5801 N. Pulaski Rd
6:30 pm to 7:30 pm
May 9, 2017 E. 95th Street and S. Stony Island 7 and 8 7th and 8th Wards St. Ailbe's Catholic Church
9015 S. Harper Avenue
6:00 pm to 7:00 pm
May 10, 2017 W. Pershing Road and S. Western Blvd. 12 12th Ward McKinley Park Field House 2210 W. Pershing Road
6:30 pm to 7:30 pm
Ald Beale got it right. The Northwestern study confirms that Chicago's Red Light Cameras have been robbing us of seconds and our money for years.
CHICAGO Sun Times
03/21/2017, 06:52pm
Red-light changes nowhere near enough, alderman says
Ald. Anthony Beale (9th), chairman of the City Council’s Transportation Committee, was equally unimpressed with Emanuel’s decision to remove red-light cameras from six existing intersections and place them at five new locations where a new study shows red-light cameras would have a greater impact on safety.
What Beale wants is what he demanded two years ago, but didn’t get as Emanuel tried to put out a political fire that had threatened to burn him in Chicago’s first mayoral runoff.
“We still haven’t seen a federal study on the yellow [light duration],” Beale said.
That “is what we really were pushing — to have some national standards for the yellow. And to have countdown [clocks] at every one of those intersections,” Beale said.
“They’re trying to put the countdown at each one of those intersections. But it’s not totally done yet. The countdown is key to reducing crashes at these intersections,” he said. “It’s not the yellow. It’s not the red. It’s gonna be that countdown that allows people to understand whether I have enough time to slow down, or do I need to speed up just a little bit to get through the intersection without getting a ticket?”
RELATED: Chicago triples ‘grace period’ for red-light cameras
Earlier this week, City Hall agreed to give red-light runners more time to get through intersections, to deal with what officials called the “dilemma zone” of hesitation and indecision.
Chicago Department of Transportation spokesman Mike Claffey maintained that Emanuel has already delivered on his 2015 promise to install pedestrian countdown timers at all red-light camera intersections.
When red-light cameras are relocated, all of the new intersections will also have countdown timers before tickets are issued, he said. Four of the five new intersections already do, Claffey said.
Last year, the city issued 586,415 red-light tickets — and about 29 percent of those went to motorists who entered the intersection between one-tenths and three-tenths of a second after the light had turned red.
By tripling the “grace period” to three-tenths of a second — as suggested by the Northwestern University Traffic Center — the city is likely to issue 29 percent fewer tickets, according to city Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld.
That could cost the city $17 million in annual revenue from red-light camera tickets.
At Northwestern’s suggestion, Scheinfeld said the city also has agreed to begin the process of removing red-light cameras at: 95th and Stony Island; 71st and Western; Pershing Road and Western Avenue; Grand and Oak Park avenues; Irving Park Road and Kedzie, and Peterson and Pulaski.
Those intersections have two cameras each. Eight of those cameras would then be moved to four intersections: Lake and Wacker; Michigan and Jackson; Grand and Dearborn, and Pershing Road and Martin Luther King Drive. The remaining four cameras would be moved to the area where Central, Foster, Northwest Highway and Milwaukee come together.
Although the city stands to lose big money with fewer tickets, Beale was unimpressed.
“Is that gonna have a big difference as far as the amount of tickets? I don’t think so,” Beale said. “It’s a small step in the right direction. But it’s not getting us where we need to be.”
Beale said he is “not at all” satisfied and won’t be until the city “abides by the national standard” for the duration of yellow lights and installs countdown clocks at all 151 red-light camera intersections.
“That will help tremendously as far as the amount of accidents and red-light violations in the city,” he said.
Earlier this week, Scheinfeld stood her ground on the timing of yellow lights.
“The length of the yellow times, we think, is appropriate for the conditions in Chicago,” she said. “There is a conversation at the national level about timings for yellow signals that we continue to follow. And if the guidance nationally changes, we’ll be taking that into consideration.”
Emanuel inherited the nation’s largest red-light camera program and has had nothing but headaches from it.
He fired the Arizona contractor at the center of a $2 million bribery scandal and replaced Redflex Traffic Systems with Xerox State & Local Solutions Traffic Solutions.
When a Chicago Tribune investigation questioned the legitimacy of thousands of $100 tickets, Emanuel asked Inspector General Joe Ferguson to conduct an exhaustive review of the red-light camera program.
In 2014, Ferguson faulted the Chicago Department of Transportation for exercising “benign neglect” in its oversight of Redflex, allowing both suspicious ticketing spikes and equipment failures that may have cost the city millions to go unnoticed.
The inspector general said he found no evidence of “willful manipulation” by either the city or Redflex to ratchet up the number of tickets.
To the contrary, he found the city’s failure to exercise its legal obligation to oversee the now-fired contractor may have cost the city money.
Changes in the timing of yellow lights did not contribute to the ticketing spikes, the IG concluded. But he nevertheless recommended that CDOT “restore a prior hard 3.0 second yellow-light threshold for violations” to ensure clarity and consistency.
When Xerox took over for Redflex, CDOT gave the new contractor the go-ahead to accept tickets with a yellow light duration of 2.9 seconds to account for slight variations from the signal power source. That generated roughly 77,000 tickets.
Last year, the city issued 586,415 red-light tickets — and about 29 percent of those went to motorists who entered the intersection between one-tenths and three-tenths of a second after the light had turned red.
By tripling the “grace period” to three-tenths of a second — as suggested by the Northwestern University Traffic Center — the city is likely to issue 29 percent fewer tickets, according to city Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld.
That could cost the city $17 million in annual revenue from red-light camera tickets.
At Northwestern’s suggestion, Scheinfeld said the city also has agreed to begin the process of removing red-light cameras at: 95th and Stony Island; 71st and Western; Pershing Road and Western Avenue; Grand and Oak Park avenues; Irving Park Road and Kedzie, and Peterson and Pulaski.
Those intersections have two cameras each. Eight of those cameras would then be moved to four intersections: Lake and Wacker; Michigan and Jackson; Grand and Dearborn, and Pershing Road and Martin Luther King Drive. The remaining four cameras would be moved to the area where Central, Foster, Northwest Highway and Milwaukee come together.
Although the city stands to lose big money with fewer tickets, Beale was unimpressed.
“Is that gonna have a big difference as far as the amount of tickets? I don’t think so,” Beale said. “It’s a small step in the right direction. But it’s not getting us where we need to be.”
Beale said he is “not at all” satisfied and won’t be until the city “abides by the national standard” for the duration of yellow lights and installs countdown clocks at all 151 red-light camera intersections.
“That will help tremendously as far as the amount of accidents and red-light violations in the city,” he said.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
03/21/2017, 06:52pm
Red-light changes nowhere near enough, alderman says
Ald. Anthony Beale (9th), chairman of the City Council’s Transportation Committee, was equally unimpressed with Emanuel’s decision to remove red-light cameras from six existing intersections and place them at five new locations where a new study shows red-light cameras would have a greater impact on safety.
What Beale wants is what he demanded two years ago, but didn’t get as Emanuel tried to put out a political fire that had threatened to burn him in Chicago’s first mayoral runoff.
“We still haven’t seen a federal study on the yellow [light duration],” Beale said.
That “is what we really were pushing — to have some national standards for the yellow. And to have countdown [clocks] at every one of those intersections,” Beale said.
“They’re trying to put the countdown at each one of those intersections. But it’s not totally done yet. The countdown is key to reducing crashes at these intersections,” he said. “It’s not the yellow. It’s not the red. It’s gonna be that countdown that allows people to understand whether I have enough time to slow down, or do I need to speed up just a little bit to get through the intersection without getting a ticket?”
RELATED: Chicago triples ‘grace period’ for red-light cameras
Earlier this week, City Hall agreed to give red-light runners more time to get through intersections, to deal with what officials called the “dilemma zone” of hesitation and indecision.
Chicago Department of Transportation spokesman Mike Claffey maintained that Emanuel has already delivered on his 2015 promise to install pedestrian countdown timers at all red-light camera intersections.
When red-light cameras are relocated, all of the new intersections will also have countdown timers before tickets are issued, he said. Four of the five new intersections already do, Claffey said.
Last year, the city issued 586,415 red-light tickets — and about 29 percent of those went to motorists who entered the intersection between one-tenths and three-tenths of a second after the light had turned red.
By tripling the “grace period” to three-tenths of a second — as suggested by the Northwestern University Traffic Center — the city is likely to issue 29 percent fewer tickets, according to city Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld.
That could cost the city $17 million in annual revenue from red-light camera tickets.
At Northwestern’s suggestion, Scheinfeld said the city also has agreed to begin the process of removing red-light cameras at: 95th and Stony Island; 71st and Western; Pershing Road and Western Avenue; Grand and Oak Park avenues; Irving Park Road and Kedzie, and Peterson and Pulaski.
Those intersections have two cameras each. Eight of those cameras would then be moved to four intersections: Lake and Wacker; Michigan and Jackson; Grand and Dearborn, and Pershing Road and Martin Luther King Drive. The remaining four cameras would be moved to the area where Central, Foster, Northwest Highway and Milwaukee come together.
Although the city stands to lose big money with fewer tickets, Beale was unimpressed.
“Is that gonna have a big difference as far as the amount of tickets? I don’t think so,” Beale said. “It’s a small step in the right direction. But it’s not getting us where we need to be.”
Beale said he is “not at all” satisfied and won’t be until the city “abides by the national standard” for the duration of yellow lights and installs countdown clocks at all 151 red-light camera intersections.
“That will help tremendously as far as the amount of accidents and red-light violations in the city,” he said.
Earlier this week, Scheinfeld stood her ground on the timing of yellow lights.
“The length of the yellow times, we think, is appropriate for the conditions in Chicago,” she said. “There is a conversation at the national level about timings for yellow signals that we continue to follow. And if the guidance nationally changes, we’ll be taking that into consideration.”
Emanuel inherited the nation’s largest red-light camera program and has had nothing but headaches from it.
He fired the Arizona contractor at the center of a $2 million bribery scandal and replaced Redflex Traffic Systems with Xerox State & Local Solutions Traffic Solutions.
When a Chicago Tribune investigation questioned the legitimacy of thousands of $100 tickets, Emanuel asked Inspector General Joe Ferguson to conduct an exhaustive review of the red-light camera program.
In 2014, Ferguson faulted the Chicago Department of Transportation for exercising “benign neglect” in its oversight of Redflex, allowing both suspicious ticketing spikes and equipment failures that may have cost the city millions to go unnoticed.
The inspector general said he found no evidence of “willful manipulation” by either the city or Redflex to ratchet up the number of tickets.
To the contrary, he found the city’s failure to exercise its legal obligation to oversee the now-fired contractor may have cost the city money.
Changes in the timing of yellow lights did not contribute to the ticketing spikes, the IG concluded. But he nevertheless recommended that CDOT “restore a prior hard 3.0 second yellow-light threshold for violations” to ensure clarity and consistency.
When Xerox took over for Redflex, CDOT gave the new contractor the go-ahead to accept tickets with a yellow light duration of 2.9 seconds to account for slight variations from the signal power source. That generated roughly 77,000 tickets.
Last year, the city issued 586,415 red-light tickets — and about 29 percent of those went to motorists who entered the intersection between one-tenths and three-tenths of a second after the light had turned red.
By tripling the “grace period” to three-tenths of a second — as suggested by the Northwestern University Traffic Center — the city is likely to issue 29 percent fewer tickets, according to city Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld.
That could cost the city $17 million in annual revenue from red-light camera tickets.
At Northwestern’s suggestion, Scheinfeld said the city also has agreed to begin the process of removing red-light cameras at: 95th and Stony Island; 71st and Western; Pershing Road and Western Avenue; Grand and Oak Park avenues; Irving Park Road and Kedzie, and Peterson and Pulaski.
Those intersections have two cameras each. Eight of those cameras would then be moved to four intersections: Lake and Wacker; Michigan and Jackson; Grand and Dearborn, and Pershing Road and Martin Luther King Drive. The remaining four cameras would be moved to the area where Central, Foster, Northwest Highway and Milwaukee come together.
Although the city stands to lose big money with fewer tickets, Beale was unimpressed.
“Is that gonna have a big difference as far as the amount of tickets? I don’t think so,” Beale said. “It’s a small step in the right direction. But it’s not getting us where we need to be.”
Beale said he is “not at all” satisfied and won’t be until the city “abides by the national standard” for the duration of yellow lights and installs countdown clocks at all 151 red-light camera intersections.
“That will help tremendously as far as the amount of accidents and red-light violations in the city,” he said.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emanuel administration clears bribe-paying red light camera vendor to bid on contracts Chicago's red light camera system grew to more than 350 cameras and has raised more than $500 million in $100 tickets since 2002. Tribune investigations beginning in 2012 have exposed corruption, failed oversight and inconsistent enforcement in the program.
David Kidwell
Contact ReporterChicago TribuneMayor Rahm Emanuel's administration has reinstated the red light camera vendor it fired after the firm was caught bribing its way into City Hall, making Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. once again eligible to pursue city contracts following a four-year suspension.
The designation of Redflex as a "responsible vendor" comes little more than two weeks after the firm agreed to pay the city $20 million to settle a lawsuit over the company's bribery scheme.
FROM OUR PARTNERS:Natalie Dormer reveals what it's like to be killed off on 'Game of Thrones'Emanuel's chief procurement officer sent the Arizona-based company a letter dated Tuesday announcing that its suspension from city contracts is over. Jamie Rhee cited the company's acceptance of responsibility for its wrongdoing, its efforts at reform and its commitment to pay restitution.
"Based on all of the above … I have determined that the City will not pursue debarment proceedings against RTSI," Rhee wrote, "and I further find that RTSI is a responsible vendor entitled to submit proposals and bids for City contracts.'
PDF: Redflex settlement agreementRedflex CEO Michael Finn said Wednesday his firm intends to vie for city contracts once again.
"The reinstatement is a vital milestone on our road to success," he said in a statement. "The actions we have taken over the last four years have been recognized by our customers, government officials and other experts. Equipped with their trust and our innovative public safety technology, we will pursue contracts in Chicago and continue our efforts throughout the Americas."
The Emanuel administration's decision to allow Redflex to once again be eligible to do business in Chicago surprised some critics of the red light camera ticketing program.
"The timing seems a bit suspect so close to that settlement," said Jacie Zolna, a Chicago lawyer embroiled in a class-action lawsuit with the city over the enforcement of red light camera violations.
"But frankly, after everything I have seen in the last three years litigating this case with the city, nothing the city does seems incredulous to me," Zolna added. "I wouldn't be surprised tomorrow to hear they had hired Donald Trump to run the red light camera program."
Emanuel moved to fire Redflex after the Chicago Tribune exposed the bribery scheme in 2012. According to internal documents obtained by the Tribune, the company was paying a high-level transportation manager named John Bills $1,500 or more for each of the 384 cameras he ordered installed throughout the city.
Red-light cameras in ChicagoIn addition, Bills accepted from Redflex lavish vacation trips, meals, sporting tickets, a car, a boat and even an Arizona condominium. In exchange, Bills coached the company on how to win the contract, orchestrated key votes and even worked to sabotage competitors vying for the contract.
Bills retired in 2011 as the No. 2 person at the city's Transportation Department, was convicted last year at a federal trial and is serving a 10-year prison term. Also sentenced to prison time were former Redflex CEO Karen Finley and a Redflex consultant in Chicago, Martin O'Malley, who acted as Bills' bagman.
After Emanuel moved to fire Redflex, he allowed the company to manage the lucrative ticketing program for more than a year while a new vendor was selected. The program is now run by Conduent, a Xerox subsidiary whose contract runs through October 2018 with the option of three, two-year extensions. Throughout the scandal, the cameras never missed a day.
Earlier this month, the city and Redflex reached a $20 million settlement over a lawsuit filed by the city seeking up to three times the $120 million in fees Redflex collected for its management of the program over a decade.
The company will pay the city in installments through 2023.The first payment of $5 million is due late next month, according to the agreement. The city expects to receive $10 million of the settlement during the current budget year, but the Emanuel administration hasn't said how the money will be spent.
The lawsuit had alleged breach of contract, civil conspiracy, unjust enrichment and payment of kickbacks in connection with city contracts. The bribery scheme helped Redflex build its Chicago program into the largest automated traffic enforcement program in the country.
No more Redflex trials if cooperation continues, prosecutors sayAt trial, Bills' attorney, Nishay Sanan, tried to portray the onetime City Hall insider as a fall guy but provided scant evidence as he tried to blame the scheme on such political luminaries as House Speaker Michael Madigan and former Mayor Richard M. Daley. Bills refused to cooperate with federal prosecutors looking to expand their investigation.
Redflex once used such high-powered city lobbyists as Michael Kasper and William Filan, who both have close ties to Madigan. Kasper also represented Emanuel during a challenge to his Chicago residency when he first ran for mayor. Redflex also used the services of Resolute Consulting, a company owned by Greg Goldner, a former Emanuel campaign manager. A Redflex spokesman said the company no longer hires any Chicago lobbyists.
Since uncovering the bribery scheme, the Tribune exposed a series of additional problems with the red light camera program, including enforcement practices that tagged thousands of drivers during unexplained ticket surges at malfunctioning red light cameras.
In response, the city's inspector general's office reported that both the Daley and Emanuel administrations could not document how or where they chose to place cameras. The watchdog also found that the administrations abdicated their responsibility to ensure the camera system was working properly and instead focused on keeping the cameras rolling — and ticket revenue pouring in.
Emanuel shut down dozens of cameras amid his re-election bid, promised to improve oversight, played down the significance of the findings and sought to refocus public attention on safety benefits.
After the Tribune series, the city offered to review the tickets of some drivers caught in unexplained ticket spikes. Ultimately, though, fewer than 200 tickets were refunded.
The Tribune also commissioned a traffic study that showed that nearly half the city's cameras installed under Bills' watch were placed at intersections that never had many crashes in the first place. In addition the study found that rear-end collisions at those intersections rose 22 percent because of the cameras.
A Tribune investigation also revealed how the Emanuel administration ordered the new camera vendor to issue tickets even when yellow light times dipped below the three-second minimum requirement, how Emanuel's new speed camera program has tagged drivers in school zones without the legally required evidence of a child present, and how many of the most lucrative speed cameras were placed on major thoroughfares where few pedestrians are hit by speeding cars.
All told, the controversial automated traffic enforcement programs have raised more than $600 million in fines.
[email protected]
David Kidwell
Contact ReporterChicago TribuneMayor Rahm Emanuel's administration has reinstated the red light camera vendor it fired after the firm was caught bribing its way into City Hall, making Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. once again eligible to pursue city contracts following a four-year suspension.
The designation of Redflex as a "responsible vendor" comes little more than two weeks after the firm agreed to pay the city $20 million to settle a lawsuit over the company's bribery scheme.
FROM OUR PARTNERS:Natalie Dormer reveals what it's like to be killed off on 'Game of Thrones'Emanuel's chief procurement officer sent the Arizona-based company a letter dated Tuesday announcing that its suspension from city contracts is over. Jamie Rhee cited the company's acceptance of responsibility for its wrongdoing, its efforts at reform and its commitment to pay restitution.
"Based on all of the above … I have determined that the City will not pursue debarment proceedings against RTSI," Rhee wrote, "and I further find that RTSI is a responsible vendor entitled to submit proposals and bids for City contracts.'
PDF: Redflex settlement agreementRedflex CEO Michael Finn said Wednesday his firm intends to vie for city contracts once again.
"The reinstatement is a vital milestone on our road to success," he said in a statement. "The actions we have taken over the last four years have been recognized by our customers, government officials and other experts. Equipped with their trust and our innovative public safety technology, we will pursue contracts in Chicago and continue our efforts throughout the Americas."
The Emanuel administration's decision to allow Redflex to once again be eligible to do business in Chicago surprised some critics of the red light camera ticketing program.
"The timing seems a bit suspect so close to that settlement," said Jacie Zolna, a Chicago lawyer embroiled in a class-action lawsuit with the city over the enforcement of red light camera violations.
"But frankly, after everything I have seen in the last three years litigating this case with the city, nothing the city does seems incredulous to me," Zolna added. "I wouldn't be surprised tomorrow to hear they had hired Donald Trump to run the red light camera program."
Emanuel moved to fire Redflex after the Chicago Tribune exposed the bribery scheme in 2012. According to internal documents obtained by the Tribune, the company was paying a high-level transportation manager named John Bills $1,500 or more for each of the 384 cameras he ordered installed throughout the city.
Red-light cameras in ChicagoIn addition, Bills accepted from Redflex lavish vacation trips, meals, sporting tickets, a car, a boat and even an Arizona condominium. In exchange, Bills coached the company on how to win the contract, orchestrated key votes and even worked to sabotage competitors vying for the contract.
Bills retired in 2011 as the No. 2 person at the city's Transportation Department, was convicted last year at a federal trial and is serving a 10-year prison term. Also sentenced to prison time were former Redflex CEO Karen Finley and a Redflex consultant in Chicago, Martin O'Malley, who acted as Bills' bagman.
After Emanuel moved to fire Redflex, he allowed the company to manage the lucrative ticketing program for more than a year while a new vendor was selected. The program is now run by Conduent, a Xerox subsidiary whose contract runs through October 2018 with the option of three, two-year extensions. Throughout the scandal, the cameras never missed a day.
Earlier this month, the city and Redflex reached a $20 million settlement over a lawsuit filed by the city seeking up to three times the $120 million in fees Redflex collected for its management of the program over a decade.
The company will pay the city in installments through 2023.The first payment of $5 million is due late next month, according to the agreement. The city expects to receive $10 million of the settlement during the current budget year, but the Emanuel administration hasn't said how the money will be spent.
The lawsuit had alleged breach of contract, civil conspiracy, unjust enrichment and payment of kickbacks in connection with city contracts. The bribery scheme helped Redflex build its Chicago program into the largest automated traffic enforcement program in the country.
No more Redflex trials if cooperation continues, prosecutors sayAt trial, Bills' attorney, Nishay Sanan, tried to portray the onetime City Hall insider as a fall guy but provided scant evidence as he tried to blame the scheme on such political luminaries as House Speaker Michael Madigan and former Mayor Richard M. Daley. Bills refused to cooperate with federal prosecutors looking to expand their investigation.
Redflex once used such high-powered city lobbyists as Michael Kasper and William Filan, who both have close ties to Madigan. Kasper also represented Emanuel during a challenge to his Chicago residency when he first ran for mayor. Redflex also used the services of Resolute Consulting, a company owned by Greg Goldner, a former Emanuel campaign manager. A Redflex spokesman said the company no longer hires any Chicago lobbyists.
Since uncovering the bribery scheme, the Tribune exposed a series of additional problems with the red light camera program, including enforcement practices that tagged thousands of drivers during unexplained ticket surges at malfunctioning red light cameras.
In response, the city's inspector general's office reported that both the Daley and Emanuel administrations could not document how or where they chose to place cameras. The watchdog also found that the administrations abdicated their responsibility to ensure the camera system was working properly and instead focused on keeping the cameras rolling — and ticket revenue pouring in.
Emanuel shut down dozens of cameras amid his re-election bid, promised to improve oversight, played down the significance of the findings and sought to refocus public attention on safety benefits.
After the Tribune series, the city offered to review the tickets of some drivers caught in unexplained ticket spikes. Ultimately, though, fewer than 200 tickets were refunded.
The Tribune also commissioned a traffic study that showed that nearly half the city's cameras installed under Bills' watch were placed at intersections that never had many crashes in the first place. In addition the study found that rear-end collisions at those intersections rose 22 percent because of the cameras.
A Tribune investigation also revealed how the Emanuel administration ordered the new camera vendor to issue tickets even when yellow light times dipped below the three-second minimum requirement, how Emanuel's new speed camera program has tagged drivers in school zones without the legally required evidence of a child present, and how many of the most lucrative speed cameras were placed on major thoroughfares where few pedestrians are hit by speeding cars.
All told, the controversial automated traffic enforcement programs have raised more than $600 million in fines.
[email protected]
January 5, 2017
The City of Chicago has started sending out what they are calling "Camera Violation Review Notices" giving 1.2 million drivers a second opportunity to Review and Contest Red Light and Speed Camera tickets going back years. What they are not telling you is it's because they got caught again not following the rules. What they are not telling you is there is a Class Action Suit that, after being Certified to have merit, is moving through the court. What they are not telling you is anything you do at this point might effect your status in that suit.
What do we suggest? If you received a BLUE CAMERA VIOLATION REVIEW NOTICE Download the attached response, input your information including the ticket number, and send it in the envelope the city provided. Your response is due Februay 5, 2017. By sending you the notice the city has verified that you did not receive your due process and you are part of the class action suit.
Download and print the Chicago Response PDF then mail in the envelope provided by the city as your response to their illegal notice.
| chicago_response.pdf |
City admits mistake in trying to fix previous error on red light tickets
David KidwellContact ReporterChicago Tribune
In its effort to clean up a mistake it made on 1.9 million red light and speed-camera tickets, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration has erred again.
In a mass mailing last week to recipients of those tickets, City Hall offered a second chance to appeal the violations. The effort was intended to fend off a class-action lawsuit alleging the city failed to give ticket holders adequate time or notice the first time around.
One problem: The city's ticket website is not allowing many ticket holders to view the violation video or photographic evidence used to issue the fines in the first place.
One attorney said many of his clients who got letters from the city are getting error messages when they go to view their violations, some more than 6 years old.
"It's alarming to me that they would do something like this," said Kimberly Slider, 46, of Sauk Village, who received notices on five red light camera tickets she received in 2010 and 2011. "Of the five, I could only see two of the videos.
"They are just up to the same old money-grabbing tactics," said Slider, an attorney in the consumer fraud division of the Illinois attorney general's office. "I know these tactics when I see them."
Emanuel's Transportation Department spokesman, Michael Claffey, said Friday that "as soon as the city was alerted to this problem, we immediately contacted our vendors for the automated enforcement programs, and they are adding additional resources to get every violation uploaded as soon as possible."
Claffey said the process may take several days, and that to ensure everyone has ample time to contest their violations, the city is extending the deadline for filing the new appeals by two weeks to Feb. 19.
The city offered no explanation for the glitch, but Claffey said some of the data from older tickets — from 2010 and 2011 — still has yet to be uploaded into the system. He also suggested high traffic on the website might be to blame.
"We are updating our website this evening to alert people to the issue and the extension to contest violations," he said.
Claffey also cautioned people to make sure they are checking the correct database on the city's website. Red light camera tickets and speed camera tickets have to be looked up separately, and an error message will appear if the citation number is plugged into the wrong database.
Asked what the city is going to do for those who have already discarded their notices because of the frustration at being unable to see the violation video, Claffey said, "All we can do is apologize."
Claffey added that violation videos can be viewed by entering a vehicle owner and vehicle tag number.
The mass mailing to nearly 1.2 million recipients of 1.9 million tickets offers a second chance to appeal red light camera violations issued between May 23, 2010, and May 14, 2015, or speed camera tickets since May 2012, which is when that program began.
The appeals offer by the city follows a ruling last year by Cook County Circuit Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy denying the city's motion to dismiss a class-action lawsuit alleging the city violated due process by failing to mail out second notices and wait the full 25 days required by law to assess late fees.
Chicago attorney Jacie Zolna, who filed the suit, has called the Emanuel administration's effort to force people to relitigate the city's illegal behavior a sham. On Friday, he scoffed at the idea the city would allow his clients to appeal violations when they cannot see the evidence used to fine them.
"I think they've got another problem here," he said. "It appears to me they have a difficult time doing anything right."
The notice instructs ticket holders to visit the city's website at www.cityofchicago.org/review, but after plugging in the citation and license plate numbers to view the video, many see only the error message "invalid citation/pin number combination."
Zolna said no photos or video were available on 18 of 37 cases of which his office is aware, including two violations sent to him personally. The dates on tickets where no video is available range from 2009 all the way through 2015, Zolna said.
Of six notices for rehearing sent to the Chicago Tribune for violations on company cars, the video evidence was unavailable on only one, a red light camera ticket from 2010.
Zolna's suit was among half a dozen lawsuits that followed a Tribune investigation of corruption and mismanagement within the city's $600 million red light program. The series exposed a $2 million City Hall bribery scheme that brought the traffic cameras to Chicago as well as tens of thousands of tickets that were issued to drivers unfairly.
The investigation found malfunctioning cameras, inconsistent enforcement and millions of dollars in tickets issued purposely by City Hall even after transportation officials knew that yellow light times were dropping below the federal minimum guidelines.
Throughout the scandal, the Emanuel administration has been reluctant to issue refunds, in some cases forcing drivers to file paperwork and apply for a rehearing process some critics have called onerous.
Former City Hall operative John Bills was sentenced to 10 years in prison for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to steer tens of millions of dollars in red light camera contracts to an Arizona company, Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. The former CEO of the company was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in federal prison.
According to testimony at his federal trial, Bills took a cash bribe of up to $2,000 for each of the 384 red light cameras that were installed while he oversaw the program. The Tribune found that up to 40 percent of those cameras made intersections more dangerous by increasing injuries from rear-end crashes by 22 percent.
One of the suits that stemmed from the scandal was filed by the Emanuel administration itself, seeking more than $350 million in damages from Redflex
[email protected]
Twitter @DavidKidwell
David KidwellContact ReporterChicago Tribune
In its effort to clean up a mistake it made on 1.9 million red light and speed-camera tickets, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration has erred again.
In a mass mailing last week to recipients of those tickets, City Hall offered a second chance to appeal the violations. The effort was intended to fend off a class-action lawsuit alleging the city failed to give ticket holders adequate time or notice the first time around.
One problem: The city's ticket website is not allowing many ticket holders to view the violation video or photographic evidence used to issue the fines in the first place.
One attorney said many of his clients who got letters from the city are getting error messages when they go to view their violations, some more than 6 years old.
"It's alarming to me that they would do something like this," said Kimberly Slider, 46, of Sauk Village, who received notices on five red light camera tickets she received in 2010 and 2011. "Of the five, I could only see two of the videos.
"They are just up to the same old money-grabbing tactics," said Slider, an attorney in the consumer fraud division of the Illinois attorney general's office. "I know these tactics when I see them."
Emanuel's Transportation Department spokesman, Michael Claffey, said Friday that "as soon as the city was alerted to this problem, we immediately contacted our vendors for the automated enforcement programs, and they are adding additional resources to get every violation uploaded as soon as possible."
Claffey said the process may take several days, and that to ensure everyone has ample time to contest their violations, the city is extending the deadline for filing the new appeals by two weeks to Feb. 19.
The city offered no explanation for the glitch, but Claffey said some of the data from older tickets — from 2010 and 2011 — still has yet to be uploaded into the system. He also suggested high traffic on the website might be to blame.
"We are updating our website this evening to alert people to the issue and the extension to contest violations," he said.
Claffey also cautioned people to make sure they are checking the correct database on the city's website. Red light camera tickets and speed camera tickets have to be looked up separately, and an error message will appear if the citation number is plugged into the wrong database.
Asked what the city is going to do for those who have already discarded their notices because of the frustration at being unable to see the violation video, Claffey said, "All we can do is apologize."
Claffey added that violation videos can be viewed by entering a vehicle owner and vehicle tag number.
The mass mailing to nearly 1.2 million recipients of 1.9 million tickets offers a second chance to appeal red light camera violations issued between May 23, 2010, and May 14, 2015, or speed camera tickets since May 2012, which is when that program began.
The appeals offer by the city follows a ruling last year by Cook County Circuit Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy denying the city's motion to dismiss a class-action lawsuit alleging the city violated due process by failing to mail out second notices and wait the full 25 days required by law to assess late fees.
Chicago attorney Jacie Zolna, who filed the suit, has called the Emanuel administration's effort to force people to relitigate the city's illegal behavior a sham. On Friday, he scoffed at the idea the city would allow his clients to appeal violations when they cannot see the evidence used to fine them.
"I think they've got another problem here," he said. "It appears to me they have a difficult time doing anything right."
The notice instructs ticket holders to visit the city's website at www.cityofchicago.org/review, but after plugging in the citation and license plate numbers to view the video, many see only the error message "invalid citation/pin number combination."
Zolna said no photos or video were available on 18 of 37 cases of which his office is aware, including two violations sent to him personally. The dates on tickets where no video is available range from 2009 all the way through 2015, Zolna said.
Of six notices for rehearing sent to the Chicago Tribune for violations on company cars, the video evidence was unavailable on only one, a red light camera ticket from 2010.
Zolna's suit was among half a dozen lawsuits that followed a Tribune investigation of corruption and mismanagement within the city's $600 million red light program. The series exposed a $2 million City Hall bribery scheme that brought the traffic cameras to Chicago as well as tens of thousands of tickets that were issued to drivers unfairly.
The investigation found malfunctioning cameras, inconsistent enforcement and millions of dollars in tickets issued purposely by City Hall even after transportation officials knew that yellow light times were dropping below the federal minimum guidelines.
Throughout the scandal, the Emanuel administration has been reluctant to issue refunds, in some cases forcing drivers to file paperwork and apply for a rehearing process some critics have called onerous.
Former City Hall operative John Bills was sentenced to 10 years in prison for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to steer tens of millions of dollars in red light camera contracts to an Arizona company, Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. The former CEO of the company was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in federal prison.
According to testimony at his federal trial, Bills took a cash bribe of up to $2,000 for each of the 384 red light cameras that were installed while he oversaw the program. The Tribune found that up to 40 percent of those cameras made intersections more dangerous by increasing injuries from rear-end crashes by 22 percent.
One of the suits that stemmed from the scandal was filed by the Emanuel administration itself, seeking more than $350 million in damages from Redflex
[email protected]
Twitter @DavidKidwell
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Class action OK'd
in camera case Lawsuit aims to recover city fines and late fees By David Kidwell Chicago Tribune November 2, 2016 A Cook County judge approved class-action status Wednesday for a lawsuit over the city's failure to give adequate notice to red light camera and speed camera violators, substantially increasing the city's potential liability. The lawsuit contends that Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration broke state law when it shortened the time that ticket holders had to contest their violations or pay their fines. The decision by Judge Kathleen Kennedy to approve the proposed class-action means as many as 1.5 million motorists could have a stake in the outcome, not just the two plaintiffs who were named when the lawsuit was first filed. The development came as no surprise to city lawyers, who have been working to stave off the onslaught of claims. In September, the Emanuel administration moved to pass an ordinance that gives those ticket holders affected by the errors a second chance to challenge their tickets retroactively, in some cases years after they had already paid their fines and late fees. Lawyers for the Emanuel administration have tried to downplay the significance of the case, arguing that accelerating the time that people have to pay fines does not change the fact they were speeding or running a red light. But plaintiffs' attorney Jacie Zolna argues that the tickets themselves are fatally flawed because the administration violated due process and should not be allowed a do-over. He is suing to recover all fines and late fees associated with those tickets. “It's big,” he said after court Wednesday. “It essentially means that every ruling in this case could affect millions of people.” Kennedy's ruling was just the latest blow in a lucrative automated camera enforcement program mired in corruption and mismanagement since it began almost 15 years ago. Later this month, the former CEO of Chicago's original camera vendor — Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. — is set to be sentenced for her role in a decadelong $2 million conspiracy to bribe a City Hall insider for every new red light camera that went up throughout the city. At its peak, the program — still the largest in the nation — peppered the city with 384 cameras that have raked in more than $600 million in fines. A Tribune investigation found tens of thousands of tickets were issued improperly at malfunctioning cameras, where yellow lights were too short or city oversight was lacking. In addition, a Tribune-sponsored study found no reduction in injury-related, right-angle crashes at nearly 40 percent of camera locations, while the cameras caused a 22 percent increase in injuries from rear-end collisions throughout the city. Emanuel and his transportation officials insist the program is designed to keep the streets safer — not to raise revenue for a cash-strapped city. Wednesday's ruling affects drivers who were ticketed through May 2015 who were issued a “notice of final determination” before the 21-day window required by law and those who failed to get a second notice and were assessed late fees before the required 25 days had passed. Zolna said that anyone who believes they may fall into this class does not need to take any action at this time. They will be identified and notified of their involvement in the case, he said. If the Emanuel administration gets its way, they will be offered another chance to contest their violation. If Zolna wins, each of them would get a full refund. [email protected] |
Ticket grace period request speeds through process
Columbia Chronicle Metro Reporter Sept 23, 2016 Drivers who received tickets from red light cameras between March 23 and May 14 will receive a second opportunity to either pay or challenge ticket violations. Motorists who receive these notices will have 30 days from the date on which the notice was sent to make their challenge or pay the fine. The new notice was the result of an ordinance passed by City Council on Sept. 14 and introduced by Mayor Rahm Emmanuel after city officials failed to send second notices for tickets issued between those days. Owen Brugh, chief of staff for Alderman John Arena (45th Ward), said the ordinance calls for 1.5 million Chicago motorists to receive their second notice. He said Arena views the ordinance as “unfortunately necessary” in order to fix the procedural mistakes City Hall made. Don Bransford, a spokesman for the Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras, an organization committed to effectively remove the city’s program, said the ordinance is another situation in which City Hall did not follow their own process, and it created mistrust between the city’s government and the community. Chicago’s red light camera program has been a topic of controversy since it was introduced in 2003 under former mayor, Richard M. Daley, and Emanuel made it worse, Bransford said. Originally, someone who received a ticket from a red-light camera had 25 days to pay before a late fee, which doubled the original fine. They were then given a second notice after 21 days, but the city bypassed that process and sent people the late fee fine after 21 days, failing to send out the second notices, Bransford said. Bransford said he has had problems with the speed at which the new ordinance went through the legislative system. He noted that it was introduced late on Sept. 8, taken to City Council on Sept. 12 and put to a vote Sept. 14. Bransford said Emanuel tried to rush this through as quickly as possible so the aldermen will not understand it. Allen Shonenberger, a law professor at Loyola University Chicago agreed the speed of the ordinance’s process is troublesome and said he does not know of another that parallels. However, he added that, “as long as [the time frame] complies with the rules of city council, it can very well be a valid ordinance.” This ordinance is in response to a pending lawsuit accusing City Hall of not sending proper second notices to ticketed individuals due to the city’s red light cameras, according to plaintiff’s attorney, Jacie Zolna of Myron M. Cherry & Associates, LLC. The suit asks for more than $200 million in refunds, he said. The ordinance is an abuse of power, Zolna said. “The people in power at City Hall should be passing legislation that benefits their citizens,” Zolna stated. “[This ordinance is a tool] in pending litigation that uncovered decades-long illegal conduct by city officials.” Zolna added that the plaintiffs’ lawsuit has nothing to do with whether or not the red-light camera program improves safety. That’s a debate for another day, he said. “If [City Hall] is going to put these cameras up and expect the citizens to follow the law, [then they] need to follow the law as well.” Zolna stated. Shoenberger agreed that the ordinance is likely in response to the pending lawsuit. “That’s not the way to run government,” Bransford said. “That’s the way to run gangsters.” Chicago Corporation Counsel Stephen Patton, Managing Deputy Director of the Department of Finance Tina Consola and the Mayor Emanuel’s press office also did not return requests for comment. |
Emanuel to let 1.5 million traffic camera tickets be contested; refunds no sure thing
(Steve Schering / Chicago Tribune) September 9, 2016 Hal Dardick and David Kidwell Chicago Tribune As he tries to get in front of a lawsuit, Mayor Rahm Emanuel plans to offer nearly 1.5 million people who got traffic camera tickets another chance to contest the validity of those fines. But City Hall's top lawyer doesn't expect many of the tickets to be overturned on appeal — from the city's point of view, it's not that the tickets weren't valid, it's just that the government didn't follow a rule that required a second notice of violation to be mailed out. The Emanuel administration's ordinance, which will be considered by aldermen Monday, is in response to a suit calling for complete refunds of tens of millions of dollars worth of fines and late penalties from the time the red light camera ticketing program started in 2003 and May 2015. The review period covers a shorter period of time. Under the ordinance, people hit with red light citations between March 23, 2010, and May 14, 2015, would get a notice in the mail giving them the right to request an administrative hearing to contest their ticket. The same process applies to those who got speed camera tickets since the program started in mid-2012. People receiving second-chance notices would be given 30 days to contest the ticket and seek a refund of the fine and any penalties. To get a refund, they would have to prove to an administrative law judge that the ticket was improperly issued, which Patton said was an unlikely result in the vast majority of cases. "We always maintained and continue to maintain that these are valid tickets," Patton said. "These folks ran red lights." The administration said the time period was determined by the statute of limitations that applies to contesting the citations in court and the date the city eliminated the second-notice requirement in response to the lawsuit. Another provision in the ordinance would affect a much smaller group of people who received tickets, but those folks would be far more likely to get some money back. In July 2012, city code was changed to allow late penalties to be assessed starting 25 days after a ticket payment was due, instead of the 21-day window that had been on the books. City Hall, however, in some cases still assessed $100 late fee penalties at 21 days. Under the ordinance, fewer than 5,000 people who paid late penalties in the small window between 21 and 25 days after receiving their tickets following the code change would get a notice of their right to get their $100 penalty back, Patton said. They would be given 60 days to request that refund, according to a draft of the ordinance. Patton said the proposed ordinance is not a settlement in the suit, which was filed in early 2015, but could form the basis of one. "This is something we are doing because we think it further bolsters our case and is a proactive step to address claims that the individuals who received these tickets were prejudiced by the lack of a second notice," Patton said. "This would provide a fair and reasonable basis for resolving the case, but there can be no assurances of that. But this was a prudent thing to do to bolster our defense." Tribune reporter David Kidwell on the upcoming sentencing in Chicago's red-light cameras scandal. The original 2003 city ordinance setting up the red light ticketing program required the city to send a second notice of a violation before guilt was determined. Last year, three people who got red light tickets sued, claiming the city did not issue the required second notice of violation and doubled the fine for being late too soon. After that suit was filed, the Emanuel administration changed its ordinance in May 2015 to eliminate the requirement for a second notice. Patton said the original 2003 ordinance was partly based on parking ticket procedures, which take into account the possibility that citations placed on vehicles could get blown away or otherwise lost. In the case of automated tickets, the citations are sent out by mail, so no second notice was needed, nor was it required by state law, Patton said. "We imposed a requirement on ourselves that was not legally required and really wasn't necessary for a red light citation," Patton said. Earlier this year, a Cook County circuit court judge denied a city motion to dismiss the suit. In determining the case could proceed, Judge Kathleen Kennedy wrote that plaintiffs' claims of failure to provide the second notice and wait 25 days before assessing late-payment penalties could ultimately be determined to be a violation of "the fundamental principles of justice, equity and good conscience." Chicago attorney Jacie Zolna, who filed the suit, called the Emanuel administration's effort to force people to re-litigate the city's illegal behavior a "kangaroo court" system. "They sped up the time that people had to fight these things, they doubled the fines prematurely and they set up an entire system designed to harm people," he said. "And now they want to use this BS ordinance to suggest they have addressed the problem. ... It's a way for them to avoid paying for their illegal conduct that they have engaged in for a decade, and it's not going to work." Zolna said he'll continue to try to force City Hall to issue full refunds to more than a million ticketholders he says were illegally tagged for fines. Zolna's suit was among half a dozen cases that followed a Tribune investigation of corruption and mismanagement within the city's $600 million red light program. The series exposed a $2 million City Hall bribery scheme that brought the traffic cameras to Chicago as well as tens of thousands of tickets that were issued to drivers unfairly. The investigation found malfunctioning cameras, inconsistent enforcement and millions of dollars in tickets issued purposely by City Hall even after transportation officials knew that yellow light times were dropping below the federal minimum guidelines. Throughout the scandal, the Emanuel administration has been reluctant to issue refunds, in some cases forcing drivers to file paperwork and apply for a rehearing process some critics have called onerous. Last month, former City Hall operative John Bills was sentenced to 10 years in prison for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to steer tens of millions of dollars in red light camera contracts to an Arizona company, Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. According to testimony at his federal trial, Bills took a cash bribe of up to $2,000 for each of the 384 red light cameras that were installed while he oversaw the program. The Tribune found that up to 40 percent of those cameras made intersections more dangerous by increasing injuries from rear-end crashes by 22 percent. One of the suits that stemmed from the scandal was filed by the Emanuel administration itself, seeking more than $350 million in damages from the private company that has admitted paying the bribes, Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. The former CEO of the company has pleaded guilty and is set to be sentenced in November. The Redflex bagman who passed the cash to Bills is set to be sentenced Monday |
OAK BROOK OFFICIALS OPPOSE OAKBROOK TERRACE’S NEW RED LIGHT REVENUE GENERATION PLAN
Oak Brook, Illinois – November 21, 2016
Officials from the Village of Oak Brook have expressed dismay over Oakbrook Terrace’s decision to implement red light cameras at intersection of Route 83 and 22nd Street – a major thoroughfare in Oak Brook – without considering the potential impact on Oak Brook. “It is very disappointing that Oakbrook Terrace is taking a microscopic view of this situation instead of a more global view of the impact on the businesses, residents and visitors to both of our communities,” said Oak Brook Village President Gopal Lalmalani. “We would have appreciated a more neighborly approach to such a significant decision.”
A part of Oak Brook’s discontent arises from the manner in which Oakbrook Terrace handled this matter. Oakbrook Terrace knew that Oak Brook officials previously fought the installation of red light cameras at the intersection when Oakbrook Terrace originally applied for them. IDOT denied the permit at that time. However, Oakbrook Terrace made no efforts to contact Oak Brook during its most recent application process. While Oakbrook Terrace did not contact Oak Brook, Oakbrook Terrace’s representatives represented to IDOT that Oak Brook had been informed in writing – an allegation Oak Brook vigorously disputes.
The installation of red light cameras at the intersection is merely a money grab for Oakbrook Terrace. If Oakbrook Terrace is experiencing financial challenges, its leaders have to find other creative ways to solve its financial problems. If Oakbrook Terrace is concerned about safety, then its City officials would certainly be aware that studies have shown that red light cameras are ineffective and cause more accidents than they prevent, and they would be aware that some municipalities that have implemented them, like Algonquin, have later voted to remove them and the City of Chicago has dramatically reduced its use of such cameras.
In addition, motorists who are confused about the warning signs often do not understand that they may turn right on red as long as they first come to a complete stop. Instead, come to a complete stop and do not turn at all, even though they may do so legally. This will compound traffic at an intersection that is already unusually busy intersection. Oakbrook Terrace has been very successful in attracting new businesses into town, yet did not decide to install red light cameras in locations that would merely impact traffic in Oakbrook Terrace, instead opting to install the cameras at a key access intersection for Oakbrook Center. If Oakbrook Terrace is concerned about safety, it should consider installing the red light cameras at dangerous intersections within the City.
Oak Brook officials have expressed concern about how the installation of the red light cameras would impact the mall, surrounding businesses, and the Village’s most populated community – the residential Oak Brook Club, which is located next to the mall. “It looks like the lost sales revenue will be going to Oakbrook Terrace in the form of fines. We're just saddened that Mayor Ragucci hasn't kept the lines of communication open and never bothered to contact me and the Village regarding this. If this is truly and solely about traffic enforcement and the possibility of reducing accidents, we could have worked with them to help enforce violations at the intersection through a mutual aid agreement if they needed help. Or more importantly, maybe Oak Brook Terrace would be willing to amend the boundary lines between the two Villages and let the Village of Oak Brook incorporate the intersection of Rt. 83 and 22nd and the two adjacent roadways. We could take responsibility for traffic enforcement without the need for red light cameras,” stated Village President Lalmalani.
The circumstances of IDOT’s approval of Oakbrook Terrace’s permit are suspicious. At first, the City presented information regarding the intersection for a three year period of time that was deemed insufficient to warrant the installation of the cameras. Then, for reasons that are unclear, IDOT reconsidered its decision a few months later and determined that a permit was warranted, apparently after viewing only one day of footage of the intersection. Oak Brook learned of Oakbrook Terrace’s permit application only after it was already approved. Oak Brook filed a request with Oakbrook Terrace, and received materials indicating that Oakbrook Terrace falsely represented to IDOT that Oak Brook was informed about the application.
Oak Brook’s Village Manager Riccardo Ginex has indicated that Oak Brook is looking into its legal options, which may include legislative relief formalizing IDOT’s permit application procedures to include a more transparent process with an option of neighboring municipalities to participate.
About the Village of Oak Brook: Founded in 1958, the Village of Oak Brook is located 15 miles west of downtown Chicago and is in proximity to the junction of Interstates 88, 294, and 290. The Village consists mostly of residential subdivisions, with the exception of the Oak Brook Center shopping mall, other retail and office properties along 22nd Street and Interstate 88. Oak Brook is the home of many corporate offices, most notably, the world headquarters of McDonald’s Corporation, Ace Hardware, Tree House Foods, Inland Real Estate and the service club organization Lions Clubs International. Oak Brook is also known for being one of the few municipalities in the Chicago area that does not levy a property tax on residents or businesses. Visit www.oak-brook.org to learn more.
Oak Brook, Illinois – November 21, 2016
Officials from the Village of Oak Brook have expressed dismay over Oakbrook Terrace’s decision to implement red light cameras at intersection of Route 83 and 22nd Street – a major thoroughfare in Oak Brook – without considering the potential impact on Oak Brook. “It is very disappointing that Oakbrook Terrace is taking a microscopic view of this situation instead of a more global view of the impact on the businesses, residents and visitors to both of our communities,” said Oak Brook Village President Gopal Lalmalani. “We would have appreciated a more neighborly approach to such a significant decision.”
A part of Oak Brook’s discontent arises from the manner in which Oakbrook Terrace handled this matter. Oakbrook Terrace knew that Oak Brook officials previously fought the installation of red light cameras at the intersection when Oakbrook Terrace originally applied for them. IDOT denied the permit at that time. However, Oakbrook Terrace made no efforts to contact Oak Brook during its most recent application process. While Oakbrook Terrace did not contact Oak Brook, Oakbrook Terrace’s representatives represented to IDOT that Oak Brook had been informed in writing – an allegation Oak Brook vigorously disputes.
The installation of red light cameras at the intersection is merely a money grab for Oakbrook Terrace. If Oakbrook Terrace is experiencing financial challenges, its leaders have to find other creative ways to solve its financial problems. If Oakbrook Terrace is concerned about safety, then its City officials would certainly be aware that studies have shown that red light cameras are ineffective and cause more accidents than they prevent, and they would be aware that some municipalities that have implemented them, like Algonquin, have later voted to remove them and the City of Chicago has dramatically reduced its use of such cameras.
In addition, motorists who are confused about the warning signs often do not understand that they may turn right on red as long as they first come to a complete stop. Instead, come to a complete stop and do not turn at all, even though they may do so legally. This will compound traffic at an intersection that is already unusually busy intersection. Oakbrook Terrace has been very successful in attracting new businesses into town, yet did not decide to install red light cameras in locations that would merely impact traffic in Oakbrook Terrace, instead opting to install the cameras at a key access intersection for Oakbrook Center. If Oakbrook Terrace is concerned about safety, it should consider installing the red light cameras at dangerous intersections within the City.
Oak Brook officials have expressed concern about how the installation of the red light cameras would impact the mall, surrounding businesses, and the Village’s most populated community – the residential Oak Brook Club, which is located next to the mall. “It looks like the lost sales revenue will be going to Oakbrook Terrace in the form of fines. We're just saddened that Mayor Ragucci hasn't kept the lines of communication open and never bothered to contact me and the Village regarding this. If this is truly and solely about traffic enforcement and the possibility of reducing accidents, we could have worked with them to help enforce violations at the intersection through a mutual aid agreement if they needed help. Or more importantly, maybe Oak Brook Terrace would be willing to amend the boundary lines between the two Villages and let the Village of Oak Brook incorporate the intersection of Rt. 83 and 22nd and the two adjacent roadways. We could take responsibility for traffic enforcement without the need for red light cameras,” stated Village President Lalmalani.
The circumstances of IDOT’s approval of Oakbrook Terrace’s permit are suspicious. At first, the City presented information regarding the intersection for a three year period of time that was deemed insufficient to warrant the installation of the cameras. Then, for reasons that are unclear, IDOT reconsidered its decision a few months later and determined that a permit was warranted, apparently after viewing only one day of footage of the intersection. Oak Brook learned of Oakbrook Terrace’s permit application only after it was already approved. Oak Brook filed a request with Oakbrook Terrace, and received materials indicating that Oakbrook Terrace falsely represented to IDOT that Oak Brook was informed about the application.
Oak Brook’s Village Manager Riccardo Ginex has indicated that Oak Brook is looking into its legal options, which may include legislative relief formalizing IDOT’s permit application procedures to include a more transparent process with an option of neighboring municipalities to participate.
About the Village of Oak Brook: Founded in 1958, the Village of Oak Brook is located 15 miles west of downtown Chicago and is in proximity to the junction of Interstates 88, 294, and 290. The Village consists mostly of residential subdivisions, with the exception of the Oak Brook Center shopping mall, other retail and office properties along 22nd Street and Interstate 88. Oak Brook is the home of many corporate offices, most notably, the world headquarters of McDonald’s Corporation, Ace Hardware, Tree House Foods, Inland Real Estate and the service club organization Lions Clubs International. Oak Brook is also known for being one of the few municipalities in the Chicago area that does not levy a property tax on residents or businesses. Visit www.oak-brook.org to learn more.
|
Was The City a
Co-conspirator With John Bills and Redflex So Dollar Bills didn't roll over and name names but what he has said all along is he was just a middle level guy who had no experience managing a contract and wasn't qualified to be running the largest Red Light Camera Program in the country. Having said that, he was able to do something no other cites were doing. He increased revenue every year while everywhere else saw revenue go down as the drivers learned where the cameras were. Not only did he add more cameras but he was even able to somehow get more tickets and money from some cameras. It took data gleaned from Freedom of Information requests from the Tribune and finally a court order to comply but once the data was available it became clear they weren't always playing by all the rules. So if Bills was a thief and Redflex was a thief isn't it likely that the other party, The City, who also made money off these cameras was a thief too. |
City Finally Moves to Stop John Bills Pension
September 1, 2016 Officials with Chicago’s biggest public retirement system are taking steps to pull the pension of John Bills, the ex-city of Chicago official convicted in the Redflex traffic camera corruption case. The Municipal Employees Benefit and Annuity Fund agreed to suspend Bills’ pension payments effective Sept. 1 and notified him that a hearing to determine whether his benefits should be terminated will be held later in the month, according to a letter obtained through the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. The pension fund’s board of trustees suspended Bills’ pension, pending a determination whether his conviction related to his service as a Chicago employee. Bills, 55, a former city transportation official with ties to Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, former mayor Richard M. Daley and City Hall, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his involvement in the Redflex Traffic Systems camera scandal. He was convicted of 20 counts including bribery, tax evasion and mail fraud. Bills worked for the city for 33 years, rising to the second-highest position in the transportation department. Pension benefits paid to retirees are revoked after a felony conviction related to municipal service according to the Illinois Pension Code. Prior to the suspension, Bills’ MEABF pension for 2016 was estimated to be $111,800, according to the Better Government Association’s Pension Database. Bills has been paid almost $550,000 since his retirement in 2011. Redflex is an Australian-based company with offices in Arizona that specializes in digital photo enhancement technologies, including the red-light camera system in Chicago, which operated between 2003 and today. Mayor Rahm Emanuel cancelled the contract in 2013 after the Chicago Tribune published allegations about the program. Federal prosecutors said Bills accepted at least $560,000 in bribes in the case, though some estimates put the total at greater than $2 million. Bribes also took the form of gifts including a Mercedes-Benz and an Arizona condominium. This story was written and reported by the Better Government Association’s Jared Rutecki. He can be reached at [email protected]. |
John Bills gets 10 Years for Chicago Redlight Camera Bribe
by David Kidwell August 29, 2016 John Bills, the central figure in a massive corruption scheme at City Hall, was sentenced to 10 years in prison Monday for taking up to $2 million in bribes and gifts in return for steering tens of millions of dollars in red light camera contracts to an Arizona company. The sentence came moments after Bills choked up in a packed federal courtroom and apologized for his actions and the shame it brought to his family. Bills, 55, who rose through City Hall as part of the political patronage army of longtime House Speaker Michael Madigan, faced up to 30 years in prison for personally profiting in exchange for helping grow the city’s $600 million red-light camera program into the largest in the nation. The scheme was first exposed by the Chicago Tribune in 2012 Standing with his hands braced on the lectern, Bills had to stop himself several times when he became emotional as he addressed U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall. He said he is still trying to come to terms with how he threw away a good job that provided for his family and promised a steady pension. “I lost all of that,” Bills said as his wife and children watched from the front row of the courtroom gallery. “It’s all gone. It’s all gone because I fell at the finish line.” Bills acknowledged in his statement that his “broken moral compass” had caused him to commit “immoral” acts, but he denied being a “power broker or mastermind” of any criminal scheme. “Your honor, that is not the truth,” Bills said. “I was a mid-level manager who was directed by my superiors and given a responsibility that I obviously wasn’t prepared for.”Bills said he was unable to navigate what was a “broken city contracting process” and was under “intense pressure to begin and expand” the red light camera program. Bills said that despite a potentially long prison sentence, his renewed faith in God has helped him realize his life “is not falling apart, it’s falling into place.” In handing down the sentence, Kendall called Bills' 10-year corruption scheme “a huge setback for the rule of law in the city of Chicago.” Kendall said corruption erodes the public's trust in government and that it takes years to build it back up. “It's like an arrow in your quiver -- once you shoot it, it's gone forever,” she said. Prosecutors had argued that Bills deserved at least 10 years in prison, while his lawyer emphasized that Bills’ wrongdoing didn’t rank with that of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. “Mr. Bills is not ex-Gov. Blagojevich,” Bills lawyer, Nishay Sanan, said in reference to Blagojevich’s 14-year prison term. “He’s not selling Senate seats.” U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon, who led the prosecution of Bills, urged U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall to send a message with her sentence. “Chicago officials need to know that if they choose a path of corruption, the end of that path is a prison cell,” Fardon said. The probation office recommended to the judge that Bills be given a 10-year prison term. A federal jury convicted Bills in January on all 20 counts, including bribery, conspiracy, extortion and fraud after deliberating for only five hours. Sanan had portrayed Bills his client at trial as a fall guy but provided scant evidence as he tried to spread blame for the conspiracy on a phalanx of well-connected lobbyists and Bills’ elected bosses, including such political luminaries as Madigan himself and former Mayor Richard Daley. But even as Sanan publicly argued before jurors that Madigan and Daley were really to blame, Bills was still quietly standing firm in his refusal to cooperate with federal prosecutors looking to expand their investigation. Fardon’s office has repeatedly asked Bills to finger other potential conspirators in exchange for leniency, according to Sanan, who said the most recent request came soon after Bills’ conviction in January. “It has always been his contention that he has no evidence to offer them,” Sanan said. In its sentencing memorandum, the prosecution team — led by Fardon himself — suggested Bills deserved to go to prison for 20 to 30 years based on the massive amount of the bribes, his lack of remorse, violation of public trust and leadership role in the decadelong conspiracy. “To this day, defendant refuses to acknowledge his culpability, instead continuing to deflect and heave blame on others despite the mountain of evidence introduced at trial against him,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Storino. “Chicago has a long, sad history with public corruption. Bills now stands tall in a long line of greedy officials who have carved that tragic history.” Sanan sought a sentence of three to four years in prison for Bills. In court papers, he argued that Bills was never a leader of the conspiracy and that the size of the scheme should be limited only to the value of those payments and gifts Bills acknowledges accepting, about $42,900, not the more than $2 million in bribes. During the two-week trial, jurors heard evidence about how Bills rose through the ranks at City Hall as a top Madigan precinct captain and political operative, eventually becoming the No. 2 manager in the Chicago Department of Transportation during then-Mayor Daley’s administration. John Bills, accused of taking bribes in the city's red light camera corruption scheme, arrives at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago for sentencing on Aug. 29, 2016. According to testimony, Bills began scheming almost immediately after he was handed the responsibility of overseeing the red-light camera pilot project, hatching a plot to steer traffic camera contracts to Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., an Arizona-based firm. Bills manipulated the process to ensure Redflex won the contract, orchestrated votes and met with Daley and Madigan in his efforts to promote the company’s agenda. He coached the company’s executives before their meetings with other city officials and advised them about which lobbyists to hire, what politicians to court and to whom to make political contributions. In return, Redflex showered Bills with more than $560,000 in cash bribes, including up to $2,000 for each of the 384 red-light cameras installed under his watch. The company also lavished hundreds of thousands of dollars more in gifts — including car, a condominium, lavish hotel stays and vacations. All the while, Bills was working to expand the program to include speed and school bus cameras, all in an effort to sweeten his own deal, according to testimony at the trial. When Bills retired from the city in 2011, he went to work in Chicago for a Redflex consultant, Greg Goldner, a former campaign manager to both Daley and Mayor Rahm Emanuel. According to testimony, Redflex was paying Goldner to keep Bills on the payroll. The decadelong conspiracy began to crumble in 2012 when the Tribune began publishing reports about Bills’ cozy relationship with Redflex. The scandal that followed has now prompted four criminal convictions, a half-dozen lawsuits, ongoing criminal investigations of Redflex practices throughout the U.S. and in Australia, the headquarters of its parent company, Redflex Holdings. Karen Finley, the former Redflex chief executive officer, pleaded guilty to her role in the conspiracy and testified for the government at Bills’ trial. She is set to be sentenced in November. Martin O’Malley, a former Chicago consultant for Redflex who testified that he acted as Bills’ bagman, is set to be sentenced next month. Redflex stock, once traded on the Australian exchange for more than $3 per share, was listed at 26 cents last week. The company, once an industry leader in automated camera enforcement, has all but abandoned its red-light camera business in the U.S. and dismissed much of its workforce. Meanwhile, the Emanuel administration is trying to restore public trust in a corrupt program beset by questions over its unfair enforcement practices, mismanagement, failed oversight and dubious safety claims. Emanuel has appointed a team of experts — led by officials at the Northwestern University Transportation Center — to investigate the program and offer reforms. As part of its four-year investigation, the Tribune found tens of thousands of tickets being issued unfairly under the program, as well as many cameras likely causing more accidents than they are preventing. Scientists from Texas A&M University, using data collected by the Tribune, found that up to 40 percent of the cameras Bills was bribed to install are making intersections more dangerous. While the cameras were responsible for a 22 percent increase in rear-end accidents involving injuries, the corresponding reduction in T-bone crashes at those intersections is negligible, the study found. Yet the Emanuel administration has refused to remove most of those cameras, undermining its long-standing contention that the cameras were more about safety than revenue. |
Feds request at least 10 years in prison for center of red-light-camera scandal
By Austin Berg, August 18 12:00 pm
Federal prosecutors on Aug. 15 asked U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall to consider a 10-year sentence “as a floor” for John Bills, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Bills was convicted of 20 counts of fraud, extortion and other crimes in January for his role in steering a lucrative red-light-camera contract toward Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. In return, he received $600,000 in cash, an Arizona condo and other kickbacks from the company. He was formerly the second-in-command at the Chicago Department of Transportation.
Beyond securing $131 million in red-light-camera contracts for Redflex between 2002 and 2011, Bills appeared to do everything in his power to ensure favorable terms for Redflex while expanding the company’s presence in Chicago government.
In doing so, he worked with one of the most powerful politicians in the state, Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan.
The admitted bagman for Bills’ scheme with Redflex, Martin O’Malley, testified that Bills ordered him to give $5,500 to Madigan’s 13th Ward Democratic Organization, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Bills was a top-performing precinct captain for Madigan’s ward operation for decades. And he began his career in Chicago’s Bureau of Electricity, “dubbed ‘Madigan Electric’ due to the number of 13th Ward loyalists employed there,” according to the Tribune.
Not only did Bills help Redflex buy its way into the city’s red-light-camera business, but he also worked to expand Redflex’s presence in Chicago to include speed cameras and stop-sign enforcement.
Federal prosecutors’ evidence showed Bills met with Madigan to discuss speed cameras.
In April 2010, O’Malley sent an email highlighting Bills' efforts: “JB has talked to Speaker of the house Matigan [sic] about Speed. Time for you to have private meeting & presentation!!!”
Less than a year later, Madigan sponsored state legislation allowing speed cameras in Chicago. Former Gov. Pat Quinn signed Senate Bill 965 into law Feb. 6, 2012.
Madigan’s fingerprints don’t end there.
In April 2007, Bills advised Redflex CEO Karen Finley to hire Bill Filan as a lobbyist in order to maintain a strong political presence in Chicago. Finley noted that Bills said Filan “came up w/ Madigan,” and had a “good relat[ionship] w/ Madigan,” as well as Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.
Finley hired Filan later that year.
Prosecutors do not allege improper behavior by Madigan. But his involvement in Bills’ scheming is a case study in how entrenched political gatekeepers run the show in Illinois.
By Austin Berg, August 18 12:00 pm
Federal prosecutors on Aug. 15 asked U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall to consider a 10-year sentence “as a floor” for John Bills, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Bills was convicted of 20 counts of fraud, extortion and other crimes in January for his role in steering a lucrative red-light-camera contract toward Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. In return, he received $600,000 in cash, an Arizona condo and other kickbacks from the company. He was formerly the second-in-command at the Chicago Department of Transportation.
Beyond securing $131 million in red-light-camera contracts for Redflex between 2002 and 2011, Bills appeared to do everything in his power to ensure favorable terms for Redflex while expanding the company’s presence in Chicago government.
In doing so, he worked with one of the most powerful politicians in the state, Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan.
The admitted bagman for Bills’ scheme with Redflex, Martin O’Malley, testified that Bills ordered him to give $5,500 to Madigan’s 13th Ward Democratic Organization, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Bills was a top-performing precinct captain for Madigan’s ward operation for decades. And he began his career in Chicago’s Bureau of Electricity, “dubbed ‘Madigan Electric’ due to the number of 13th Ward loyalists employed there,” according to the Tribune.
Not only did Bills help Redflex buy its way into the city’s red-light-camera business, but he also worked to expand Redflex’s presence in Chicago to include speed cameras and stop-sign enforcement.
Federal prosecutors’ evidence showed Bills met with Madigan to discuss speed cameras.
In April 2010, O’Malley sent an email highlighting Bills' efforts: “JB has talked to Speaker of the house Matigan [sic] about Speed. Time for you to have private meeting & presentation!!!”
Less than a year later, Madigan sponsored state legislation allowing speed cameras in Chicago. Former Gov. Pat Quinn signed Senate Bill 965 into law Feb. 6, 2012.
Madigan’s fingerprints don’t end there.
In April 2007, Bills advised Redflex CEO Karen Finley to hire Bill Filan as a lobbyist in order to maintain a strong political presence in Chicago. Finley noted that Bills said Filan “came up w/ Madigan,” and had a “good relat[ionship] w/ Madigan,” as well as Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.
Finley hired Filan later that year.
Prosecutors do not allege improper behavior by Madigan. But his involvement in Bills’ scheming is a case study in how entrenched political gatekeepers run the show in Illinois.
Chicago Red-light, speed-cam lawsuit gets stronger after deposition
July 15, 2016
Sun Times Reporting
Fran Spielman (http://chicago.suntimes.com/author/fspielmancst/)
A city official’s damaging deposition Thursday appeared to strengthen a lawsuit with the
potential to force cash-strapped Chicago to refund $200 million in fines and late fees paid by
motorists denied due process after receiving red-light camera and speed-camera tickets.
Tina Consola, managing deputy director of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Department of Finance,
acknowledged that City Hall “accelerated the determination of liability on the front end, sped
up late penalties on the back end” and changed the law when a judge raised questions about
the process, according to plaintiffs attorney Jacie Zolna, who questioned Consola.
Potentially more damaging was Consola’s response when Zolna confronted her with a
photograph used to issue a speed-camera ticket to one of his clients accused of going 34
mph near Orr High School in a zone that was marked as having a 20 mph speed limit, but
only when children were present.
“She could not discern whether it was a child in the picture. Yet, she also told me it was a
completely acceptable practice for the city to issue such tickets,” Zolna said Thursday.
“They’re putting the impossible burden on people of trying to determine whether a blob in a
picture is a school child. They’re collecting on tickets that never should have been issued in
the first place.”
“The City continues to believe that it will prevail in this case and nothing said in the
deposition today changes that,” Law Department spokesman Bill McCarey said in an email.
The evidence shows that the plaintis violated the law and received notices of these
violations, and therefore are not entitled to any recovery. We will continue to focus on
defending this case in court, and not on trying the case in the media.”
Zolna also cited several other potentially damaging admissions by Consola. She disclosed
that:
In February 2016, shortly after a judge accused the city of denying motorists due process,
the state stopped siphoning state tax refunds of speed-cam and red-light camera
sco㈙醟aws for fear that Zolna would win the lawsuit.
About a month later, the city stopped booting vehicles owned by speed-camera and redlight
camera scofflaws and stopped asking the state to suspend their driver’s licenses.
When Zolna asked Consola why, an attorney representing the city “refused to let her
answer.”
Around the same time, the city changed its procedures to give motorists 21 days to contest
a notice, instead of 14 days, and lengthened — from 21 to 25 days — the grace period
before late fees are tacked on.
IBM — the company awarded a 10-year, $188 million contract to operate the computer
system used to generate millions of parking, red-light camera and speed-camera tickets
— makes the final determination of when tickets are issued, not the city.
Earlier this year, a Circuit Court judge accused City Hall of violating the “fundamental
principles of justice, equity and good conscience” by issuing thousands of red-light and
speed-camera tickets. The motorists who sued alleged they were denied due process because
they were not given a second notice of their violations.
Technically, Circuit Judge Kathleen Kennedy simply rejected the city’s motion to dismiss the
case and kept alive a lawsuit Zolna filed on behalf of three ticketed motorists.
But the wording of her ruling was so strong there was little doubt thousands of red-light and
speed-camera tickets issued since 2003 would ultimately be nullified, potentially forcing the
city to refund hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and penalties already paid.
“The second notice provision is designed to protect a non-responding violator’s right to
contest a violation before determination of liability issues. This right is generally injured by a
contest a violation before determination of liability issues. This right is generally injured by a
directory reading,” the ruling stated. “Therefore, the term ‘shall’ means mandatory in the
second notice provisions. . . . Because the second notice requirement at issue is mandatory
under the [municipal code of Chicago], the determinations of liability are void and subject to
collateral attack.”
Kennedy ruled that the three named plaintiffs in the case had “sufficiently alleged facts
showing that the city’s retention of payments from determinations made without a second
notice violates the fundamental principles of justice, equity and good conscience.”
“The alleged practice of accelerating late fees without statutory compliance is sufficient to
show a violation of the fundamental principles of justice, equity and good conscience,” the
judge wrote.
Armed with that ruling, Zolna had hoped to forge ahead with his request for class-action
status after months of discovery to determine precisely how many motorists are eligible for
refunds.
He subsequently accused the city of trying to slow that process to a crawl by refusing to
cough up records and produce a “corporate representative” for a deposition. Kennedy then
ordered the deposition.
The stonewalling allegation marked the latest chapter in a long-running saga between Zolna
and the city.
Days after Kennedy’s ruling, Zolna accused Emanuel of changing the rules in the middle of
the game in a move he branded an “admission of guilt” that strengthens his claim to
refunds.
Without fanfare, Emanuel asked the City Council to amend Chicago’s municipal code to drop
the step that Zolna’s lawsuit had accused City Hall of skipping.
No longer would the city be required to send a second notice of violation prior to issuing a
determination of liability against motorists slapped with speed-camera and red-light camera
tickets.
In addition to abolishing the second-notice requirement that Zolna had accused the city of
ignoring, City Hall made an administrative change to correct the due process violation cited
in the lawsuit.
Instead of assessing late penalties whenever motorists don’t pay up within 21 days of a
liability determination, the city started abiding by the 25-day grace period required by law.
July 15, 2016
Sun Times Reporting
Fran Spielman (http://chicago.suntimes.com/author/fspielmancst/)
A city official’s damaging deposition Thursday appeared to strengthen a lawsuit with the
potential to force cash-strapped Chicago to refund $200 million in fines and late fees paid by
motorists denied due process after receiving red-light camera and speed-camera tickets.
Tina Consola, managing deputy director of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Department of Finance,
acknowledged that City Hall “accelerated the determination of liability on the front end, sped
up late penalties on the back end” and changed the law when a judge raised questions about
the process, according to plaintiffs attorney Jacie Zolna, who questioned Consola.
Potentially more damaging was Consola’s response when Zolna confronted her with a
photograph used to issue a speed-camera ticket to one of his clients accused of going 34
mph near Orr High School in a zone that was marked as having a 20 mph speed limit, but
only when children were present.
“She could not discern whether it was a child in the picture. Yet, she also told me it was a
completely acceptable practice for the city to issue such tickets,” Zolna said Thursday.
“They’re putting the impossible burden on people of trying to determine whether a blob in a
picture is a school child. They’re collecting on tickets that never should have been issued in
the first place.”
“The City continues to believe that it will prevail in this case and nothing said in the
deposition today changes that,” Law Department spokesman Bill McCarey said in an email.
The evidence shows that the plaintis violated the law and received notices of these
violations, and therefore are not entitled to any recovery. We will continue to focus on
defending this case in court, and not on trying the case in the media.”
Zolna also cited several other potentially damaging admissions by Consola. She disclosed
that:
In February 2016, shortly after a judge accused the city of denying motorists due process,
the state stopped siphoning state tax refunds of speed-cam and red-light camera
sco㈙醟aws for fear that Zolna would win the lawsuit.
About a month later, the city stopped booting vehicles owned by speed-camera and redlight
camera scofflaws and stopped asking the state to suspend their driver’s licenses.
When Zolna asked Consola why, an attorney representing the city “refused to let her
answer.”
Around the same time, the city changed its procedures to give motorists 21 days to contest
a notice, instead of 14 days, and lengthened — from 21 to 25 days — the grace period
before late fees are tacked on.
IBM — the company awarded a 10-year, $188 million contract to operate the computer
system used to generate millions of parking, red-light camera and speed-camera tickets
— makes the final determination of when tickets are issued, not the city.
Earlier this year, a Circuit Court judge accused City Hall of violating the “fundamental
principles of justice, equity and good conscience” by issuing thousands of red-light and
speed-camera tickets. The motorists who sued alleged they were denied due process because
they were not given a second notice of their violations.
Technically, Circuit Judge Kathleen Kennedy simply rejected the city’s motion to dismiss the
case and kept alive a lawsuit Zolna filed on behalf of three ticketed motorists.
But the wording of her ruling was so strong there was little doubt thousands of red-light and
speed-camera tickets issued since 2003 would ultimately be nullified, potentially forcing the
city to refund hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and penalties already paid.
“The second notice provision is designed to protect a non-responding violator’s right to
contest a violation before determination of liability issues. This right is generally injured by a
contest a violation before determination of liability issues. This right is generally injured by a
directory reading,” the ruling stated. “Therefore, the term ‘shall’ means mandatory in the
second notice provisions. . . . Because the second notice requirement at issue is mandatory
under the [municipal code of Chicago], the determinations of liability are void and subject to
collateral attack.”
Kennedy ruled that the three named plaintiffs in the case had “sufficiently alleged facts
showing that the city’s retention of payments from determinations made without a second
notice violates the fundamental principles of justice, equity and good conscience.”
“The alleged practice of accelerating late fees without statutory compliance is sufficient to
show a violation of the fundamental principles of justice, equity and good conscience,” the
judge wrote.
Armed with that ruling, Zolna had hoped to forge ahead with his request for class-action
status after months of discovery to determine precisely how many motorists are eligible for
refunds.
He subsequently accused the city of trying to slow that process to a crawl by refusing to
cough up records and produce a “corporate representative” for a deposition. Kennedy then
ordered the deposition.
The stonewalling allegation marked the latest chapter in a long-running saga between Zolna
and the city.
Days after Kennedy’s ruling, Zolna accused Emanuel of changing the rules in the middle of
the game in a move he branded an “admission of guilt” that strengthens his claim to
refunds.
Without fanfare, Emanuel asked the City Council to amend Chicago’s municipal code to drop
the step that Zolna’s lawsuit had accused City Hall of skipping.
No longer would the city be required to send a second notice of violation prior to issuing a
determination of liability against motorists slapped with speed-camera and red-light camera
tickets.
In addition to abolishing the second-notice requirement that Zolna had accused the city of
ignoring, City Hall made an administrative change to correct the due process violation cited
in the lawsuit.
Instead of assessing late penalties whenever motorists don’t pay up within 21 days of a
liability determination, the city started abiding by the 25-day grace period required by law.
Feds: Key figure in Chicago red light camera scandal John Bills faces up to 30 years
Chicago Tribune June 14, 2016
Federal prosecutors say the former city official convicted in a decade long bribery scheme that brought red light cameras to Chicago faces up to 30 years in prison under sentencing guidelines because of the "outlandish" scope of his greed.
John Bills, a longtime political operative of House Speaker Michael Madigan who rose to second in command at the city's Transportation Department, faces the unusually harsh sentence for a public corruption case largely because of the size of the $2 million bribery scheme.
The sentencing guidelines call for Bills to be sentenced to 20 to 30 years in federal prison, according to prosecutors and probation officials.
"The scope of Bills' graft — in terms of duration, number of acts of corruption, and range of corrupt benefits — separates this case from the run-of-the-mill bribery and corruption cases," U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon, who led the prosecution, wrote in a sentencing memorandum filed late Monday.
"The wide range of benefits Bills solicited and accepted — one more outlandish than the next — supports the imposition of a lengthy term of imprisonment," Fardon wrote.
A jury in January convicted Bills, 55, on charges he solicited cash bribes of nearly $600,000 in addition to lavish gifts, meals, cars and even an Arizona condominium from red light camera vendor Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. The former CEO of Redflex pleaded guilty to her role and testified against Bills in exchange for leniency at sentencing.
Chicago Tribune June 14, 2016
Federal prosecutors say the former city official convicted in a decade long bribery scheme that brought red light cameras to Chicago faces up to 30 years in prison under sentencing guidelines because of the "outlandish" scope of his greed.
John Bills, a longtime political operative of House Speaker Michael Madigan who rose to second in command at the city's Transportation Department, faces the unusually harsh sentence for a public corruption case largely because of the size of the $2 million bribery scheme.
The sentencing guidelines call for Bills to be sentenced to 20 to 30 years in federal prison, according to prosecutors and probation officials.
"The scope of Bills' graft — in terms of duration, number of acts of corruption, and range of corrupt benefits — separates this case from the run-of-the-mill bribery and corruption cases," U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon, who led the prosecution, wrote in a sentencing memorandum filed late Monday.
"The wide range of benefits Bills solicited and accepted — one more outlandish than the next — supports the imposition of a lengthy term of imprisonment," Fardon wrote.
A jury in January convicted Bills, 55, on charges he solicited cash bribes of nearly $600,000 in addition to lavish gifts, meals, cars and even an Arizona condominium from red light camera vendor Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. The former CEO of Redflex pleaded guilty to her role and testified against Bills in exchange for leniency at sentencing.
Red-Light Cameras Banned in Unincorporated Miami-Dade County
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8, 2016 AT 12:38 P.M.
BY KYLE MUNZENRIEDER
Yellow lights must last at least four seconds, according to state regulation.
The backlash against red-light cameras continues. The Miami-Dade County Commission voted yesterday to rescind the county's power to install the cameras in unincorporated areas. That means you'll never see red-light cameras in places such as Kendall, Westchester, Brownsville, and the Redland.
In 2011, the commission tentatively hopped onboard the red-light camera craze and voted to give the county power to install the equipment in unincorporated areas. The idea was that the devices would provide a steady stream of semiautomated revenue while, in theory at least, keeping streets safer. The county even got as far as putting out a procurement order for 150 red-light cameras in 2015.
However, the county never installed any of those cameras — perhaps because of both popular and legal backlash against the devices. Judges have ruled against certain aspects of red-light camera programs in other municipalities. Efforts to ban the cameras throughout Florida have been introduced in the past few legislative sessions with bipartisan support, although a bill has not yet been passed.
Indeed, the ordinance sponsored by Miami-Dade Commissioner Rebecca Sosa notes the uncertain legal future of red-light cameras.
"The fact that recent legislative and judicial action had shifted certain responsibilities and costs of red light camera programs to law enforcement as opposed to vendors, a lack of a firm revenue model, and pending judicial rulings and legislation that may further alter or eliminate red light camera programs, the report recommended that the County not implement a red-light camera program," reads a portion of the legislation.
The new rule, however, extends to unincorporated Miami-Dade only and has no impact on red-light cameras operated by cities and towns within the county.
Miami-Dade is not the first local government to backtrack on the cameras.North Miami removed all of its red-light cameras last year.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8, 2016 AT 12:38 P.M.
BY KYLE MUNZENRIEDER
Yellow lights must last at least four seconds, according to state regulation.
The backlash against red-light cameras continues. The Miami-Dade County Commission voted yesterday to rescind the county's power to install the cameras in unincorporated areas. That means you'll never see red-light cameras in places such as Kendall, Westchester, Brownsville, and the Redland.
In 2011, the commission tentatively hopped onboard the red-light camera craze and voted to give the county power to install the equipment in unincorporated areas. The idea was that the devices would provide a steady stream of semiautomated revenue while, in theory at least, keeping streets safer. The county even got as far as putting out a procurement order for 150 red-light cameras in 2015.
However, the county never installed any of those cameras — perhaps because of both popular and legal backlash against the devices. Judges have ruled against certain aspects of red-light camera programs in other municipalities. Efforts to ban the cameras throughout Florida have been introduced in the past few legislative sessions with bipartisan support, although a bill has not yet been passed.
Indeed, the ordinance sponsored by Miami-Dade Commissioner Rebecca Sosa notes the uncertain legal future of red-light cameras.
"The fact that recent legislative and judicial action had shifted certain responsibilities and costs of red light camera programs to law enforcement as opposed to vendors, a lack of a firm revenue model, and pending judicial rulings and legislation that may further alter or eliminate red light camera programs, the report recommended that the County not implement a red-light camera program," reads a portion of the legislation.
The new rule, however, extends to unincorporated Miami-Dade only and has no impact on red-light cameras operated by cities and towns within the county.
Miami-Dade is not the first local government to backtrack on the cameras.North Miami removed all of its red-light cameras last year.
Colorado Residents Fight To Save Anti-Camera Referendum
June 7, 2016
Lawsuit filed in county court to force Sheridan, Colorado to allow a public vote on the use of red light and speed cameras.
Residents of Sheridan, Colorado want the public to decide whether or not photo enforcement is used in their community. After being twice denied access to the ballot by city officials, proponents of the referendum decided this time to sue the mayor and city council, accusing them of dirty tricks. .
"We knew we were dealing with people who weren't dealing from the top of the deck," initiative sponsor Paul Houston told TheNewspaper. "Which is why we have to go to an Arapahoe County district court judge to get any justice."
Houston, his son Patrick and the group Ban it Sheridan had collected more than enough signatures to qualify for the ballot -- or so they thought. The city clerk cited a number of technicalities in declaring seventy-eight signatures invalid, bringing the petition just four signatures shy of the minimum required. The group double-checked the invalidated signatures and found that many that had been rejected as "illegible" or "not registered" were, in fact, perfectly valid. Houston expects to have affidavits affirming support for the measure from several of the individuals whose signatures were tossed out by the clerk.
The court challenge provides the voter registration numbers for each of the signatures that the clerk claimed were "not registered" in Sheridan. In one example, a man signed his name without using the "junior" suffix used in the registration rolls. The group claims that, since no other person lives at the listed address with that name, the identity of the voter was not in any way ambiguous. In another example, a valid signature was rejected because the signer only listed "Arapahoe County" as the location, even though her address was located in the city.
Houston believes the city denied the signatures hoping that the anti-petition effort would give up, rather than go to the effort of mounting a court challenge. Last year, the clerk refused to accept Houston's anti-camera petition because of a staple-related error. Houston had removed fasteners from the petition so that he could run them through the copy machine at OfficeMax, not realizing this could be used as a technical ground for invalidating the petitions. This time, Houston refuses to back down, even though he believes the city and its vendor, Xerox, will pour all their resources into the challenge.
"Once Sheridan passes this, or the city council adopts it, the floodgates open," Houston said. "Other cities are going to see that it can be done, and that's why I think we might be facing a major confrontation with these folks."
A judge has not yet been assigned to the case
June 7, 2016
Lawsuit filed in county court to force Sheridan, Colorado to allow a public vote on the use of red light and speed cameras.
Residents of Sheridan, Colorado want the public to decide whether or not photo enforcement is used in their community. After being twice denied access to the ballot by city officials, proponents of the referendum decided this time to sue the mayor and city council, accusing them of dirty tricks. .
"We knew we were dealing with people who weren't dealing from the top of the deck," initiative sponsor Paul Houston told TheNewspaper. "Which is why we have to go to an Arapahoe County district court judge to get any justice."
Houston, his son Patrick and the group Ban it Sheridan had collected more than enough signatures to qualify for the ballot -- or so they thought. The city clerk cited a number of technicalities in declaring seventy-eight signatures invalid, bringing the petition just four signatures shy of the minimum required. The group double-checked the invalidated signatures and found that many that had been rejected as "illegible" or "not registered" were, in fact, perfectly valid. Houston expects to have affidavits affirming support for the measure from several of the individuals whose signatures were tossed out by the clerk.
The court challenge provides the voter registration numbers for each of the signatures that the clerk claimed were "not registered" in Sheridan. In one example, a man signed his name without using the "junior" suffix used in the registration rolls. The group claims that, since no other person lives at the listed address with that name, the identity of the voter was not in any way ambiguous. In another example, a valid signature was rejected because the signer only listed "Arapahoe County" as the location, even though her address was located in the city.
Houston believes the city denied the signatures hoping that the anti-petition effort would give up, rather than go to the effort of mounting a court challenge. Last year, the clerk refused to accept Houston's anti-camera petition because of a staple-related error. Houston had removed fasteners from the petition so that he could run them through the copy machine at OfficeMax, not realizing this could be used as a technical ground for invalidating the petitions. This time, Houston refuses to back down, even though he believes the city and its vendor, Xerox, will pour all their resources into the challenge.
"Once Sheridan passes this, or the city council adopts it, the floodgates open," Houston said. "Other cities are going to see that it can be done, and that's why I think we might be facing a major confrontation with these folks."
A judge has not yet been assigned to the case
Illinois: Six-Figure Fines Levied In Redflex Corruption Trial
June 1, 2016
Chicago, Illinois official must forfeit $680,107 in bribes received from Redflex Traffic Systems. Bagman fined $98,837.
US District Judge Virginia M. Kendall wants the public to know that red light camera crime should not pay. On Friday, she ordered former Chicago, Illinois transportation official John Bills to forfeit to the federal government the $680,107 he received in the form of gifts and cash from Redflex Traffic Systems. A federal jury in January found Bills guilty of taking bribes in return for his assistance in landing the largest red light camera program of its type for the Australian company.
Bills had attempted to get out of paying back the money he received in the form of gifts and cash from Redflex by arguing that the jury's decision was improper, based on evidence provided by Redflex co-conspirators Karen Finley, Aaron Rosenberg and Martin O'Malley, who are admitted liars. This argument centered on an excerpt from an article in the Chicago Tribune newspaper describing the Bills trial.
"Jurors didn't like that the prosecutors relied so heavily on three key witnesses who had won deals... but emails, bank records, and other witnesses buttressed their testimony," the article stated.
Judge Kendall did not buy the interpretation of the article that Bills had posed.
"Despite Bills's arguments to the contrary, this quotation does not indicate that the jury did not rely on the testimony provided by the three witnesses; rather, it shows that the testimony, when supplemented by other evidence, was sufficient for the jury to convict him," the judge wrote in her order. "As such, Bills's contention in no way undermines the government's reliance on the witnesses' testimony regarding Bills's bribery offenses and forfeiture amount."
Judge Kendall also rejected the attempt to spread the $680,107 fine among the co-conspirators, arguing that the forfeiture would be entered according to the amount of personal benefit each individual received. Redflex bagman Martin O'Malley entered a guilty plea last December. He was fined $98,837. Finley's plea bargain allows her to get away without a forfeiture order against her.
Meanwhile, Finley, the former top Redflex executive based in the United States, will not find out how long she will spend behind bars for her role in the Chicago bribery scandal until September 16. Sentencing was delayed once again so that Judge Kendall would make her decision after Ohio District Court Judge George Smith sentences Finley for her role in bribing Cleveland officials. Judge Smith is scheduled to make that decision on August 10
June 1, 2016
Chicago, Illinois official must forfeit $680,107 in bribes received from Redflex Traffic Systems. Bagman fined $98,837.
US District Judge Virginia M. Kendall wants the public to know that red light camera crime should not pay. On Friday, she ordered former Chicago, Illinois transportation official John Bills to forfeit to the federal government the $680,107 he received in the form of gifts and cash from Redflex Traffic Systems. A federal jury in January found Bills guilty of taking bribes in return for his assistance in landing the largest red light camera program of its type for the Australian company.
Bills had attempted to get out of paying back the money he received in the form of gifts and cash from Redflex by arguing that the jury's decision was improper, based on evidence provided by Redflex co-conspirators Karen Finley, Aaron Rosenberg and Martin O'Malley, who are admitted liars. This argument centered on an excerpt from an article in the Chicago Tribune newspaper describing the Bills trial.
"Jurors didn't like that the prosecutors relied so heavily on three key witnesses who had won deals... but emails, bank records, and other witnesses buttressed their testimony," the article stated.
Judge Kendall did not buy the interpretation of the article that Bills had posed.
"Despite Bills's arguments to the contrary, this quotation does not indicate that the jury did not rely on the testimony provided by the three witnesses; rather, it shows that the testimony, when supplemented by other evidence, was sufficient for the jury to convict him," the judge wrote in her order. "As such, Bills's contention in no way undermines the government's reliance on the witnesses' testimony regarding Bills's bribery offenses and forfeiture amount."
Judge Kendall also rejected the attempt to spread the $680,107 fine among the co-conspirators, arguing that the forfeiture would be entered according to the amount of personal benefit each individual received. Redflex bagman Martin O'Malley entered a guilty plea last December. He was fined $98,837. Finley's plea bargain allows her to get away without a forfeiture order against her.
Meanwhile, Finley, the former top Redflex executive based in the United States, will not find out how long she will spend behind bars for her role in the Chicago bribery scandal until September 16. Sentencing was delayed once again so that Judge Kendall would make her decision after Ohio District Court Judge George Smith sentences Finley for her role in bribing Cleveland officials. Judge Smith is scheduled to make that decision on August 10
May 27, 2016
Citizens Launch Petition to End Red Light Cameras in Illinois
Sign Our Petition and help us bring down both Red Light & Speed Cameras
May 15, 2016
Chicago now allows you to contest online
You may now contest your Parking, Compliance, Red Light Camera and Automated Speed Enforcement violations using the City’s new eContest system. Simply click the “Get Started Online” button and follow the instructions to submit evidence for a correspondence hearing or to request an in-person hearing be scheduled for your violation.
If you have any problems accessing the eContest system, please call the City of Chicago helpdesk at 312.744.PARK (7275).
One Red-Light Camera Lawsuit Thrown Out, But Another Is Still Going Forward
April 5, 2016
The Expired Meter.comCHICAGO — On the heels of a ruling allowing one red-light camera lawsuit against the City of Chicago to move forward toward class action status, another Cook County Circuit Court judge put the brakes on another suit on Friday.
Attorneys for the case were hoping to get a green light from the court to move the case to class action status, which they hoped would help them recover more than $600 million in fines, fees and interest paid by vehicle owners.
In her ruling, Cook County Circuit Court Judge Rita Novak threw out the lawsuit.
The suit, Kata v. City of Chicago, has been lingering in Cook County Circuit Court since it was filed four years ago this month. The case was postponed twice while another lawsuit with similar claims, Keating v. City of Chicago, was moving through the appellate court and ultimately the Illinois Supreme Court. But the state supreme court deadlocked on that suit after two justices recused themselves, thus ending that lawsuit.
Kata v. City of Chicago argued that when the city initiated its red-light camera program back in 2003, Illinois law specifically prohibited this type of automated traffic enforcement. But the judge said none of the plaintiff's tickets were older than 2006, the year the Illinois General Assembly approved a law allowing municipalities located in just eight counties to utilize red-light camera enforcement.
The plaintiffs also argued Chicago did not re-enact its own municipal law after the state passed its red-light camera law in 2006. They also claim because the law was crafted to only apply in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, Madison, McHenry, St. Clair and Will counties — and not in all Illinois counties — the law violated Illinois' constitution.
But the judge shot down these arguments as well and agreed with city lawyers who argued the state law was constitutional and the city's law was still valid.
Lead plaintiff attorney Patrick Keating was disappointed in the judge's ruling.
"We're a disappointed and a little surprised by the ruling," he said.
Steve Patton, the city's Corporation Counsel, was happy with the judge's decision to dismiss this case.
"We are pleased that the court dismissed this lawsuit and found the red-light automated enforcement program to be legal and constitutionally sound," Patton said in a statement.
The suit also contended the city had issued 77,000 tickets improperly at intersections where yellow light times were below the 3-second minimum set by federal transportation standards, with some yellow light times as low as 2.89 seconds.
While Novak conceded the possible safety issues with short yellow light times, she agreed with the city's argument that there's no legal force behind the U.S. Department of Transportation's guidelines on street light timing as there's no law on the books mandating minimum yellow light times.
Keating was not sure if they'll appeal the Novak's ruling, but is leaving all possibilities on the table.
"The option at this point would be a motion to reconsider and possibly an appeal to the Illinois Appellate Court," he said. "We're still evaluating those options."
Just six weeks ago, Judge Kathleen Kennedy dealt a blow to the city when she allowed a separate lawsuit challenging how the city administrates its red light and speed camera program to move forward. That lawsuit alleges the city did not follow its own municipal code when it didn’t mail a second notice of violation and then prematurely doubled fines at 21 days instead of the 25 days spelled out in the law.
Chicago's red-light camera program is the nation's largest with 302 cameras at 147 intersections.
April 5, 2016
The Expired Meter.comCHICAGO — On the heels of a ruling allowing one red-light camera lawsuit against the City of Chicago to move forward toward class action status, another Cook County Circuit Court judge put the brakes on another suit on Friday.
Attorneys for the case were hoping to get a green light from the court to move the case to class action status, which they hoped would help them recover more than $600 million in fines, fees and interest paid by vehicle owners.
In her ruling, Cook County Circuit Court Judge Rita Novak threw out the lawsuit.
The suit, Kata v. City of Chicago, has been lingering in Cook County Circuit Court since it was filed four years ago this month. The case was postponed twice while another lawsuit with similar claims, Keating v. City of Chicago, was moving through the appellate court and ultimately the Illinois Supreme Court. But the state supreme court deadlocked on that suit after two justices recused themselves, thus ending that lawsuit.
Kata v. City of Chicago argued that when the city initiated its red-light camera program back in 2003, Illinois law specifically prohibited this type of automated traffic enforcement. But the judge said none of the plaintiff's tickets were older than 2006, the year the Illinois General Assembly approved a law allowing municipalities located in just eight counties to utilize red-light camera enforcement.
The plaintiffs also argued Chicago did not re-enact its own municipal law after the state passed its red-light camera law in 2006. They also claim because the law was crafted to only apply in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, Madison, McHenry, St. Clair and Will counties — and not in all Illinois counties — the law violated Illinois' constitution.
But the judge shot down these arguments as well and agreed with city lawyers who argued the state law was constitutional and the city's law was still valid.
Lead plaintiff attorney Patrick Keating was disappointed in the judge's ruling.
"We're a disappointed and a little surprised by the ruling," he said.
Steve Patton, the city's Corporation Counsel, was happy with the judge's decision to dismiss this case.
"We are pleased that the court dismissed this lawsuit and found the red-light automated enforcement program to be legal and constitutionally sound," Patton said in a statement.
The suit also contended the city had issued 77,000 tickets improperly at intersections where yellow light times were below the 3-second minimum set by federal transportation standards, with some yellow light times as low as 2.89 seconds.
While Novak conceded the possible safety issues with short yellow light times, she agreed with the city's argument that there's no legal force behind the U.S. Department of Transportation's guidelines on street light timing as there's no law on the books mandating minimum yellow light times.
Keating was not sure if they'll appeal the Novak's ruling, but is leaving all possibilities on the table.
"The option at this point would be a motion to reconsider and possibly an appeal to the Illinois Appellate Court," he said. "We're still evaluating those options."
Just six weeks ago, Judge Kathleen Kennedy dealt a blow to the city when she allowed a separate lawsuit challenging how the city administrates its red light and speed camera program to move forward. That lawsuit alleges the city did not follow its own municipal code when it didn’t mail a second notice of violation and then prematurely doubled fines at 21 days instead of the 25 days spelled out in the law.
Chicago's red-light camera program is the nation's largest with 302 cameras at 147 intersections.
Illinois State Rep Ken Dunkin joins Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras
Joined by State Rep Ken Dunkin, Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras held a press conference at it's weekly meeting Feb 26th. Mark Wallace, the groups Executive Director, provided an update on the recent "go ahead" win in the Circuit Court, another case making it's way through the court and the reason Rep Dunkin was there, House Bill 141.
Rep Dunkin shared how, after learning the facts, he had come to the realization that the system was so flawed that it was not fixable. Believing the other reps would agree he introduced HB 141 early last year expecting it to bring about hearings and a vote only to have Speaker Madigan sit on it for over a year,
Another year of Scameras, another $60 Million Dollars. But enough is enough. The state gave the city the authority to install and operate Red Light and Speed cameras and HB 141 takes it away.
Rep Dunkin shared how, after learning the facts, he had come to the realization that the system was so flawed that it was not fixable. Believing the other reps would agree he introduced HB 141 early last year expecting it to bring about hearings and a vote only to have Speaker Madigan sit on it for over a year,
Another year of Scameras, another $60 Million Dollars. But enough is enough. The state gave the city the authority to install and operate Red Light and Speed cameras and HB 141 takes it away.
Judge rules that all red light and speed camera tickets are 'void'
By Clayton GusePosted: Monday February 22 2016, 6:48pm
If you've been pinged with a red-light or speed camera ticket since 2003, you could soon be owed a refund. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, a ruling out of the Cook County Circuit Court on Friday found that Chicago denied due process to motorists who were ticketed by the automated cameras, and that those tickets are now void.
If upheld, the decision would be a near critical blow to the controversial program that's cost Chicagoans millions of dollars over the past decade. It isn't the first time the city's gotten into hot water over the way it's handled the red-light and speed camera programs. Last year, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office sued the city's former red-light camera operator, claiming the whole program stemmed from a bribery scandal under Mayor Richard M. Daley's administration. An investigation by the Tribune also found that the city was guilty of shortening yellow light times at red light camera intersections. Chicago Inspector General Joe Ferguson later argued that the city never shortened yellow light times, it merely changed the standards for ticketing—a completely legal decision made in the name of public safety, according to StreetsBlog Chicago.
All told, the program has been a mess since it launched, and Friday's court case could be a near-knockout blow. The Sun-Times reports that the plaintiffs' lawyer is going to request a class action lawsuit for motorists who were unjustly ticketed since the red light cameras first launched. They're also seeking an injunction that would temporarily stop the city from enforcing outstanding red light and speed camera tickets.
This comes at a time when the city is strapped for cash and desperate for revenue to pay off massive, state-mandated pensions that it's on the hook for. But it looks like this gravy train could be coming to a screeching halt.
By Clayton GusePosted: Monday February 22 2016, 6:48pm
If you've been pinged with a red-light or speed camera ticket since 2003, you could soon be owed a refund. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, a ruling out of the Cook County Circuit Court on Friday found that Chicago denied due process to motorists who were ticketed by the automated cameras, and that those tickets are now void.
If upheld, the decision would be a near critical blow to the controversial program that's cost Chicagoans millions of dollars over the past decade. It isn't the first time the city's gotten into hot water over the way it's handled the red-light and speed camera programs. Last year, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office sued the city's former red-light camera operator, claiming the whole program stemmed from a bribery scandal under Mayor Richard M. Daley's administration. An investigation by the Tribune also found that the city was guilty of shortening yellow light times at red light camera intersections. Chicago Inspector General Joe Ferguson later argued that the city never shortened yellow light times, it merely changed the standards for ticketing—a completely legal decision made in the name of public safety, according to StreetsBlog Chicago.
All told, the program has been a mess since it launched, and Friday's court case could be a near-knockout blow. The Sun-Times reports that the plaintiffs' lawyer is going to request a class action lawsuit for motorists who were unjustly ticketed since the red light cameras first launched. They're also seeking an injunction that would temporarily stop the city from enforcing outstanding red light and speed camera tickets.
This comes at a time when the city is strapped for cash and desperate for revenue to pay off massive, state-mandated pensions that it's on the hook for. But it looks like this gravy train could be coming to a screeching halt.
Northwestern Gets $311,778
To Study Red-Light Camera Program
February 4, 2016 6:37 AM
CHICAGO (STMW) -- Northwestern University will be paid $311,778 to study red-light camera enforcement and chart a path forward for a despised program built on a $2 million bribery scandal that paid a convicted bureaucrat $1,500 for every additional intersection.
Last year, the Chicago Department of Transportation promised to engage a team of academics with expertise in traffic engineering and traffic safety to conduct a “comprehensive review” of the red-light camera program after examining “best practices” across the nation to determine criteria for future removal and placement of cameras.
The contract calls for Northwestern to take the lead on a review that also will include traffic-safety experts from Texas A&M and Florida State Universities.
Last week, the former CDOT managing deputy who oversaw the red-light camera program was convicted of taking up to $2 million in bribes from Arizona-based Redflex Traffic Systems.
During the trial that lifted the veil on a red-light camera program built on bribes — not public safety — federal prosecutors proved that John Bills was getting a kickback of up to $2,000 for every new camera added to a network that became the largest in the nation.
Even after a 20 percent reduction, much of it ordered during last year’s heated mayoral campaign, Chicago has 306 red-light cameras at 151 intersections.
That’s the sordid backdrop for the Northwestern study, but it will not be the focus, said Hani S. Mahmassani, director of NU’s Transportation Center.
Instead, Mahmassani said he will preside over a purely technical study by traffic engineers — intersection-by-intersection — to determine whether red-light cameras installed at Chicago intersections have done the job they were supposed to do.
“We’re looking at the entire history of the program. . . . We’re not getting into any of the politics behind it. That’s not our purview. We’re taking a comprehensive look at intersection safety and the role red-light cameras have played in this based on data and evidence. Safer driver behavior. Compliance with red lights. And, of course, looking at crashes that have occurred at and around intersections that are equipped,” Mahmassani said.
“The second part of the study is to provide recommendations to the city on systematic procedures, scientific-based, that would serve as guidelines to determine where it would be best to deploy the red-light cameras and whether a particular intersection is a good candidate or not for such enforcement. That would then be the basis of shutting off or removing enforcement and, in other places, installing cameras based on the guidelines.”
Mahmassani called the study a “unique opportunity” to restore public confidence in the red-light camera program shaken by a corruption scandal of historic proportions, even by Chicago’s sordid standards.
“The inappropriate behavior of officials over the history of the program may have been a factor. But when we look at all the intersections one-by-one, we’ll be able to see where the improvements have occurred and where these have been warranted,” Mahmassani said.
He said he would not hesitate to recommend removal of “large numbers” of red-light cameras if empirical data justifies it.
After disclosing that the nation’s largest red-light camera program was built on bribery, the Chicago Tribune sponsored its own study conducted by researchers at Texas A&M’s Transportation Institute.
It concluded that Chicago’s red-light cameras were often installed at intersections where they weren’t needed, with only a handful of accidents resulting in injuries, if any accidents at all.
And superfluous cameras installed at more than 70 of those intersections actually caused an increase in rear-end crashes as motorists slammed on the brakes to avoid getting a $100 ticket.
Mahmassani said the Tribune study “had good points.” But, he said, “It’s generally known that, when you introduce red-light camera enforcement, you may experience some increase in rear-end, relatively minor crashes. Where you have reduction is the more dangerous sideswipe, right-angle crashes.”
During the 2015 mayoral campaign, Emanuel removed 50 red-light cameras at 25 more Chicago intersections where accidents have been reduced to put out a political fire that had threatened to burn him in the April 7 runoff.
Last week, the mayor made it clear that Chicago’s red-light camera program was here to stay, even though it was built on a $2 million bribery scandal.
“The corruption is about how the firm got this contract and we’ve made changes in the firm and in the operations of that contract,” the mayor said.
“It still plays a role in safety on our streets as it relates to side crashes. That data is pretty clear. But when the first questions were about the firm and how they got awarded that contract prior to my administration, we sent them out the door,” he said.
Pressed on the alleged arrangement that would pay Bills for every additional intersection where red-light cameras were installed, Emanuel said, “That’s why we’ve made changes.”
But what about removing red-light cameras from even more intersections? The mayor was asked why that isn’t being done based on state accident data.
“I don’t have the exact number, but I think the [number of] red-light camera intersections have been cut by a quarter to a third,” he said.
To Study Red-Light Camera Program
February 4, 2016 6:37 AM
CHICAGO (STMW) -- Northwestern University will be paid $311,778 to study red-light camera enforcement and chart a path forward for a despised program built on a $2 million bribery scandal that paid a convicted bureaucrat $1,500 for every additional intersection.
Last year, the Chicago Department of Transportation promised to engage a team of academics with expertise in traffic engineering and traffic safety to conduct a “comprehensive review” of the red-light camera program after examining “best practices” across the nation to determine criteria for future removal and placement of cameras.
The contract calls for Northwestern to take the lead on a review that also will include traffic-safety experts from Texas A&M and Florida State Universities.
Last week, the former CDOT managing deputy who oversaw the red-light camera program was convicted of taking up to $2 million in bribes from Arizona-based Redflex Traffic Systems.
During the trial that lifted the veil on a red-light camera program built on bribes — not public safety — federal prosecutors proved that John Bills was getting a kickback of up to $2,000 for every new camera added to a network that became the largest in the nation.
Even after a 20 percent reduction, much of it ordered during last year’s heated mayoral campaign, Chicago has 306 red-light cameras at 151 intersections.
That’s the sordid backdrop for the Northwestern study, but it will not be the focus, said Hani S. Mahmassani, director of NU’s Transportation Center.
Instead, Mahmassani said he will preside over a purely technical study by traffic engineers — intersection-by-intersection — to determine whether red-light cameras installed at Chicago intersections have done the job they were supposed to do.
“We’re looking at the entire history of the program. . . . We’re not getting into any of the politics behind it. That’s not our purview. We’re taking a comprehensive look at intersection safety and the role red-light cameras have played in this based on data and evidence. Safer driver behavior. Compliance with red lights. And, of course, looking at crashes that have occurred at and around intersections that are equipped,” Mahmassani said.
“The second part of the study is to provide recommendations to the city on systematic procedures, scientific-based, that would serve as guidelines to determine where it would be best to deploy the red-light cameras and whether a particular intersection is a good candidate or not for such enforcement. That would then be the basis of shutting off or removing enforcement and, in other places, installing cameras based on the guidelines.”
Mahmassani called the study a “unique opportunity” to restore public confidence in the red-light camera program shaken by a corruption scandal of historic proportions, even by Chicago’s sordid standards.
“The inappropriate behavior of officials over the history of the program may have been a factor. But when we look at all the intersections one-by-one, we’ll be able to see where the improvements have occurred and where these have been warranted,” Mahmassani said.
He said he would not hesitate to recommend removal of “large numbers” of red-light cameras if empirical data justifies it.
After disclosing that the nation’s largest red-light camera program was built on bribery, the Chicago Tribune sponsored its own study conducted by researchers at Texas A&M’s Transportation Institute.
It concluded that Chicago’s red-light cameras were often installed at intersections where they weren’t needed, with only a handful of accidents resulting in injuries, if any accidents at all.
And superfluous cameras installed at more than 70 of those intersections actually caused an increase in rear-end crashes as motorists slammed on the brakes to avoid getting a $100 ticket.
Mahmassani said the Tribune study “had good points.” But, he said, “It’s generally known that, when you introduce red-light camera enforcement, you may experience some increase in rear-end, relatively minor crashes. Where you have reduction is the more dangerous sideswipe, right-angle crashes.”
During the 2015 mayoral campaign, Emanuel removed 50 red-light cameras at 25 more Chicago intersections where accidents have been reduced to put out a political fire that had threatened to burn him in the April 7 runoff.
Last week, the mayor made it clear that Chicago’s red-light camera program was here to stay, even though it was built on a $2 million bribery scandal.
“The corruption is about how the firm got this contract and we’ve made changes in the firm and in the operations of that contract,” the mayor said.
“It still plays a role in safety on our streets as it relates to side crashes. That data is pretty clear. But when the first questions were about the firm and how they got awarded that contract prior to my administration, we sent them out the door,” he said.
Pressed on the alleged arrangement that would pay Bills for every additional intersection where red-light cameras were installed, Emanuel said, “That’s why we’ve made changes.”
But what about removing red-light cameras from even more intersections? The mayor was asked why that isn’t being done based on state accident data.
“I don’t have the exact number, but I think the [number of] red-light camera intersections have been cut by a quarter to a third,” he said.
Rep. Dunkin renews call for end to red-light cameras
WRITTEN BY MITCH DUDEK POSTED: 01/31/2016, 04:31PM
State Rep. Ken Dunkin wants House Speaker Mike Madigan to let legislators vote on a bill that would eliminate red-light cameras and speed cameras in Illinois. | Sun-Times file photoState Rep. Ken Dunkin wants House Speaker Mike Madigan to let legislators vote on a bill that would eliminate red-light cameras and speed cameras in Illinois, pointing to the recent federal bribery conviction of a former Chicago official who helped establish the city’s red-light camera program.
“All I’m asking today is for Speaker Mike Madigan to call House Bill 141 that’s been held hostage in the Rules Committee since last spring,” Dunkin, a South Side Democrat, said at a news conference Sunday at the corner of 76th and Stony Island in the shadow of a red-light camera.
About 30 supporters from the group Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras stood behind Dunkin waving signs and chanting in support.
Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said Sunday he was not aware of the effort to block municipalities from installing red-light and speed cameras.
Dunkin insisted Sunday that he’s written several letters to Madigan imploring him to call the bill for a vote.
Dunkin claimed the cameras are a money-making scheme, do not improve safety and were born of corruption that was evidenced by the recent conviction of former Chicago Transportation Department official John Bills, who accepted bribes to steer business to the company that established red-light cameras in Chicago.
The conviction should create a sense of urgency for Madigan to call the bill for a vote, Dunkin said.
“There’s no (legislative) member in their right mind who would not support this legislation,” said Dunkin, who noted the highly unpopular red-light and speed camera programs allow for residents “to be gouged and to be played by the scam of the century.”
Fearing a backlash among voters, Mayor Rahm Emanuel agreed during his re-election campaign in 2015 to remove 50 red-light cameras at relatively safe intersections.
Dunkin has been a thorn in the side of state Democrats. Late last year he refused to hold the party line to reverse social service cuts made by Gov. Bruce Rauner.
WRITTEN BY MITCH DUDEK POSTED: 01/31/2016, 04:31PM
State Rep. Ken Dunkin wants House Speaker Mike Madigan to let legislators vote on a bill that would eliminate red-light cameras and speed cameras in Illinois. | Sun-Times file photoState Rep. Ken Dunkin wants House Speaker Mike Madigan to let legislators vote on a bill that would eliminate red-light cameras and speed cameras in Illinois, pointing to the recent federal bribery conviction of a former Chicago official who helped establish the city’s red-light camera program.
“All I’m asking today is for Speaker Mike Madigan to call House Bill 141 that’s been held hostage in the Rules Committee since last spring,” Dunkin, a South Side Democrat, said at a news conference Sunday at the corner of 76th and Stony Island in the shadow of a red-light camera.
About 30 supporters from the group Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras stood behind Dunkin waving signs and chanting in support.
Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said Sunday he was not aware of the effort to block municipalities from installing red-light and speed cameras.
Dunkin insisted Sunday that he’s written several letters to Madigan imploring him to call the bill for a vote.
Dunkin claimed the cameras are a money-making scheme, do not improve safety and were born of corruption that was evidenced by the recent conviction of former Chicago Transportation Department official John Bills, who accepted bribes to steer business to the company that established red-light cameras in Chicago.
The conviction should create a sense of urgency for Madigan to call the bill for a vote, Dunkin said.
“There’s no (legislative) member in their right mind who would not support this legislation,” said Dunkin, who noted the highly unpopular red-light and speed camera programs allow for residents “to be gouged and to be played by the scam of the century.”
Fearing a backlash among voters, Mayor Rahm Emanuel agreed during his re-election campaign in 2015 to remove 50 red-light cameras at relatively safe intersections.
Dunkin has been a thorn in the side of state Democrats. Late last year he refused to hold the party line to reverse social service cuts made by Gov. Bruce Rauner.
Red light verdict casts harsh light on rationale for cameras
January 30, 2016
David Kidwell and Abraham EptonContact Reporter
Chicago Tribune
Dozens of red light cameras that a Tribune safety study found to be potentially dangerous were placed in low-crash intersections by a corrupt Chicago official who was taking up to $2,000 in bribes for every new camera he ordered.
But most of those cameras are still snapping photos — and raking in millions of dollars in traffic fines for City Hall — even though Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his transportation chief were given scientific evidence more than a year ago that showed many of the cameras are causing more injuries than they prevent.
Those findings take on new significance since a federal jury last week convicted the former City Hall manager of the camera program of taking up to $2 million in bribes from camera vendor Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. Testimony in the trial of John Bills indicated that greed — not safety — was the driving force behind the city's expansion of the camera network into the largest in the nation.
Last week's guilty verdicts against Bills on charges of tax fraud, mail fraud, extortion, conspiracy and bribery followed a four-year Tribune investigation that exposed a camera program rife with corruption, mismanagement, failed oversight and unfair enforcement practices.
The series revealed tens of thousands of tickets issued improperly while Emanuel and his lieutenants defended the program with safety statistics that were false. All the while, the $100 fines continued to roll in, more than $600 million and still counting. None of that revenue was ever used by the city to conduct a scientific study on the effects the cameras have on the streets of Chicago.
The Tribune-sponsored study, conducted by traffic researchers at Texas A&M University's Transportation Institute and first published in December 2014, found the city routinely placed cameras at intersections that had few if any injury-related crash problems, leaving the cameras little room to improve safety.
At the same time, experts found, the unnecessary cameras at more than 70 intersections prompted many drivers to slam on the brakes in efforts to avoid an automated ticket, causing a significant increase in injury-related rear-end crashes near cameras throughout the city.
For years, city officials have been unable to explain how camera locations were chosen when Bills was running the program.
The trial portrayed a brazen scheme in which some of the most important camera placement meetings occurred over corned beef lunches at Manny's deli, and often ended with a stack of $100 bills passed from bagman to Bills in a manila envelope.
National transportation engineering experts who participated in the Tribune investigation said last week they are perplexed at the city's failure to adequately address problems in the program.
"If I was a motorist in the city of Chicago, I would be incredibly angry right now," said Joseph Hummer, chairman of the civil and environmental engineering department at Wayne State University.
"I have to say I am surprised that more than a year later those cameras are still operating," he said. "They should turn off the cameras that were installed for no good engineering reason."
Emanuel and his transportation chief, Rebekah Scheinfeld, have argued the city has done many things to reform the troubled program. Last year, for instance, an ordinance was passed requiring pedestrian countdown timers at each intersection equipped with cameras in order to help drivers gauge the city's three-second yellow light times, which are among the shortest in the nation.
Emanuel hired the Northwestern University Transportation Center to lead a panel of academic experts that is studying the program and is expected to offer suggestions later this year. Last March, just days away from a hotly contested runoff election, Emanuel announced he was ordering cameras removed from 50 intersections as part of his effort to "right the operation."
"It was corrupt, in my view, literally from who got the contract to how it was operated," Emanuel said at the March 8 news conference to announce the shutdown of all camera intersections that had fewer than two right-angle, or T-bone, crashes in the previous year.
In response to Tribune requests, both Emanuel and Scheinfeld declined to be interviewed for this report. The mayor's press office instead issued a statement reiterating what it described as the administration's "far-reaching reforms."
Chicago Tribune investigation reveals red light camera scheme. Jan. 26, 2016. (Chicago Tribune)
Experts say Emanuel's move to shut down cameras is laudable, but falls short of the necessary actions for a program that grew so quickly under such corrupt circumstances and with little or no oversight.
"Any time you hear about bribes, it is not good," said Dominique Lord, the Texas A&M civil engineering professor who led the Tribune study. "But it does support some of the things we found, and it explains somewhat why they didn't do the traffic studies they should have done before installing any cameras.
"The city has to do the right thing," he said. "Either start over from the beginning with a new program or stop issuing tickets until the cameras can be evaluated and removed and to make sure there is evidence the program works the way it should."
Lord and Hummer said any programs designed to promote safety cannot be effective if the public has no confidence they are being run effectively and legitimately. Hummer and other traffic engineering experts quoted in Tribune stories were approached last year by city officials to sit on the reform panel.
One of them, Northwestern's Joseph Schofer, was among the most outspoken of the city's critics. He declined to comment for this report because he now sits on the city panel looking at possible reforms to the program.
The Texas A&M study used data collected by the Tribune under the guidance of experts such as Lord and Hummer. It included characteristics of each intersection, such as number of lanes, traffic flow and speed limits combined with a decade of crash statistics from the Illinois Department of Transportation.
The study also included a control group of similar intersections that never had cameras for comparison. After the data were compiled, the academic researchers applied a complex mathematical formula to strip away any other factors that might have caused changes in crash rates. Then they compared crash rates from periods before and after the camera installations.
What the research concluded largely mirrored the findings of studies done on other, smaller programs throughout the country. Overall, there was a 15 percent reduction in more dangerous T-bone crashes involving injury, but a 22 percent increase in injury-causing rear-end crashes.
Perhaps more significant, the study concluded that the cameras did not reduce T-bone crashes at those intersections that had fewer than four such crashes per year before the cameras were installed. And the lack of safety benefits likely means that the increase in rear-enders made those intersections more dangerous for Chicago drivers.
The Tribune found 73 camera-equipped intersections throughout the city that fit that criteria. Those cameras have earned the city more than $170 million in traffic fines since the program began.
By the time the study was published, cameras had already been taken down at eight of those intersections. Another 10 of the 73 were shut down as part of Emanuel's efforts in March.
That leaves 55 intersections throughout Chicago now equipped with red light cameras that scientists say should never have been installed. Those cameras have collected an estimated $150 million in fines, including more than $17 million since the Tribune study was published in December 2014.
At that time Scheinfeld and her deputies at City Hall sat down with the Tribune to discuss the study, and acknowledged it was a sound scientific analysis.
"So certainly, the study presents an interesting argument, something that we will be considering moving forward," Scheinfeld told the Tribune in 2014. "But the fact is, the important thing I want to make sure that we get across here is that there are less deaths out there, there are less injuries out there and we are very encouraged by that."
Her deputy commissioner, David Zavattero, went even further.
"You have offered a different perspective, a different method, a different data set looking at slightly different crashes," said Zavattero, who has since retired. "I think we are going to take that very seriously and look at some of those same questions."
The lack of a stated rationale behind the camera locations was noted by the city's own inspector general, Joseph Ferguson, in a 2013 investigation that followed Tribune reports.
"It's troubling that CDOT cannot produce documentation or an analysis demonstrating how each camera location was chosen, including all of those currently in operation," Ferguson wrote.
John Bills, accused of taking bribes at City Hall, discusses a red light camera expansion with Aaron Rosenberg from Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. Published Jan. 19, 2016. (U.S. attorney’s office)
Bills, 54, faces a sentence that could exceed 20 years in federal prison for accepting between $1,500 and $2,000 in cash from Redflex for every new camera that was installed — 384 at the program's peak. In addition, witnesses testified, he took lavish gifts including luxury vacations, golf outings, pricey meals, a Mercedes convertible, a speed boat, even a condominium near Redflex's headquarters in Arizona.
In exchange, prosecutors showed, Bills steered the lucrative city contract to Redflex, sabotaged its competitors, and then oversaw the program's expansion from a pilot project at two intersections to a revenue-generating machine for a cash-strapped city.
Despite his conviction, Bills maintains his innocence. At trial, his defense alleged that the cash did not flow to him, but to a phalanx of well-connected lobbyists with ties to powerful elected officials such as Mayor Richard M. Daley and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.
Federal authorities have never implicated any lobbyists or politicians in the scheme, which garnered Redflex contracts worth more than $130 million before the company was ousted from the city in 2013.
The company's former CEO, Karen Finley, and former top salesman, Aaron Rosenberg, testified against Bills after cutting deals for leniency with federal prosecutors. Rosenberg, who told jurors he was Bills' handler-in-chief for the company, was granted immunity.
January 30, 2016
David Kidwell and Abraham EptonContact Reporter
Chicago Tribune
Dozens of red light cameras that a Tribune safety study found to be potentially dangerous were placed in low-crash intersections by a corrupt Chicago official who was taking up to $2,000 in bribes for every new camera he ordered.
But most of those cameras are still snapping photos — and raking in millions of dollars in traffic fines for City Hall — even though Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his transportation chief were given scientific evidence more than a year ago that showed many of the cameras are causing more injuries than they prevent.
Those findings take on new significance since a federal jury last week convicted the former City Hall manager of the camera program of taking up to $2 million in bribes from camera vendor Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. Testimony in the trial of John Bills indicated that greed — not safety — was the driving force behind the city's expansion of the camera network into the largest in the nation.
Last week's guilty verdicts against Bills on charges of tax fraud, mail fraud, extortion, conspiracy and bribery followed a four-year Tribune investigation that exposed a camera program rife with corruption, mismanagement, failed oversight and unfair enforcement practices.
The series revealed tens of thousands of tickets issued improperly while Emanuel and his lieutenants defended the program with safety statistics that were false. All the while, the $100 fines continued to roll in, more than $600 million and still counting. None of that revenue was ever used by the city to conduct a scientific study on the effects the cameras have on the streets of Chicago.
The Tribune-sponsored study, conducted by traffic researchers at Texas A&M University's Transportation Institute and first published in December 2014, found the city routinely placed cameras at intersections that had few if any injury-related crash problems, leaving the cameras little room to improve safety.
At the same time, experts found, the unnecessary cameras at more than 70 intersections prompted many drivers to slam on the brakes in efforts to avoid an automated ticket, causing a significant increase in injury-related rear-end crashes near cameras throughout the city.
For years, city officials have been unable to explain how camera locations were chosen when Bills was running the program.
The trial portrayed a brazen scheme in which some of the most important camera placement meetings occurred over corned beef lunches at Manny's deli, and often ended with a stack of $100 bills passed from bagman to Bills in a manila envelope.
National transportation engineering experts who participated in the Tribune investigation said last week they are perplexed at the city's failure to adequately address problems in the program.
"If I was a motorist in the city of Chicago, I would be incredibly angry right now," said Joseph Hummer, chairman of the civil and environmental engineering department at Wayne State University.
"I have to say I am surprised that more than a year later those cameras are still operating," he said. "They should turn off the cameras that were installed for no good engineering reason."
Emanuel and his transportation chief, Rebekah Scheinfeld, have argued the city has done many things to reform the troubled program. Last year, for instance, an ordinance was passed requiring pedestrian countdown timers at each intersection equipped with cameras in order to help drivers gauge the city's three-second yellow light times, which are among the shortest in the nation.
Emanuel hired the Northwestern University Transportation Center to lead a panel of academic experts that is studying the program and is expected to offer suggestions later this year. Last March, just days away from a hotly contested runoff election, Emanuel announced he was ordering cameras removed from 50 intersections as part of his effort to "right the operation."
"It was corrupt, in my view, literally from who got the contract to how it was operated," Emanuel said at the March 8 news conference to announce the shutdown of all camera intersections that had fewer than two right-angle, or T-bone, crashes in the previous year.
In response to Tribune requests, both Emanuel and Scheinfeld declined to be interviewed for this report. The mayor's press office instead issued a statement reiterating what it described as the administration's "far-reaching reforms."
Chicago Tribune investigation reveals red light camera scheme. Jan. 26, 2016. (Chicago Tribune)
Experts say Emanuel's move to shut down cameras is laudable, but falls short of the necessary actions for a program that grew so quickly under such corrupt circumstances and with little or no oversight.
"Any time you hear about bribes, it is not good," said Dominique Lord, the Texas A&M civil engineering professor who led the Tribune study. "But it does support some of the things we found, and it explains somewhat why they didn't do the traffic studies they should have done before installing any cameras.
"The city has to do the right thing," he said. "Either start over from the beginning with a new program or stop issuing tickets until the cameras can be evaluated and removed and to make sure there is evidence the program works the way it should."
Lord and Hummer said any programs designed to promote safety cannot be effective if the public has no confidence they are being run effectively and legitimately. Hummer and other traffic engineering experts quoted in Tribune stories were approached last year by city officials to sit on the reform panel.
One of them, Northwestern's Joseph Schofer, was among the most outspoken of the city's critics. He declined to comment for this report because he now sits on the city panel looking at possible reforms to the program.
The Texas A&M study used data collected by the Tribune under the guidance of experts such as Lord and Hummer. It included characteristics of each intersection, such as number of lanes, traffic flow and speed limits combined with a decade of crash statistics from the Illinois Department of Transportation.
The study also included a control group of similar intersections that never had cameras for comparison. After the data were compiled, the academic researchers applied a complex mathematical formula to strip away any other factors that might have caused changes in crash rates. Then they compared crash rates from periods before and after the camera installations.
What the research concluded largely mirrored the findings of studies done on other, smaller programs throughout the country. Overall, there was a 15 percent reduction in more dangerous T-bone crashes involving injury, but a 22 percent increase in injury-causing rear-end crashes.
Perhaps more significant, the study concluded that the cameras did not reduce T-bone crashes at those intersections that had fewer than four such crashes per year before the cameras were installed. And the lack of safety benefits likely means that the increase in rear-enders made those intersections more dangerous for Chicago drivers.
The Tribune found 73 camera-equipped intersections throughout the city that fit that criteria. Those cameras have earned the city more than $170 million in traffic fines since the program began.
By the time the study was published, cameras had already been taken down at eight of those intersections. Another 10 of the 73 were shut down as part of Emanuel's efforts in March.
That leaves 55 intersections throughout Chicago now equipped with red light cameras that scientists say should never have been installed. Those cameras have collected an estimated $150 million in fines, including more than $17 million since the Tribune study was published in December 2014.
At that time Scheinfeld and her deputies at City Hall sat down with the Tribune to discuss the study, and acknowledged it was a sound scientific analysis.
"So certainly, the study presents an interesting argument, something that we will be considering moving forward," Scheinfeld told the Tribune in 2014. "But the fact is, the important thing I want to make sure that we get across here is that there are less deaths out there, there are less injuries out there and we are very encouraged by that."
Her deputy commissioner, David Zavattero, went even further.
"You have offered a different perspective, a different method, a different data set looking at slightly different crashes," said Zavattero, who has since retired. "I think we are going to take that very seriously and look at some of those same questions."
The lack of a stated rationale behind the camera locations was noted by the city's own inspector general, Joseph Ferguson, in a 2013 investigation that followed Tribune reports.
"It's troubling that CDOT cannot produce documentation or an analysis demonstrating how each camera location was chosen, including all of those currently in operation," Ferguson wrote.
John Bills, accused of taking bribes at City Hall, discusses a red light camera expansion with Aaron Rosenberg from Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. Published Jan. 19, 2016. (U.S. attorney’s office)
Bills, 54, faces a sentence that could exceed 20 years in federal prison for accepting between $1,500 and $2,000 in cash from Redflex for every new camera that was installed — 384 at the program's peak. In addition, witnesses testified, he took lavish gifts including luxury vacations, golf outings, pricey meals, a Mercedes convertible, a speed boat, even a condominium near Redflex's headquarters in Arizona.
In exchange, prosecutors showed, Bills steered the lucrative city contract to Redflex, sabotaged its competitors, and then oversaw the program's expansion from a pilot project at two intersections to a revenue-generating machine for a cash-strapped city.
Despite his conviction, Bills maintains his innocence. At trial, his defense alleged that the cash did not flow to him, but to a phalanx of well-connected lobbyists with ties to powerful elected officials such as Mayor Richard M. Daley and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.
Federal authorities have never implicated any lobbyists or politicians in the scheme, which garnered Redflex contracts worth more than $130 million before the company was ousted from the city in 2013.
The company's former CEO, Karen Finley, and former top salesman, Aaron Rosenberg, testified against Bills after cutting deals for leniency with federal prosecutors. Rosenberg, who told jurors he was Bills' handler-in-chief for the company, was granted immunity.
BILLS CONVICTED IN REDFLEX BRIBE CASE
Former City Hall insider faces at least 10 years for taking $2 million in payoffs
BY DAVID KIDWELL AND JASON MEISNER CHICAGO TRIBUNE
In a sweeping victory for federal authorities, a jury wasted little time Tuesday before convicting John Bills on all 20 counts, finding that the former Chicago city official took up to $2 million in bribes and gifts in return for steering tens of millions of dollars in red light camera contracts to an Arizona company.
With his conviction on mail and wire fraud, bribery, extortion, conspiracy and tax fraud charges, Bills faces at least 10 years in prison and possibly more than 20 years, his attorney said.
A stoic Bills hugged his defense team and his crying wife moments after the verdict. On his way out of the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, the former longtime City Hall insider stopped to shake hands with reporters but declined to discuss the outcome.
“John is going to continue to fight for his innocence,” said his lawyer, Nishay Sanan. “The fight is not over. The people who are guilty of this know who they are, (but) we don’t expect them to come forward.”
The verdict comes almost four years after a Tribune investigation began uncovering the bribery scheme in a series of stories over many months.
During closing arguments Monday, Sanan attempted to deflect blame for the massive scheme on a handful of well-connected lobbyists hired by camera vendor Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., saying they funneled the bribes “upstairs” to influence some of Chicago’s most powerful elected officials who helped legalize and expand the red light and speed camera programs.
U.S. Attorney Zachary Far-don, who had scoffed during his own closing argument at Sanan’s dramatic allegations as “malarkey,” vowed after the verdict that his office would continue to ferret out corruption.
“Public corruption is a disease, it is a cancer, it is insidious,” he said. “... At the end of the day, the taxpayers of the city of Chicago deserve an honest day for an honest dollar from their public servants.”
Jurors took less than five hours to convict Bills, 54, of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and lavish gifts from Redflex executives in return for steering more than $130 million in business to the company over the decade-long scheme.
The conviction further undercuts City Hall’s long contention that the lucrative program was designed to promote safety and not revenue.
A study by the Tribune — which first exposed the scandal in 2012 — showed last year that nearly half the red light cameras have resulted in no reduction in dangerous T-bone crashes and likely are making intersections more dangerous because of an increase in rear-end crashes as people stop short to avoid a ticket.
Most of those cameras are still up and running, even though the Emanuel administration has promised reforms. During his re-election bid last spring, Emanuel ordered some 80 cameras taken down.
“We’ve made changes in the firm and in the operations for that contract,” Emanuel told reporters Monday. “It still plays a role in safety on our streets as it relates to side crashes, that data’s pretty clear.”
While many jurors leaving the courthouse Tuesday declined to comment about their deliberations, one juror said that while the evidence against Bills was plentiful, the trial raised as many questions as it answered.
“Where else does it lead, you have to wonder,” said Michael Woerner, 63, a former Hinsdale village president. “There’s got to be somebody above him. Why didn’t he cut a deal? That was the big question.”
Woerner, who lives in Burr Ridge, said those questions and others bubbled to the surface at times during deliberations.
“But every time somebody started to talk about it, somebody else would say, ‘We have a lot of work to do, let’s get to it,’ ” he said.
Jurors sifted through the evidence on each of the 20 counts, one by one, according to Woerner.
“It smelled,” he said. “We all felt the same way, that we knew what the end result would be, but we had to go through all the evidence and make sure they proved the case on each count. All of the 12 of us were on the same page, and we all got along.’’
Jurors didn’t like that prosecutors relied so heavily on three key witnesses who had won deals, Woerner said, but emails, bank records and other witnesses buttressed their testimony.
“You wished there was a smoking gun, a picture of someone handing him the cash, and there wasn’t,” Woerner said. “But it was so close to that.”
During the two-week trial, Fardon and his team presented evidence that Bills advised Redflex about which well-connected lobbyists to hire, what politicians to court, where to make contributions and how to navigate the political intrigue at City Hall. Evidence also showed that Bills met with then-Mayor Richard M. Daley and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan in his efforts to promote the company’s agenda.
But prosecutors never called a single one of the high-priced lobbyists hired by Redflex, let alone any of the politicians whom they alleged met with Bills to discuss the program’s expansion.
“Whether it’s the Chicago Way or not — and I love the city of Chicago — I don’t think corruption is unique to Chicago,” Fardon told a scrum of reporters, cameramen and photographers in the courthouse lobby after the verdict. “I think it’s important that law enforcement be there to make sure there is accountability where the public’s trust is violated.”
Sanan said Bills’ sentence could depend on whether he’s tagged for the total amount of the bribes or — worse for him — the total amount of the Redflex contracts.
U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall set his sentencing for May 5. Bills remains free on bond.
The lifelong resident of Chicago’s South Side worked for the city for 32 years, rising from a street lamp repairman to the $139,000-a-year managing deputy commissioner in the city’s Department of Transportation.
He was also a top-earning lieutenant in Madigan’s powerful patronage army, serving as a top precinct captain for more than two decades, much of which he spent as a supervisor in the city’s Bureau of Electricity, long known as “Madigan Electric” because of the number of patronage workers loyal to Madigan’s 13th Ward political organization.
Bills worked campaigns for Daley and Madigan, getting out the vote and raising political cash for their favored candidates.
According to witnesses and evidence presented at trial, those political connections put Bills in a unique position to manipulate the levers of power and help Redflex expand its business.
He was convicted of taking nearly $600,000 in cash through a Chicago man hired by Redflex as a consultant. But Martin O’Malley was really just a bagman who collected more than $2 million in commissions for new cameras installed throughout Chicago. He testified that he met Bills in 2002 at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and applied for the Redflex job at his direction.
According to O’Malley, the commissions would be passed to Bills in an envelope over lunch at such famous Chicago eateries as Manny’s Deli, long known as a hot spot for political power lunches.
The O’Malley commissions also went to pay for an Arizona condominium, a speedboat, a Mercedes-Benz, even Bills’ June 2011 retirement party when he left the city and soon took a job on Redflex’s payroll working with Resolute Consulting.
The consulting firm, owned by longtime Chicago political power broker Greg Goldner, was hired by Red-flex around the same time the company was pushing to expand its red light cameras to include speed cameras.
Goldner was a former campaign manager for Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Daley.
Former Redflex CEO Karen Finley and her top salesman, Aaron Rosenberg, also testified that Red-flex paid the tab for hotel stays, rental cars, golf outings and pricey meals for Bills throughout the 10-year relationship.
In exchange, they testified, Bills worked his magic at City Hall, orchestrating votes and meeting with powerful aldermen, Daley and Madigan. He sabotaged potential competitors, allowed Redflex to draft contract provisions and went against the advice of city lawyers to give Redflex the advantages it sought.
But Finley, Rosenberg and O’Malley all turned government informants in exchange for more lenient sentences.
Sanan portrayed each as admitted liars who were framing Bills for a scheme they hatched with their team of Chicago lobbyists and consultants. Among them were Goldner; Michael Kasper, a longtime confidant to Madigan and a lawyer who represented Emanuel in a high-profile residency fight when he first ran for mayor; William Filan, a statehouse lobbyist with longtime ties to Madigan; and William Griffin and Mark Fary, two other lobbyists closely aligned with Daley.
All those names were introduced by prosecutors as part of Redflex’s efforts to navigate Illinois politics. In his closing arguments, Sanan told jurors to ask themselves why the well-connected lobbyists and the politicians were never called to testify.
“That money went to lobbyists who funneled it upstairs,” he told jurors. “You don’t give that kind of money to a guy like John Bills. You give it to people who can get things done.”
When it came Fardon’s turn to respond, he called Sanan’s argument “malarkey,” “baloney” and “crazy.”
“The idea that lobbyists were paid to funnel money to people like Mike Madigan and Ed Burke and Rahm Emanuel is pretty grandiose,” he said, “but there is not one single shred of evidence that supports any of it.”
Fardon’s team did, however, offer evidence that Bills counseled Redflex executives on what lobbyists to hire in order to court favor with Daley and Madigan. In addition, they said Bills ordered O’Malley to use bribe money to contribute a total of $5,500 to Madigan’s political war chest as well as to a nonprofit foundation supported by the mayor.
Rosenberg testified under a grant of immunity from prosecution, while Finley and O’Malley have both pleaded guilty for their roles in the conspiracy. Finley also pleaded guilty to a similar but smaller bribery scheme in Columbus, Ohio, in which she admitted the company hired lobbyists as a conduit for bribes to elected officials.
Finley and O’Malley testified they expect sentences of less than five years in prison each because of their cooperation.
“He doesn’t want to die in jail,” Sanan said of O’Malley, 75, in closing arguments. “Nor does he want to implicate the well-oiled machine of Chicago. He was a salesman before, he’s a salesman now, and he’s trying to sell you a load.”
Sanan argued that Bills’ frequent use of cash came from his lucrative side business selling sports tickets and memorabilia, not from any bribery scheme.
Woerner, the juror, said that admission made jurors’ job on the tax fraud counts “a slam dunk.”
“Those were the easiest counts of all,” he said. “He reported none of that income.”
Woerner acknowledged he had hoped his political experience as Hinsdale village president would keep him off the jury. But those feelings changed after he was picked.
“I was very surprised when I was selected,” he said. “That’s why I brought it up, hoping that it would keep me off the jury. But in the end it was a very rewarding experience.
“There’s clearly a lot of corruption going on in the city of Chicago, and that’s why we were there. We hope this sends a message, but it really hasn’t happened yet, has it?”
Woerner was the only juror who agreed to be interviewed. Others declined to speak or could not be reached Tuesday.
In the courthouse lobby, Woerner was asked by a television reporter about what he took away from the experience.
“Big picture?” said Woerner, a half-dozen microphones in his face. “Nationally we see a lot of the corruption exposed by reporters, and in this case it was the Chicago Tribune. And at the same time, you see all these cuts at newspapers and you wonder, after they are all gone, who will be left to look for it?”
Chicago Tribune’s John Byrne contributed. [email protected] [email protected]
Former City Hall insider faces at least 10 years for taking $2 million in payoffs
BY DAVID KIDWELL AND JASON MEISNER CHICAGO TRIBUNE
In a sweeping victory for federal authorities, a jury wasted little time Tuesday before convicting John Bills on all 20 counts, finding that the former Chicago city official took up to $2 million in bribes and gifts in return for steering tens of millions of dollars in red light camera contracts to an Arizona company.
With his conviction on mail and wire fraud, bribery, extortion, conspiracy and tax fraud charges, Bills faces at least 10 years in prison and possibly more than 20 years, his attorney said.
A stoic Bills hugged his defense team and his crying wife moments after the verdict. On his way out of the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, the former longtime City Hall insider stopped to shake hands with reporters but declined to discuss the outcome.
“John is going to continue to fight for his innocence,” said his lawyer, Nishay Sanan. “The fight is not over. The people who are guilty of this know who they are, (but) we don’t expect them to come forward.”
The verdict comes almost four years after a Tribune investigation began uncovering the bribery scheme in a series of stories over many months.
During closing arguments Monday, Sanan attempted to deflect blame for the massive scheme on a handful of well-connected lobbyists hired by camera vendor Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., saying they funneled the bribes “upstairs” to influence some of Chicago’s most powerful elected officials who helped legalize and expand the red light and speed camera programs.
U.S. Attorney Zachary Far-don, who had scoffed during his own closing argument at Sanan’s dramatic allegations as “malarkey,” vowed after the verdict that his office would continue to ferret out corruption.
“Public corruption is a disease, it is a cancer, it is insidious,” he said. “... At the end of the day, the taxpayers of the city of Chicago deserve an honest day for an honest dollar from their public servants.”
Jurors took less than five hours to convict Bills, 54, of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and lavish gifts from Redflex executives in return for steering more than $130 million in business to the company over the decade-long scheme.
The conviction further undercuts City Hall’s long contention that the lucrative program was designed to promote safety and not revenue.
A study by the Tribune — which first exposed the scandal in 2012 — showed last year that nearly half the red light cameras have resulted in no reduction in dangerous T-bone crashes and likely are making intersections more dangerous because of an increase in rear-end crashes as people stop short to avoid a ticket.
Most of those cameras are still up and running, even though the Emanuel administration has promised reforms. During his re-election bid last spring, Emanuel ordered some 80 cameras taken down.
“We’ve made changes in the firm and in the operations for that contract,” Emanuel told reporters Monday. “It still plays a role in safety on our streets as it relates to side crashes, that data’s pretty clear.”
While many jurors leaving the courthouse Tuesday declined to comment about their deliberations, one juror said that while the evidence against Bills was plentiful, the trial raised as many questions as it answered.
“Where else does it lead, you have to wonder,” said Michael Woerner, 63, a former Hinsdale village president. “There’s got to be somebody above him. Why didn’t he cut a deal? That was the big question.”
Woerner, who lives in Burr Ridge, said those questions and others bubbled to the surface at times during deliberations.
“But every time somebody started to talk about it, somebody else would say, ‘We have a lot of work to do, let’s get to it,’ ” he said.
Jurors sifted through the evidence on each of the 20 counts, one by one, according to Woerner.
“It smelled,” he said. “We all felt the same way, that we knew what the end result would be, but we had to go through all the evidence and make sure they proved the case on each count. All of the 12 of us were on the same page, and we all got along.’’
Jurors didn’t like that prosecutors relied so heavily on three key witnesses who had won deals, Woerner said, but emails, bank records and other witnesses buttressed their testimony.
“You wished there was a smoking gun, a picture of someone handing him the cash, and there wasn’t,” Woerner said. “But it was so close to that.”
During the two-week trial, Fardon and his team presented evidence that Bills advised Redflex about which well-connected lobbyists to hire, what politicians to court, where to make contributions and how to navigate the political intrigue at City Hall. Evidence also showed that Bills met with then-Mayor Richard M. Daley and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan in his efforts to promote the company’s agenda.
But prosecutors never called a single one of the high-priced lobbyists hired by Redflex, let alone any of the politicians whom they alleged met with Bills to discuss the program’s expansion.
“Whether it’s the Chicago Way or not — and I love the city of Chicago — I don’t think corruption is unique to Chicago,” Fardon told a scrum of reporters, cameramen and photographers in the courthouse lobby after the verdict. “I think it’s important that law enforcement be there to make sure there is accountability where the public’s trust is violated.”
Sanan said Bills’ sentence could depend on whether he’s tagged for the total amount of the bribes or — worse for him — the total amount of the Redflex contracts.
U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall set his sentencing for May 5. Bills remains free on bond.
The lifelong resident of Chicago’s South Side worked for the city for 32 years, rising from a street lamp repairman to the $139,000-a-year managing deputy commissioner in the city’s Department of Transportation.
He was also a top-earning lieutenant in Madigan’s powerful patronage army, serving as a top precinct captain for more than two decades, much of which he spent as a supervisor in the city’s Bureau of Electricity, long known as “Madigan Electric” because of the number of patronage workers loyal to Madigan’s 13th Ward political organization.
Bills worked campaigns for Daley and Madigan, getting out the vote and raising political cash for their favored candidates.
According to witnesses and evidence presented at trial, those political connections put Bills in a unique position to manipulate the levers of power and help Redflex expand its business.
He was convicted of taking nearly $600,000 in cash through a Chicago man hired by Redflex as a consultant. But Martin O’Malley was really just a bagman who collected more than $2 million in commissions for new cameras installed throughout Chicago. He testified that he met Bills in 2002 at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and applied for the Redflex job at his direction.
According to O’Malley, the commissions would be passed to Bills in an envelope over lunch at such famous Chicago eateries as Manny’s Deli, long known as a hot spot for political power lunches.
The O’Malley commissions also went to pay for an Arizona condominium, a speedboat, a Mercedes-Benz, even Bills’ June 2011 retirement party when he left the city and soon took a job on Redflex’s payroll working with Resolute Consulting.
The consulting firm, owned by longtime Chicago political power broker Greg Goldner, was hired by Red-flex around the same time the company was pushing to expand its red light cameras to include speed cameras.
Goldner was a former campaign manager for Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Daley.
Former Redflex CEO Karen Finley and her top salesman, Aaron Rosenberg, also testified that Red-flex paid the tab for hotel stays, rental cars, golf outings and pricey meals for Bills throughout the 10-year relationship.
In exchange, they testified, Bills worked his magic at City Hall, orchestrating votes and meeting with powerful aldermen, Daley and Madigan. He sabotaged potential competitors, allowed Redflex to draft contract provisions and went against the advice of city lawyers to give Redflex the advantages it sought.
But Finley, Rosenberg and O’Malley all turned government informants in exchange for more lenient sentences.
Sanan portrayed each as admitted liars who were framing Bills for a scheme they hatched with their team of Chicago lobbyists and consultants. Among them were Goldner; Michael Kasper, a longtime confidant to Madigan and a lawyer who represented Emanuel in a high-profile residency fight when he first ran for mayor; William Filan, a statehouse lobbyist with longtime ties to Madigan; and William Griffin and Mark Fary, two other lobbyists closely aligned with Daley.
All those names were introduced by prosecutors as part of Redflex’s efforts to navigate Illinois politics. In his closing arguments, Sanan told jurors to ask themselves why the well-connected lobbyists and the politicians were never called to testify.
“That money went to lobbyists who funneled it upstairs,” he told jurors. “You don’t give that kind of money to a guy like John Bills. You give it to people who can get things done.”
When it came Fardon’s turn to respond, he called Sanan’s argument “malarkey,” “baloney” and “crazy.”
“The idea that lobbyists were paid to funnel money to people like Mike Madigan and Ed Burke and Rahm Emanuel is pretty grandiose,” he said, “but there is not one single shred of evidence that supports any of it.”
Fardon’s team did, however, offer evidence that Bills counseled Redflex executives on what lobbyists to hire in order to court favor with Daley and Madigan. In addition, they said Bills ordered O’Malley to use bribe money to contribute a total of $5,500 to Madigan’s political war chest as well as to a nonprofit foundation supported by the mayor.
Rosenberg testified under a grant of immunity from prosecution, while Finley and O’Malley have both pleaded guilty for their roles in the conspiracy. Finley also pleaded guilty to a similar but smaller bribery scheme in Columbus, Ohio, in which she admitted the company hired lobbyists as a conduit for bribes to elected officials.
Finley and O’Malley testified they expect sentences of less than five years in prison each because of their cooperation.
“He doesn’t want to die in jail,” Sanan said of O’Malley, 75, in closing arguments. “Nor does he want to implicate the well-oiled machine of Chicago. He was a salesman before, he’s a salesman now, and he’s trying to sell you a load.”
Sanan argued that Bills’ frequent use of cash came from his lucrative side business selling sports tickets and memorabilia, not from any bribery scheme.
Woerner, the juror, said that admission made jurors’ job on the tax fraud counts “a slam dunk.”
“Those were the easiest counts of all,” he said. “He reported none of that income.”
Woerner acknowledged he had hoped his political experience as Hinsdale village president would keep him off the jury. But those feelings changed after he was picked.
“I was very surprised when I was selected,” he said. “That’s why I brought it up, hoping that it would keep me off the jury. But in the end it was a very rewarding experience.
“There’s clearly a lot of corruption going on in the city of Chicago, and that’s why we were there. We hope this sends a message, but it really hasn’t happened yet, has it?”
Woerner was the only juror who agreed to be interviewed. Others declined to speak or could not be reached Tuesday.
In the courthouse lobby, Woerner was asked by a television reporter about what he took away from the experience.
“Big picture?” said Woerner, a half-dozen microphones in his face. “Nationally we see a lot of the corruption exposed by reporters, and in this case it was the Chicago Tribune. And at the same time, you see all these cuts at newspapers and you wonder, after they are all gone, who will be left to look for it?”
Chicago Tribune’s John Byrne contributed. [email protected] [email protected]
Bills trial continues with testiminy from Redflex ex President
David KidwellContact ReporterChicago Tribune
The often secret but legendary power politics at City Hall played a major role in a bribery scheme that propelled Chicago's red light camera program into the largest in the nation, a key player testified Wednesday.
Karen Finley, 55, the ousted CEO of Redflex Traffic Systems, told federal jurors that among the many benefits her company reaped from paying bribes to a political insider was his advice on which connected lobbyists to hire and what politicians to court.
John Bills, whose longtime political connections helped him rise through the ranks at City Hall to become the No. 2 official in the city's Department of Transportation, is on trial on charges he took up to $2 million in bribes and gifts from Redflex and Finley.
The scheme was first exposed by the Tribune in 2012.
Finley, who pleaded guilty in August after working out a deal with prosecutors, said she first met Bills in 2003 over drinks in the Signature Lounge atop the John Hancock Center. The get-together came on the eve of a key meeting at City Hall as Redflex prepared for a "head-to-head faceoff" with a competitor over the lucrative Chicago deal.
Former Redflex CEO Karen Finley arrives to the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago on Aug. 20, 2015, before her guilty plea.
(Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)
"We sat and talked with John, and the essence of the discussion was giving Redflex some tips in working with the city, how to navigate the process, what we were up against, that sort of stuff," Finley testified.
Redflex won the initial contract, but a political problem arose in 2007 as Bills was pushing to give Redflex a deal to expand the program in a "sole sourced" deal that would have eliminated any competition as the number of cameras installed throughout the city grew to more than 100.
Finley testified that one of Redflex's main competitors for the business had aligned itself with 14th Ward Ald. Edward Burke, the dean of the City Council and chairman of its powerful Finance Committee.
The competing vendor, American Traffic Solutions, had complained about Bills' cozy relationship with Redflex, and Burke — a decadeslong political ally to the owner of an ATS subcontractor — had worked to torpedo the sole-sourced deal.
In response, Redflex decided that it needed more clout than just Bills' influence at City Hall and sought out his advice on how to accomplish that goal, Finley testified. She said Bills recommended an all-out political attack.
Jurors were shown Finley's note of one conversation with Bills in which he advised her to hire longtime lobbyist William Filan because of his close ties toIllinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, who also runs the vaunted 13th Ward Regular Political Organization.
"Filan — Mike Madigan, speaker of the house, daughter is attorney general," Finley scribbled on a piece of paper as she spoke with Bills. "Filan came up with Madigan — stronger than Burke (Madigan)."
Bills rose through the ranks at City Hall as a precinct captain and top fundraiser in Madigan's political army. Prosecutors have made no allegations that Madigan or any other elected official has done anything improper on Bills' behalf.
Bills attorney, Nishay Sanan, opened his questioning of Finley by asking her how she pulled off another bribery scheme she pleaded guilty to in Columbus, Ohio.
"In that case you hired a lobbyist who bribed elected officials, correct?" he asked.
"Yes," she said.
Ex-Redflex exec pleads guilty to helping orchestrate $2M bribery scheme
Sanan has repeatedly argued that Bills did not have the power or authority to steer tens of millions of dollars in contracts to Redflex.
Finley testified that she hired Filan on Bills' advice, as well as other lobbyists, and that Redflex eventually emerged with the contract. Filan did not return a telephone message Wednesday. Other well-connected lobbyists and consultants hired by Redflex at the time included Greg Goldner, Mark Fary, Bill Griffin and Michael Kasper.
Finley said Bills warned her about political sabotage at City Hall, including fears that Redflex's bid could be doomed if a page or two from its proposal was "accidentally" lost.
"There was a concern that one of the (competitors) might have gotten to someone in procurement," she said.
Under questioning from U.S. AttorneyZachary Fardon, Finley also testified that Bills was working at City Hall to bring more business to Redflex from the very beginning of their relationship — and those plans included expanding to mobile speed camera vans as well as cameras on buses, at stoplights and even on the city's fleet of street sweepers.
"He was very good at getting more systems installed in the city," she said.
Fardon showed jurors numerous emails that detailed Bills' cozy relationship with Redflex.
"John Bills very much wants Redflex to continue to be the exclusive provider of camera enforcement equipment in the city," one high-level company executive wrote Oct. 11, 2004, in an email to Finley and others. "It is very clear that Mayor (Richard M.) Daley has embraced camera enforcement and wants to expand the program to include other things (i.e: street sweepers, city busses, etc.). John is convinced that, based upon prior experience, this concept will become a very hot item very quickly.
"He has told us that with the current financial situation in the city (they may actually lay off workers this week) he sees very little chance that they would reject another public safety program that also happens to generate revenue," wrote Robert Warner, the director of customer management for Redflex.
Finley testified that Redflex was struggling to pay its bills in 2003 when the Chicago deal first arose.
"Redflex was very cash-strapped," she said. "We were really struggling with cash flow, making payroll and paying vendors. It was a really tough time.
"Chicago was a major city, and Redflex didn't have any major cities at that time."
Redflex salesman testifies his role was 'to keep John Bills happy'
She also testified about the company's hiring of a Chicago consultant who was paid $1,500 to $2,000 in commissions for every new camera that was installed, money that was then intended for Bills.
She said she initially had doubts about hiring Martin O'Malley for the job because he lacked experience and computer savvy, but she testified that she was still only a vice president in 2003 and her concerns were overruled by then CEO Bruce Higgins.
"Basically, he was John's guy and we were going to hire him," Finley said she was told. "Whenever I tried to fight with Bruce on something, I didn't win, and it really wasn't a battle I wanted to take up."
But O'Malley's commissions became a problem within the company after the program — and the commission checks — began to expand in 2006 and 2007, Finley said. She recalled the fallout on one occasion when O'Malley mistakenly filed a $52,000 commission invoice to Bill Braden, the construction manager in Redflex's Chicago office.
"I didn't want Bill Braden to know what kind of money Marty O'Malley was making because it was so much more than Bill and he was a harder worker than Marty," Finley testified.
Jurors were shown an email string between Finley and another Redflex executive, Jennifer Dwiggens, in which Finley sought advice on how to explain O'Malley's exorbitant pay.
"I haven't come up with any spin that he couldn't see through in a second," Dwiggens wrote to Finley in May 2007. "Maybe it's best that he learn about it and learn what the real world is truly like. It's not like it would do any good to bitch about this to John Bills. It may make him very angry, but that's not necessarily a bad thing."
"Very good point," Finley replied.
Finley also testified about Bills' demand that Redflex give him a job after he retired in 2011 after a 32-year career with the city.
Friends say red light camera figure always paid with wads of cash
She said she turned to Goldner, another politically connected consultant hired by Redflex to promote red light and speed camera enforcement. Goldner, who owned Resolute Consulting, had managed campaigns for Mayors Daley and Rahm Emanuel.
Finley was shown an email she had received from Redflex's general counsel about hiring Bills.
"I have introduced John Bills to Kasper and Resolute," Andrejs Bunkse wrote in the email in June 2011. "They both will be able to give him a job. Bills is happy."
After he retired from the city that same month, Bills took a part-time, $35,000-a-year post on an obscure Cook County employee appeals board long known as a haven for those with political clout. Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle has refused to say who asked her to appoint Bills to the post.
Kasper, a longtime lawyer and political ally to Madigan, said Wednesday he played no role and that the email read in federal court Wednesday was mistaken.
"I have never had a role in getting him a job," Kasper said.
Bills also took a job working for a Redflex-funded nonprofit run by Resolute.
Finley teared up early in her testimony when Fardon asked about the impact of her guilty plea.
"I will have a felony record for the rest of my life," she testified, her voice cracking with emotion.
Finley, who was fired as president and CEO of Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. after Tribune stories exposed the corruption, said her plea deal calls for up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
In exchange, she said, she promised to provide truthful testimony in the government's case against Bills.
Fardon also questioned Finley about numerous false statements she has made to her own staff, in depositions, internal Redflex investigations, even in initial interviews with federal agents.
"Ms. Finley, why did you lie over and over again about this scheme?" Fardon asked.
"I was scared," she said.
[email protected]
Twitter @davidkidwell1
David KidwellContact ReporterChicago Tribune
The often secret but legendary power politics at City Hall played a major role in a bribery scheme that propelled Chicago's red light camera program into the largest in the nation, a key player testified Wednesday.
Karen Finley, 55, the ousted CEO of Redflex Traffic Systems, told federal jurors that among the many benefits her company reaped from paying bribes to a political insider was his advice on which connected lobbyists to hire and what politicians to court.
John Bills, whose longtime political connections helped him rise through the ranks at City Hall to become the No. 2 official in the city's Department of Transportation, is on trial on charges he took up to $2 million in bribes and gifts from Redflex and Finley.
The scheme was first exposed by the Tribune in 2012.
Finley, who pleaded guilty in August after working out a deal with prosecutors, said she first met Bills in 2003 over drinks in the Signature Lounge atop the John Hancock Center. The get-together came on the eve of a key meeting at City Hall as Redflex prepared for a "head-to-head faceoff" with a competitor over the lucrative Chicago deal.
(Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)
"We sat and talked with John, and the essence of the discussion was giving Redflex some tips in working with the city, how to navigate the process, what we were up against, that sort of stuff," Finley testified.
Redflex won the initial contract, but a political problem arose in 2007 as Bills was pushing to give Redflex a deal to expand the program in a "sole sourced" deal that would have eliminated any competition as the number of cameras installed throughout the city grew to more than 100.
Finley testified that one of Redflex's main competitors for the business had aligned itself with 14th Ward Ald. Edward Burke, the dean of the City Council and chairman of its powerful Finance Committee.
The competing vendor, American Traffic Solutions, had complained about Bills' cozy relationship with Redflex, and Burke — a decadeslong political ally to the owner of an ATS subcontractor — had worked to torpedo the sole-sourced deal.
In response, Redflex decided that it needed more clout than just Bills' influence at City Hall and sought out his advice on how to accomplish that goal, Finley testified. She said Bills recommended an all-out political attack.
Jurors were shown Finley's note of one conversation with Bills in which he advised her to hire longtime lobbyist William Filan because of his close ties toIllinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, who also runs the vaunted 13th Ward Regular Political Organization.
"Filan — Mike Madigan, speaker of the house, daughter is attorney general," Finley scribbled on a piece of paper as she spoke with Bills. "Filan came up with Madigan — stronger than Burke (Madigan)."
Bills rose through the ranks at City Hall as a precinct captain and top fundraiser in Madigan's political army. Prosecutors have made no allegations that Madigan or any other elected official has done anything improper on Bills' behalf.
Bills attorney, Nishay Sanan, opened his questioning of Finley by asking her how she pulled off another bribery scheme she pleaded guilty to in Columbus, Ohio.
"In that case you hired a lobbyist who bribed elected officials, correct?" he asked.
"Yes," she said.
Sanan has repeatedly argued that Bills did not have the power or authority to steer tens of millions of dollars in contracts to Redflex.
Finley testified that she hired Filan on Bills' advice, as well as other lobbyists, and that Redflex eventually emerged with the contract. Filan did not return a telephone message Wednesday. Other well-connected lobbyists and consultants hired by Redflex at the time included Greg Goldner, Mark Fary, Bill Griffin and Michael Kasper.
Finley said Bills warned her about political sabotage at City Hall, including fears that Redflex's bid could be doomed if a page or two from its proposal was "accidentally" lost.
"There was a concern that one of the (competitors) might have gotten to someone in procurement," she said.
Under questioning from U.S. AttorneyZachary Fardon, Finley also testified that Bills was working at City Hall to bring more business to Redflex from the very beginning of their relationship — and those plans included expanding to mobile speed camera vans as well as cameras on buses, at stoplights and even on the city's fleet of street sweepers.
"He was very good at getting more systems installed in the city," she said.
Fardon showed jurors numerous emails that detailed Bills' cozy relationship with Redflex.
"John Bills very much wants Redflex to continue to be the exclusive provider of camera enforcement equipment in the city," one high-level company executive wrote Oct. 11, 2004, in an email to Finley and others. "It is very clear that Mayor (Richard M.) Daley has embraced camera enforcement and wants to expand the program to include other things (i.e: street sweepers, city busses, etc.). John is convinced that, based upon prior experience, this concept will become a very hot item very quickly.
"He has told us that with the current financial situation in the city (they may actually lay off workers this week) he sees very little chance that they would reject another public safety program that also happens to generate revenue," wrote Robert Warner, the director of customer management for Redflex.
Finley testified that Redflex was struggling to pay its bills in 2003 when the Chicago deal first arose.
"Redflex was very cash-strapped," she said. "We were really struggling with cash flow, making payroll and paying vendors. It was a really tough time.
"Chicago was a major city, and Redflex didn't have any major cities at that time."
She also testified about the company's hiring of a Chicago consultant who was paid $1,500 to $2,000 in commissions for every new camera that was installed, money that was then intended for Bills.
She said she initially had doubts about hiring Martin O'Malley for the job because he lacked experience and computer savvy, but she testified that she was still only a vice president in 2003 and her concerns were overruled by then CEO Bruce Higgins.
"Basically, he was John's guy and we were going to hire him," Finley said she was told. "Whenever I tried to fight with Bruce on something, I didn't win, and it really wasn't a battle I wanted to take up."
But O'Malley's commissions became a problem within the company after the program — and the commission checks — began to expand in 2006 and 2007, Finley said. She recalled the fallout on one occasion when O'Malley mistakenly filed a $52,000 commission invoice to Bill Braden, the construction manager in Redflex's Chicago office.
"I didn't want Bill Braden to know what kind of money Marty O'Malley was making because it was so much more than Bill and he was a harder worker than Marty," Finley testified.
Jurors were shown an email string between Finley and another Redflex executive, Jennifer Dwiggens, in which Finley sought advice on how to explain O'Malley's exorbitant pay.
"I haven't come up with any spin that he couldn't see through in a second," Dwiggens wrote to Finley in May 2007. "Maybe it's best that he learn about it and learn what the real world is truly like. It's not like it would do any good to bitch about this to John Bills. It may make him very angry, but that's not necessarily a bad thing."
"Very good point," Finley replied.
Finley also testified about Bills' demand that Redflex give him a job after he retired in 2011 after a 32-year career with the city.
She said she turned to Goldner, another politically connected consultant hired by Redflex to promote red light and speed camera enforcement. Goldner, who owned Resolute Consulting, had managed campaigns for Mayors Daley and Rahm Emanuel.
Finley was shown an email she had received from Redflex's general counsel about hiring Bills.
"I have introduced John Bills to Kasper and Resolute," Andrejs Bunkse wrote in the email in June 2011. "They both will be able to give him a job. Bills is happy."
After he retired from the city that same month, Bills took a part-time, $35,000-a-year post on an obscure Cook County employee appeals board long known as a haven for those with political clout. Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle has refused to say who asked her to appoint Bills to the post.
Kasper, a longtime lawyer and political ally to Madigan, said Wednesday he played no role and that the email read in federal court Wednesday was mistaken.
"I have never had a role in getting him a job," Kasper said.
Bills also took a job working for a Redflex-funded nonprofit run by Resolute.
Finley teared up early in her testimony when Fardon asked about the impact of her guilty plea.
"I will have a felony record for the rest of my life," she testified, her voice cracking with emotion.
Finley, who was fired as president and CEO of Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. after Tribune stories exposed the corruption, said her plea deal calls for up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
In exchange, she said, she promised to provide truthful testimony in the government's case against Bills.
Fardon also questioned Finley about numerous false statements she has made to her own staff, in depositions, internal Redflex investigations, even in initial interviews with federal agents.
"Ms. Finley, why did you lie over and over again about this scheme?" Fardon asked.
"I was scared," she said.
[email protected]
Twitter @davidkidwell1
Ex-City Hall employee got $14K in gifts from red-light camera contractor, ex-VP testifies
WRITTEN BY JON SEIDEL POSTED: 01/19/2016, 01:57PM
A former Redflex vice president testified Tuesday the company showered ex-City Hall worker John Bills with $14,246 in gifts. | Sun-Times file photoAfter Redflex Traffic Systems won Chicago’s lucrative red-light camera contract in 2003, its employees gathered to celebrate 2,000 miles away in Los Angeles.
So did John Bills, the assistant commissioner from the Chicago Department of Transportation now accused of helping Redflex cheat its way into contracts that would turn out to be worth $131 million.
The month after Bills allegedly engineered a unanimous vote in Redflex’s favor, former Redflex Vice President Aaron Rosenberg testified that Bills joined the Redflex team for dinner at Asia De Cuba in the Mondrian LA Hotel. But first, Bills told Rosenberg it was time for the Arizona-based company to make good.
“It was time for him to get his,” Rosenberg told a federal jury Tuesday.
And Rosenberg said he delivered, ultimately showering Bills with $14,246 in hotel stays, meals, rental cars, golf outings, computers and even cigars. The longtime city worker, who retired in 2011, is now on trial at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse for fraud, extortion, bribery, conspiracy to commit bribery and filing false tax returns.
Rosenberg is the second of three key prosecution witnesses to take the stand. Former Redflex employee Martin O’Malley testified last week that he passed along $560,000 in cash bribes from Redflex to Bills. Former Redflex CEO Karen Finley is expected to testify Wednesday.
O’Malley and Finley have pleaded guilty to their roles in the bribery scheme. Rosenberg told the jury he received immunity from prosecutors as long as he told the truth. He said he turned over “everything I had” to the FBI — including emails, calendars, and covert recordings he sometimes made illegally.
Prosecutors played one of those recordings Tuesday, in which Rosenberg said he spoke “cryptically” with Bills about money Bills allegedly received from Redflex through O’Malley in June 2008. Rosenberg can be heard on the recording referring to an “envelope from Marty O,” and Bills later refers to it as the “report on all the intersections.”
“Everything’s good?” Rosenberg asks on the recording. “It aligns?”
“Very good, very good,” Bills replies on the tape. The feds later pointed out that O’Malley received a $76,000 check from Redflex that month.
Bills’ attorney Nishay Sanan told jurors last week that it was really Rosenberg who used the Chicago deal to double-dip, seeking reimbursements from his employer after Bills paid him back for the lavish extravagances. Rosenberg denied that Tuesday, testifying Bills never reimbursed him. He also said his superiors expected him to keep it up.
“I had to keep John happy,” Rosenberg said.
Sanan has said the prosecution built its case on “three liars,” including Rosenberg. The former Redflex VP admitted early in Sanan’s cross-examination that he lied under oath as recently as January 2015, when he gave a deposition in a civil lawsuit. Sanan also highlighted Rosenberg’s guilty plea in Ohio to a conspiracy involving Redflex to bribe an elected official there.
The feds call Bills a “greedy public official” who reaped an “almost nonstop flow of benefits” by helping Redflex cheat its way into red-light contracts between 2002 and 2011. Mayor Rahm Emanuel canceled Redflex’s contract in 2013.
Sanan has argued his client didn’t have the clout to pull off the kind of scam alleged by the feds.
“You want a contract, you bribe an elected official,” Sanan told jurors last week.
WRITTEN BY JON SEIDEL POSTED: 01/19/2016, 01:57PM
A former Redflex vice president testified Tuesday the company showered ex-City Hall worker John Bills with $14,246 in gifts. | Sun-Times file photoAfter Redflex Traffic Systems won Chicago’s lucrative red-light camera contract in 2003, its employees gathered to celebrate 2,000 miles away in Los Angeles.
So did John Bills, the assistant commissioner from the Chicago Department of Transportation now accused of helping Redflex cheat its way into contracts that would turn out to be worth $131 million.
The month after Bills allegedly engineered a unanimous vote in Redflex’s favor, former Redflex Vice President Aaron Rosenberg testified that Bills joined the Redflex team for dinner at Asia De Cuba in the Mondrian LA Hotel. But first, Bills told Rosenberg it was time for the Arizona-based company to make good.
“It was time for him to get his,” Rosenberg told a federal jury Tuesday.
And Rosenberg said he delivered, ultimately showering Bills with $14,246 in hotel stays, meals, rental cars, golf outings, computers and even cigars. The longtime city worker, who retired in 2011, is now on trial at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse for fraud, extortion, bribery, conspiracy to commit bribery and filing false tax returns.
Rosenberg is the second of three key prosecution witnesses to take the stand. Former Redflex employee Martin O’Malley testified last week that he passed along $560,000 in cash bribes from Redflex to Bills. Former Redflex CEO Karen Finley is expected to testify Wednesday.
O’Malley and Finley have pleaded guilty to their roles in the bribery scheme. Rosenberg told the jury he received immunity from prosecutors as long as he told the truth. He said he turned over “everything I had” to the FBI — including emails, calendars, and covert recordings he sometimes made illegally.
Prosecutors played one of those recordings Tuesday, in which Rosenberg said he spoke “cryptically” with Bills about money Bills allegedly received from Redflex through O’Malley in June 2008. Rosenberg can be heard on the recording referring to an “envelope from Marty O,” and Bills later refers to it as the “report on all the intersections.”
“Everything’s good?” Rosenberg asks on the recording. “It aligns?”
“Very good, very good,” Bills replies on the tape. The feds later pointed out that O’Malley received a $76,000 check from Redflex that month.
Bills’ attorney Nishay Sanan told jurors last week that it was really Rosenberg who used the Chicago deal to double-dip, seeking reimbursements from his employer after Bills paid him back for the lavish extravagances. Rosenberg denied that Tuesday, testifying Bills never reimbursed him. He also said his superiors expected him to keep it up.
“I had to keep John happy,” Rosenberg said.
Sanan has said the prosecution built its case on “three liars,” including Rosenberg. The former Redflex VP admitted early in Sanan’s cross-examination that he lied under oath as recently as January 2015, when he gave a deposition in a civil lawsuit. Sanan also highlighted Rosenberg’s guilty plea in Ohio to a conspiracy involving Redflex to bribe an elected official there.
The feds call Bills a “greedy public official” who reaped an “almost nonstop flow of benefits” by helping Redflex cheat its way into red-light contracts between 2002 and 2011. Mayor Rahm Emanuel canceled Redflex’s contract in 2013.
Sanan has argued his client didn’t have the clout to pull off the kind of scam alleged by the feds.
“You want a contract, you bribe an elected official,” Sanan told jurors last week.
Red light camera trial hits 2nd week
3rd key witness prepares to testify in bribery case
BY DAVID KIDWELL CHICAGO TRIBUNE
ABEL URIBE/CHICAGO TRIBUNE John Bills, center, is accused of taking a cash bribe for every new camera system installed during the 10 years he oversaw the program at City Hall.
One of the most brazen City Hall corruption cases in Chicago’s storied history of graft enters its second week of testimony Tuesday with both sides sorting through a decade of lies.
The trial centers on what federal authorities say was the massive bribery scheme that allowed the city’s controversial network of red light cameras to grow into the largest program in the nation.
John Bills, 54, a South Side native who rose through the ranks at City Hall as a soldier in the political patronage army of House Speaker Michael Madigan, is the pivotal figure in the alleged $2 million scheme involving the city’s longtime camera vendor, Redflex Traffic Systems Inc.
He is on trial on charges he took a cash bribe of between $1,500 and $2,000 for every new camera system that was installed during the 10 years he oversaw the program at City Hall. At its peak, 384 cameras peppered the city.
The prosecution’s three key witnesses are all admitted co-conspirators, including the bagman for the payoffs and Redflex’s former chief executive, both of whom have already pleaded guilty to the conspiracy.
When the trial resumes Tuesday, the third key witness — the first one to cooperate with investigators — is set to take the witness stand. Aaron Rosenberg, Redflex’s former top salesman, will testify under an immunity deal that it was his job to keep Bills happy by whatever means necessary.
That meant hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash bribes, lavish trips, sporting events, steak dinners, a Mercedes, a Bay Liner boat, catered parties, even an Arizona condominium shaded by palm trees.
In exchange, Redflex bought a well-connected bureaucrat who coached company executives how to win the contract, directed them where to make political contributions, schemed to weigh key votes in their favor and sabotaged their competition, Rosenberg is expected to testify.
Bills has adamantly maintained his innocence and suggested he never had the authority or the ability to steer the contract.
“If you are going to bribe someone, you bribe an alderman, you bribe a president, you bribe the mayor,” Bills attorney, Nishay Sanan, told jurors during opening remarks.
When Martin O’Malley, Bills’ friend and admitted bagman in the conspiracy, was on the stand for two days to detail hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash payments he says he passed to Bills in Manila envelopes, Sanan was careful to bring up O’Malley’s $5,500 in donations to Madigan’s political organization.
“If you are going to get speed enforcement passed, you have to go through Mike Madigan, right?” Sanan asked O’Malley.
“No doubt,” O’Malley said, but he later added that he made those contributions on the orders of Bills, who was a top-earning precinct captain in Madigan’s 13th Ward Regular Political Organization.
Sanan said federal authorities have been pressuring his client from the beginning to cooperate and name anyone more influential in the conspiracy.
While jurors will hear in minute detail how federal authorities believe the contract was corrupted, U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall has made it clear they will not be told about the failures of the program itself.
It took two days to pick a jury, mostly because so many of them had strong feelings about the unpopular camera program.
The bribery scheme was first revealed in an October 2012 Tribune story that detailed an internal Redflex memo about the alleged corruption.
A series of Tribune reports that followed documented widespread failures in the program itself, including unfair and inconsistent enforcement practices, failed oversight and bogus safety claims by City Hall.
The city still cannot justify how intersections were chosen for cameras during the decadelong conspiracy. And Mayor Rahm Emanuel has yet to address a Tribune-sponsored safety study that concluded the cameras provided no safety benefit at nearly half the locations and are likely to make many intersections more dangerous because of drivers suddenly stopping short to avoid a $100 ticket.
While commenting on a piece of evidence Friday, the judge made it clear why she insisted that jurors be protected from hearing about the program’s failures.
“I worry about jury nullification,” she said outside the jury’s presence. “It took us two days to pick a jury because of this. I don’t want any jurors to say, ‘I knew it. I keep getting these red light tickets, and it was a bad program in the first place.’ ”
Kendall said it would be unfair to Bills for jurors to use this case to take out their frustrations with the red light camera program.
She said she plans to instruct jurors once again “that your opinions about the efficiency of the system is not an issue here.”
Also expected to testify is Rosenberg’s former boss, ousted Redflex CEO Karen Finley.
Both of them are expected to address how Bills
— in exchange for money — helped them lie to elected officials, scheme for an unfair advantage and plot to distract those who sought to expose them.
In the meantime, the company collected more than $130 million in fees while the city took in more than $600 million in traffic fines under the program.
Sanan, Bills’ attorney, is expected to play up contradictions between both witnesses’ previous statements and what they told prosecutors after they had worked out deals with them.
Sanan has argued that Bills has never lived the lifestyle of a man collecting so much money in bribes.
Prosecutors spent much of their first week showing jurors a mountain of bank records, travel receipts and email traffic that portray Bills as a money-laundering machine who always paid in cash.
A parade of friends and acquaintances also testified that Bills had helped hide his ill-gotten cash by persuading them to use their credit cards to make purchases on his behalf. He then reeled off a wad of $100 bills to pay them back, they said.[email protected]
3rd key witness prepares to testify in bribery case
BY DAVID KIDWELL CHICAGO TRIBUNE
ABEL URIBE/CHICAGO TRIBUNE John Bills, center, is accused of taking a cash bribe for every new camera system installed during the 10 years he oversaw the program at City Hall.
One of the most brazen City Hall corruption cases in Chicago’s storied history of graft enters its second week of testimony Tuesday with both sides sorting through a decade of lies.
The trial centers on what federal authorities say was the massive bribery scheme that allowed the city’s controversial network of red light cameras to grow into the largest program in the nation.
John Bills, 54, a South Side native who rose through the ranks at City Hall as a soldier in the political patronage army of House Speaker Michael Madigan, is the pivotal figure in the alleged $2 million scheme involving the city’s longtime camera vendor, Redflex Traffic Systems Inc.
He is on trial on charges he took a cash bribe of between $1,500 and $2,000 for every new camera system that was installed during the 10 years he oversaw the program at City Hall. At its peak, 384 cameras peppered the city.
The prosecution’s three key witnesses are all admitted co-conspirators, including the bagman for the payoffs and Redflex’s former chief executive, both of whom have already pleaded guilty to the conspiracy.
When the trial resumes Tuesday, the third key witness — the first one to cooperate with investigators — is set to take the witness stand. Aaron Rosenberg, Redflex’s former top salesman, will testify under an immunity deal that it was his job to keep Bills happy by whatever means necessary.
That meant hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash bribes, lavish trips, sporting events, steak dinners, a Mercedes, a Bay Liner boat, catered parties, even an Arizona condominium shaded by palm trees.
In exchange, Redflex bought a well-connected bureaucrat who coached company executives how to win the contract, directed them where to make political contributions, schemed to weigh key votes in their favor and sabotaged their competition, Rosenberg is expected to testify.
Bills has adamantly maintained his innocence and suggested he never had the authority or the ability to steer the contract.
“If you are going to bribe someone, you bribe an alderman, you bribe a president, you bribe the mayor,” Bills attorney, Nishay Sanan, told jurors during opening remarks.
When Martin O’Malley, Bills’ friend and admitted bagman in the conspiracy, was on the stand for two days to detail hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash payments he says he passed to Bills in Manila envelopes, Sanan was careful to bring up O’Malley’s $5,500 in donations to Madigan’s political organization.
“If you are going to get speed enforcement passed, you have to go through Mike Madigan, right?” Sanan asked O’Malley.
“No doubt,” O’Malley said, but he later added that he made those contributions on the orders of Bills, who was a top-earning precinct captain in Madigan’s 13th Ward Regular Political Organization.
Sanan said federal authorities have been pressuring his client from the beginning to cooperate and name anyone more influential in the conspiracy.
While jurors will hear in minute detail how federal authorities believe the contract was corrupted, U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall has made it clear they will not be told about the failures of the program itself.
It took two days to pick a jury, mostly because so many of them had strong feelings about the unpopular camera program.
The bribery scheme was first revealed in an October 2012 Tribune story that detailed an internal Redflex memo about the alleged corruption.
A series of Tribune reports that followed documented widespread failures in the program itself, including unfair and inconsistent enforcement practices, failed oversight and bogus safety claims by City Hall.
The city still cannot justify how intersections were chosen for cameras during the decadelong conspiracy. And Mayor Rahm Emanuel has yet to address a Tribune-sponsored safety study that concluded the cameras provided no safety benefit at nearly half the locations and are likely to make many intersections more dangerous because of drivers suddenly stopping short to avoid a $100 ticket.
While commenting on a piece of evidence Friday, the judge made it clear why she insisted that jurors be protected from hearing about the program’s failures.
“I worry about jury nullification,” she said outside the jury’s presence. “It took us two days to pick a jury because of this. I don’t want any jurors to say, ‘I knew it. I keep getting these red light tickets, and it was a bad program in the first place.’ ”
Kendall said it would be unfair to Bills for jurors to use this case to take out their frustrations with the red light camera program.
She said she plans to instruct jurors once again “that your opinions about the efficiency of the system is not an issue here.”
Also expected to testify is Rosenberg’s former boss, ousted Redflex CEO Karen Finley.
Both of them are expected to address how Bills
— in exchange for money — helped them lie to elected officials, scheme for an unfair advantage and plot to distract those who sought to expose them.
In the meantime, the company collected more than $130 million in fees while the city took in more than $600 million in traffic fines under the program.
Sanan, Bills’ attorney, is expected to play up contradictions between both witnesses’ previous statements and what they told prosecutors after they had worked out deals with them.
Sanan has argued that Bills has never lived the lifestyle of a man collecting so much money in bribes.
Prosecutors spent much of their first week showing jurors a mountain of bank records, travel receipts and email traffic that portray Bills as a money-laundering machine who always paid in cash.
A parade of friends and acquaintances also testified that Bills had helped hide his ill-gotten cash by persuading them to use their credit cards to make purchases on his behalf. He then reeled off a wad of $100 bills to pay them back, they said.[email protected]
Jurors hear of cash-flush defendant January 15, 2016
Caterer says red light camera figure paid $11,651 tab with bills
But where was he living for $700 a month?
BY DAVID KIDWELL CHICAGO TRIBUNE
A half-dozen friends and acquaintances of the former city official accused of taking bribes to install red light cameras took the witness stand Friday to detail his practice of using wads of cash to pay for everything from rent to plane tickets.
One after another they testified that John Bills — charged with accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash bribes — always paid in cash. He sometimes asked them to use their credit cards or personal checks to cover expenses for him but paid them back with $100 bills.
“He said he was getting a divorce and he asked me for a loan,” said Thomas McCluskey, who said he was a longtime friend. “I gave him a check for $6,000 and that same day he gave me $6,000 in cash.”
His administrative assistant at City Hall said she often used her credit card to buy him and his family members plane tickets to Phoenix and once to Disney World in Orlando. He always reimbursed her with cash, she said.
It was the same with Bills’ boss as well as his landlady, and even the catering manager for the 2011 retirement party Bills threw for himself at the Westin Chicago River North.
The catering manager said he remembered the $11,651 party “because cash isn’t the typical payment method.”
Federal prosecutors spent much of the day Friday calling witnesses to show how Bills was moving tens of thousands of dollars in cash they say was bribe money.
Bills, 54, is on trial charged as the central figure in a decadelong conspiracy with camera vendor Redflex Traffic Systems to grow the city’s network of traffic cameras into the largest in the nation.
U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon, who is leading the prosecution team, has accused Bills of taking more than $2 million in bribes, including a cash payment for every new camera system installed at an intersection as well as lavish trips, a Mercedes, a boat, pricey meals, hotel stays and even a condominium near the company’s Arizona headquarters.
Bills has denied wrongdoing, and part of his defense centers on his lack of money. His attorney said he is working a security job to pay the bills.
The day opened Friday with a bit of intrigue after one of the prosecution witnesses inadvertently showed up in the juror room and began introducing herself to each of the jurors.
U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall delayed the trial to interview each juror about the inappropriate contact and any conversations that took place.
Kendall told prosecutors she was contacted by an alert juror, a 65-year-old retired pharmacist from Arlington Heights who quickly realized the witness’s mistake and instructed her to leave the jury room. The juror then immediately notified Kendall’s deputies.
Attorneys and prosecutors were called into Kendall’s chambers to interview jurors to see whether anything was said that might affect the outcome of the trial. Testimony resumed about an hour later after it was determined that nothing prejudicial was said.
It was unclear how the witness gained access to the secured jury room.
The witness later took the stand briefly to say she was Bills’ landlady for a few years during his separation from his ex-wife and that he always paid his $700 rent in cash.
Testimony in the case is scheduled to resume Tuesday. [email protected]
Caterer says red light camera figure paid $11,651 tab with bills
But where was he living for $700 a month?
BY DAVID KIDWELL CHICAGO TRIBUNE
A half-dozen friends and acquaintances of the former city official accused of taking bribes to install red light cameras took the witness stand Friday to detail his practice of using wads of cash to pay for everything from rent to plane tickets.
One after another they testified that John Bills — charged with accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash bribes — always paid in cash. He sometimes asked them to use their credit cards or personal checks to cover expenses for him but paid them back with $100 bills.
“He said he was getting a divorce and he asked me for a loan,” said Thomas McCluskey, who said he was a longtime friend. “I gave him a check for $6,000 and that same day he gave me $6,000 in cash.”
His administrative assistant at City Hall said she often used her credit card to buy him and his family members plane tickets to Phoenix and once to Disney World in Orlando. He always reimbursed her with cash, she said.
It was the same with Bills’ boss as well as his landlady, and even the catering manager for the 2011 retirement party Bills threw for himself at the Westin Chicago River North.
The catering manager said he remembered the $11,651 party “because cash isn’t the typical payment method.”
Federal prosecutors spent much of the day Friday calling witnesses to show how Bills was moving tens of thousands of dollars in cash they say was bribe money.
Bills, 54, is on trial charged as the central figure in a decadelong conspiracy with camera vendor Redflex Traffic Systems to grow the city’s network of traffic cameras into the largest in the nation.
U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon, who is leading the prosecution team, has accused Bills of taking more than $2 million in bribes, including a cash payment for every new camera system installed at an intersection as well as lavish trips, a Mercedes, a boat, pricey meals, hotel stays and even a condominium near the company’s Arizona headquarters.
Bills has denied wrongdoing, and part of his defense centers on his lack of money. His attorney said he is working a security job to pay the bills.
The day opened Friday with a bit of intrigue after one of the prosecution witnesses inadvertently showed up in the juror room and began introducing herself to each of the jurors.
U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall delayed the trial to interview each juror about the inappropriate contact and any conversations that took place.
Kendall told prosecutors she was contacted by an alert juror, a 65-year-old retired pharmacist from Arlington Heights who quickly realized the witness’s mistake and instructed her to leave the jury room. The juror then immediately notified Kendall’s deputies.
Attorneys and prosecutors were called into Kendall’s chambers to interview jurors to see whether anything was said that might affect the outcome of the trial. Testimony resumed about an hour later after it was determined that nothing prejudicial was said.
It was unclear how the witness gained access to the secured jury room.
The witness later took the stand briefly to say she was Bills’ landlady for a few years during his separation from his ex-wife and that he always paid his $700 rent in cash.
Testimony in the case is scheduled to resume Tuesday. [email protected]
Bagman testifies Bills got him the job and he funneled the bribes to him.
January 14, 2016
BY DAVID KIDWELL CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Martin O’Malley, who cut a deal to testify for the government, told the court Thursday that Bills is the only person he bribed.
The man who says he funneled more than half a million dollars in bribes to Chicago’s top red light camera official testified Thursday that he feared he would die in prison if he refused to cooperate with federal authorities.
“I didn’t think I could make it,” 75-year-old Martin O’Malley said after a defense attorney asked him if he had been threatened with a 20-year federal prison term.
“You see it on TV,” O’Malley said. “But when it happens to you, it’s a different story.”
O’Malley’s testimony was the first from the several key government witnesses who have acknowledged their guilt in a $2 million bribery conspiracy that brought the controversial traffic cameras to Chicago.
On trial is John Bills, 54, a former city transportation official who oversaw the program as it grew from a pilot project in 2002 to the largest automated enforcement network in the country.
O’Malley, who began his testimony Wednesday, spent more than a day going over the details of the scheme, from the way Bills orchestrated a job for him with the camera vendor to Bills’ constant demands for more cash.
Bills’ attorney, Nishay Sanan, pounced on the deal O’Malley has cut with prosecutors to avoid prison time.
“That would be nice, yes,” O’Malley said of the potential for leniency.
O’Malley also testified about how he and Bills scrambled to deal with the fallout after the conspiracy was first revealed in a front-page Chicago Tribune report in October 2012.
He said Bills immediately told him to sell the Arizona condominium that O’Malley had bought for Bills near the Arizona headquarters of camera vendor Redflex Traffic Systems.
They met secretly “to lay out a plan as to how we were going to respond to that article,” O’Malley said. “We agreed to sell the place and formulate a plan to fight these allegations.
“He suggested I go out to Arizona and put pictures of my family up so it looked more like my residence than his.”
Sanan also asked O’Malley about several checks totaling $5,500 he wrote to the 13th Ward political organization of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan at a time when Redflex was working to expand its reach from red light cameras to speed cameras.
“If you are going to get speed enforcement passed, you have to go through Mike Madigan, right?” Sanan asked.
“No doubt,” O’Malley said. He said he made those contributions on orders from Bills, who was a political operative for Madigan. Sanan also asked O’Malley about the phalanx of well-connected lobbyists hired by Red-flex. After Sanan completed his questioning, U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon, who is leading the prosecution team, addressed the implication that checks to the 13th Ward organization were aimed to influence Madigan or anyone other than Bills. “Mr. O’Malley, have you ever passed bribes to Mike Madigan?” Fardon asked. “No.” “Have you ever passed bribes to any lobbyists?” “No.” “Who is the only person you have passed bribes to?” “John Bills.” Also testifying Thursday were witnesses who sold Bills a boat, a Mercedes-Benz and catering services for cash at times when O’Malley withdrew corresponding amounts from the account where he kept his bogus Redflex commissions.
FBI Special Agent Craig Henderson also testified about his analysis of O’Malley’s finances and phone records.
He detailed 103 cash withdrawals of $2,000 or more from 2006 through 2012 totaling nearly $600,000, cash O’Malley said was meant for Bills.
Bills is charged in a 20-count federal indictment with bribery, conspiracy and mail fraud. Testimony is scheduled to resume Friday.[email protected]
January 14, 2016
BY DAVID KIDWELL CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Martin O’Malley, who cut a deal to testify for the government, told the court Thursday that Bills is the only person he bribed.
The man who says he funneled more than half a million dollars in bribes to Chicago’s top red light camera official testified Thursday that he feared he would die in prison if he refused to cooperate with federal authorities.
“I didn’t think I could make it,” 75-year-old Martin O’Malley said after a defense attorney asked him if he had been threatened with a 20-year federal prison term.
“You see it on TV,” O’Malley said. “But when it happens to you, it’s a different story.”
O’Malley’s testimony was the first from the several key government witnesses who have acknowledged their guilt in a $2 million bribery conspiracy that brought the controversial traffic cameras to Chicago.
On trial is John Bills, 54, a former city transportation official who oversaw the program as it grew from a pilot project in 2002 to the largest automated enforcement network in the country.
O’Malley, who began his testimony Wednesday, spent more than a day going over the details of the scheme, from the way Bills orchestrated a job for him with the camera vendor to Bills’ constant demands for more cash.
Bills’ attorney, Nishay Sanan, pounced on the deal O’Malley has cut with prosecutors to avoid prison time.
“That would be nice, yes,” O’Malley said of the potential for leniency.
O’Malley also testified about how he and Bills scrambled to deal with the fallout after the conspiracy was first revealed in a front-page Chicago Tribune report in October 2012.
He said Bills immediately told him to sell the Arizona condominium that O’Malley had bought for Bills near the Arizona headquarters of camera vendor Redflex Traffic Systems.
They met secretly “to lay out a plan as to how we were going to respond to that article,” O’Malley said. “We agreed to sell the place and formulate a plan to fight these allegations.
“He suggested I go out to Arizona and put pictures of my family up so it looked more like my residence than his.”
Sanan also asked O’Malley about several checks totaling $5,500 he wrote to the 13th Ward political organization of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan at a time when Redflex was working to expand its reach from red light cameras to speed cameras.
“If you are going to get speed enforcement passed, you have to go through Mike Madigan, right?” Sanan asked.
“No doubt,” O’Malley said. He said he made those contributions on orders from Bills, who was a political operative for Madigan. Sanan also asked O’Malley about the phalanx of well-connected lobbyists hired by Red-flex. After Sanan completed his questioning, U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon, who is leading the prosecution team, addressed the implication that checks to the 13th Ward organization were aimed to influence Madigan or anyone other than Bills. “Mr. O’Malley, have you ever passed bribes to Mike Madigan?” Fardon asked. “No.” “Have you ever passed bribes to any lobbyists?” “No.” “Who is the only person you have passed bribes to?” “John Bills.” Also testifying Thursday were witnesses who sold Bills a boat, a Mercedes-Benz and catering services for cash at times when O’Malley withdrew corresponding amounts from the account where he kept his bogus Redflex commissions.
FBI Special Agent Craig Henderson also testified about his analysis of O’Malley’s finances and phone records.
He detailed 103 cash withdrawals of $2,000 or more from 2006 through 2012 totaling nearly $600,000, cash O’Malley said was meant for Bills.
Bills is charged in a 20-count federal indictment with bribery, conspiracy and mail fraud. Testimony is scheduled to resume Friday.[email protected]
January 13, 2016
The first full day of trial and already it's getting interesting.
Redflex bagman details bribery
Witness describes giving $557,000 in cash to ex-official
BY DAVID KIDWELL CHICAGO TRIBUNE
ANTONIO PEREZ/TRIBUNE
Former transportation official John Bills is charged with steering multimillion-dollar contracts to Redflex.
The admitted bagman in a bribery scheme that brought red light cameras to Chicago testified Wednesday that he passed envelopes stuffed with thousands in cash at a time to a city official over the table at Manny’s deli, a hot spot for political power lunches.
“It was generally in Manila envelopes,” said Martin O’Malley, 75, who told jurors he collected about $2 million in bogus commissions over the decade-long conspiracy. “Sometimes there would be other people there with us, but they couldn’t tell what was happening.
“It looked like documentation I was giving him,” O’Malley said under questioning from U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon, who is leading the prosecution of John Bills, the former No. 2 official in the city’s Department of Transportation.
O’Malley, the first key witness to testify, said he passed $557,000 in cash to Bills during dozens of lunch meetings with his friend at Manny’s and other favorite eateries.
He used much of the other money he received from camera vendor Red-flex Traffic Systems Inc. to purchase — at Bills’ request
— a car, a boat, pricey hotel stays, golf outings, plane tickets, meals, even an Arizona condominium.
He said Redflex paid him bogus commissions every time a new camera system was installed in Chicago.
“I put it in the bank, paid taxes on it and gave the rest to John Bills,” O’Malley said. “A lot of times he would tell me what he wanted, most usually over the phone.
“Sometimes he would email ‘let’s get together for lunch and discuss the 8-page speed results,’ ” O’Malley said. “That indicated to me he wanted $8,000.”
The bribery scheme was first disclosed in the Chicago Tribune in 2012 after the newspaper obtained an internal Redflex memo that detailed the plot.
In exchange for the bribes, Bills is charged with steering multimillion-dollar contracts to Redflex, coaching executives, allowing them to help write contract specifications, sabotaging competitors and growing the system to the largest camera network in the country.
Bills’ attorney will cross-examine O’Malley when the trial resumes Thursday.
According to O’Malley, he met Bills at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting on the South Side in 2002. Bills later set him up with a consulting job with Red-flex, he said.
O’Malley recalled from the witness stand going to the interview at Redflex headquarters in Phoenix.
“They said they were looking for someone in the $30,000 range,” O’Malley testified. “And I said that wasn’t me, that I was looking for something more like $60,000.
“They excused themselves for 15 minutes and came back and told me they could work with that.”
O’Malley said it was Bills who negotiated for his lucrative commissions based on every new camera system installed.
Fardon spent much of the afternoon showing jurors the email communications, receipts and spreadsheet summaries of all the expenditures O’Malley said he made “at the request of John Bills.”
Those included several checks totaling $5,500 to the vaunted 13th Ward political organization of powerful House Speaker Michael Madigan. Bills rose through the ranks at City Hall as part of Madigan’s patronage army, serving as a top precinct captain and fundraiser for the longtime Democratic politician.
Fardon questioned O’Malley about emails he wrote to his bosses at Redflex about meetings Bills had with Madigan and former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley when Redflex was working to expand the red light camera program to include speed cameras.
“Absolutely,” O’Malley said about Redflex’s interest in speed cameras. “It was a tremendous amount of money.”
He said Redflex was working to take care of Bills even after he retired in 2011, by orchestrating work with a Chicago consulting firm it hired to help get the speed camera contract.
“He went to work at Resolute (Consulting),” O’Malley said of Bills. “Resolute ran the campaign for the new mayor, Mayor Emanuel,” he testified. “They have good connections to the new mayor, so Redflex decided to hire them to increase their connections to him.”
Resolute owner Greg Goldner has acknowledged hiring Bills to work for a Redflex-funded nonprofit organization but has denied any wrongdoing connected with the contract. Goldner has political ties to both Rahm Emanuel and Daley. He was Emanuel’s campaign manager in his first run for Congress.
Earlier Wednesday, Bills’ attorney, Nishay Sanan, opened his defense by giving jurors a primer on the Chicago Way. He maintained that Bills didn’t have the clout to orchestrate a scheme of such magnitude.
“In the city of Chicago, if you are going to bribe someone, you go to an alderman, you go to a president, you go to the mayor,” Sanan told jurors in his opening statement. “You go to someone who has the power to do it.
“John Bills did not have the ability, the power, the control, the influence or the leverage to direct that contract to Redflex,” he said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Storino told jurors that Bills indeed wielded the power at City Hall to pull off the decade-long conspiracy.
“This is a case about public corruption,” Storino said. “It’s a case of a high-level city official who had power, who violated the public trust for one reason, and that reason was greed to line his own pockets.
“This case is not about red light cameras, whether or not they are good or bad, whether or not they are effective or ineffective,” he said. “It’s about a city process that was corrupted and exploited by a greedy public official.”
But even as he tried to separate the charges against Bills from jurors’ opinions on the unpopular cameras, he also asked that they consider that Bills’ scheme resulted in more cameras and more traffic tickets.
“His commission structure was specifically tied to the number of cameras installed around the city,” Storino said.
Sanan said the entire case against Bills relies on the jury judging the credibility of O’Malley and two other alleged co-conspirators who are testifying after cutting deals with prosecutors.
“At the end of this case, they will have failed,” Sanan said. “Not only will they have failed, but they will have failed miserably because they have to rely on three liars.” [email protected]
Jury chosen in red light cameras trial
Opening arguments set in bribery case of ex-city manager January 13, 2016
BY DAVID KIDWELL CHICAGO TRIBUNE
ABEL URIBE / CHICAGO TRIBUNE John Bills, right, leaves the federal courthouse Tuesday.
Attorneys are scheduled to deliver their opening salvos Wednesday morning after a federal jury was impaneled in the trial of a former city manager accused of taking up to $2 million in bribes to pepper the city with red light cameras.
U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall took two full days to question more than 60 potential jurors, most of whom had been ticketed at least once for a red-light camera violation.
Those with strong opinions about the program were questioned by attorneys and Kendall outside the earshot of other potential jurors.
On trial is John Bills, 54, who retired in 2011 as the No. 2 official in the Chicago Department of Transportation.
Bills oversaw the red light camera program as it grew from a pilot project in 2002 to the largest automated enforcement network in the country.
He has persistently denied charges that he took cash bribes from vendor Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. for each of the nearly 400 cameras installed around the city.
His fate will be decided by a jury of seven men and five women, almost all of whom live in the suburbs.
They include a former Hinsdale village president, a retired chemist from Abbott Laboratories, a women’s lacrosse coach from Skokie, a pipe fitter from Westmont, a securities broker from Hinsdale and a 43-year-old bookkeeper who told the judge she once won a lawsuit after her family car was struck by a driver who blew through a red light. [email protected]
Opening arguments set in bribery case of ex-city manager January 13, 2016
BY DAVID KIDWELL CHICAGO TRIBUNE
ABEL URIBE / CHICAGO TRIBUNE John Bills, right, leaves the federal courthouse Tuesday.
Attorneys are scheduled to deliver their opening salvos Wednesday morning after a federal jury was impaneled in the trial of a former city manager accused of taking up to $2 million in bribes to pepper the city with red light cameras.
U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall took two full days to question more than 60 potential jurors, most of whom had been ticketed at least once for a red-light camera violation.
Those with strong opinions about the program were questioned by attorneys and Kendall outside the earshot of other potential jurors.
On trial is John Bills, 54, who retired in 2011 as the No. 2 official in the Chicago Department of Transportation.
Bills oversaw the red light camera program as it grew from a pilot project in 2002 to the largest automated enforcement network in the country.
He has persistently denied charges that he took cash bribes from vendor Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. for each of the nearly 400 cameras installed around the city.
His fate will be decided by a jury of seven men and five women, almost all of whom live in the suburbs.
They include a former Hinsdale village president, a retired chemist from Abbott Laboratories, a women’s lacrosse coach from Skokie, a pipe fitter from Westmont, a securities broker from Hinsdale and a 43-year-old bookkeeper who told the judge she once won a lawsuit after her family car was struck by a driver who blew through a red light. [email protected]
Selection of jury still at red light
January 12, 2016
Federal bribery trial over camera program begins with a surprise.
It's hard to find a citizen in Chicago who doesn't hate the Red Light Cameras.
BY DAVID KIDWELL CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Jury selection was suspended for the evening Monday in the federal bribery trial of a former city transportation manager charged in a bribery conspiracy that prosecutors say brought red-light cameras to the city.
U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall told prospective jurors she had hoped to finish jury selection Monday in the trial of John Bills, but proceedings were slowed somewhat when most of the 40-person jury pool raised their hands when asked if they had ever received a red-light camera ticket.
A few even had strong feelings about the program.
“I think the yellow lights are too short,” said one woman, who was later sent home.
So was a physician who raised his hand to say the entire red-light camera program was unfair.
One 46-year-old assistant dispatcher for a trucking company said her husband voices his strong opinion of the red-light camera program every time they pass under a light.
“But I think I can be fair,” she said.
Kendall told the jurors that it was important to separate their feelings about red-light cameras from Bills, 54, who faces a 20-count indictment that charges him as a central figure in a $2 million bribery conspiracy.
“We’d all like to fix the timing on the lights,” Kendall told the jurors. “But it’s important to remember that the red-light camera program is not on trial here.”
Jury selection is expected to resume Tuesday morning. Opening statements in the case could begin in the afternoon. The trial is expected to last two to three weeks.
Prosecutors allege Bills accepted cash bribes, lavish hotel stays, sports tickets, vacations and a condo in return for steering multimillion-dollar city contracts to Redflex Traffic Systems Inc.
The sweeping scandal — which by size alone ranks among the largest in Chicago’s notorious history of corruption — was first uncovered by the Tribune in 2012.
Bills’ attorney, Nishay Sanan, has said the defense will hinge mostly on the credibility of federal witnesses who have cut cooperation deals, as well as the inability of federal authorities to track down most of the riches they have accused Bills of accumulating.
For the first time in his more than two years in office, U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon is slated to personally prosecute Bills’ case. Fardon played a key role in winning the conviction of former Gov. George Ryan on sweeping corruption charges in 2006 when Fardon was an assistant U.S. attorney.
Among those on the prosecution witness list are Karen Finley, Redflex’s former chief executive, and Bills’ friend Martin O’Malley, who authorities say was hired as a consultant by the company for the sole purpose of acting as a bagman for bribes to Bills throughout the decadelong contract. Both have pleaded guilty and have negotiated for reduced sentences in exchange for their cooperation.[email protected]
January 12, 2016
Federal bribery trial over camera program begins with a surprise.
It's hard to find a citizen in Chicago who doesn't hate the Red Light Cameras.
BY DAVID KIDWELL CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Jury selection was suspended for the evening Monday in the federal bribery trial of a former city transportation manager charged in a bribery conspiracy that prosecutors say brought red-light cameras to the city.
U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall told prospective jurors she had hoped to finish jury selection Monday in the trial of John Bills, but proceedings were slowed somewhat when most of the 40-person jury pool raised their hands when asked if they had ever received a red-light camera ticket.
A few even had strong feelings about the program.
“I think the yellow lights are too short,” said one woman, who was later sent home.
So was a physician who raised his hand to say the entire red-light camera program was unfair.
One 46-year-old assistant dispatcher for a trucking company said her husband voices his strong opinion of the red-light camera program every time they pass under a light.
“But I think I can be fair,” she said.
Kendall told the jurors that it was important to separate their feelings about red-light cameras from Bills, 54, who faces a 20-count indictment that charges him as a central figure in a $2 million bribery conspiracy.
“We’d all like to fix the timing on the lights,” Kendall told the jurors. “But it’s important to remember that the red-light camera program is not on trial here.”
Jury selection is expected to resume Tuesday morning. Opening statements in the case could begin in the afternoon. The trial is expected to last two to three weeks.
Prosecutors allege Bills accepted cash bribes, lavish hotel stays, sports tickets, vacations and a condo in return for steering multimillion-dollar city contracts to Redflex Traffic Systems Inc.
The sweeping scandal — which by size alone ranks among the largest in Chicago’s notorious history of corruption — was first uncovered by the Tribune in 2012.
Bills’ attorney, Nishay Sanan, has said the defense will hinge mostly on the credibility of federal witnesses who have cut cooperation deals, as well as the inability of federal authorities to track down most of the riches they have accused Bills of accumulating.
For the first time in his more than two years in office, U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon is slated to personally prosecute Bills’ case. Fardon played a key role in winning the conviction of former Gov. George Ryan on sweeping corruption charges in 2006 when Fardon was an assistant U.S. attorney.
Among those on the prosecution witness list are Karen Finley, Redflex’s former chief executive, and Bills’ friend Martin O’Malley, who authorities say was hired as a consultant by the company for the sole purpose of acting as a bagman for bribes to Bills throughout the decadelong contract. Both have pleaded guilty and have negotiated for reduced sentences in exchange for their cooperation.[email protected]
Trial to start for red-light figure today January 11, 2016
Ex-city official took bribes for program, U.S. prosecutors say
By David Kidwell Chicago Tribune
In his colorful 32-year career with the city, John Bills rode his political connections to rise from street lamp maintenance man to the top Transportation Department official responsible for growing Chicago’s fledgling red-light camera program.
This week, Bills, a longtime political operative to the city’s most powerful politicians, becomes the latest in a long line of city officials facing a federal trial on charges of using his position to line his own pockets.
Federal prosecutors say Bills, 54, was the central figure in a massive $2 million bribery conspiracy, accepting lavish hotel stays, sports tickets, vacations, a condo and cash bribes for each of the nearly 400 red-light cameras that catapulted the program into the largest in the nation.
The sweeping scandal — which by size alone ranks among the largest in Chicago’s notorious history of corruption — was first uncovered by the Tribune in 2012 after the newspaper obtained a whistleblower memo detailing the questionable relationship between Bills and Redflex Traffic Systems Inc.
Bills has persistently denied the charges, refusing overtures from federal authorities interested in learning the names of any others who may have benefited from the conspiracy.
“From the day he was first arrested, they have always wanted him to cooperate and give them names of people further up the food chain,” said Nishay Sanan, Bills’ attorney. “His answer has always been that he didn’t do it and there is no food chain.”
Sanan describes the native South Sider as a longtime bureaucrat who had neither the authority nor the political juice to orchestrate a scheme of such magnitude.
He said the defense will hinge mostly on the credibility of federal witnesses who have cut cooperation deals, as well as the inability of federal authorities to track down most of the riches they have accused Bills of accumulating from the longtime camera vendor.
“He’s been living paycheck to paycheck,” Sanan said. “Hardly the kind of lifestyle you’d expect from a guy who took all the money they say he has taken.”
In recent years, Sanan said, Bills has worked a series of menial jobs to make ends meet — pizza delivery, golf course maintenance, a security detail.
By contrast, federal prosecutors are expected to portray the then-No. 2 official in the city’s Transportation Department as living the high life — flush with unexplained cash and frequenting ritzy hotels and pricey restaurants — as he secretly schemed to steer the lucrative city contract to Redflex and pepper the city with cameras.
For the first time in his more than two years in office, U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon is slated to personally prosecute Bills’ case in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall. Fardon, who declined a request to be interviewed, played a key role in winning the conviction of former Gov. George Ryan on sweeping corruption charges in 2006 when he was an assistant U.S. attorney.
Jury selection is set to begin Monday. Bills faces 20 counts of mail and wire fraud, bribery, extortion, income tax evasion and conspiracy charges.
Among those on the prosecution witness list — some of whom will detail publicly for the first time their own roles in the criminal conspiracy — are Karen Finley, Redflex’s former chief executive, and Bills’ friend Martin O’Malley, who authorities say was hired as a consultant by the company for the sole purpose of acting as a bagman for bribes to Bills throughout the decade-long contract.
Both have pleaded guilty and have negotiated for reduced sentences in exchange for their cooperation.
Until 2012, Chicago’s red-light camera program was lauded by Redflex and the city as a model of how an automated camera program should be run. After he was elected, Mayor Rahm Emanuel pointed to its success in his efforts to expand the program to include speed cameras.
That began to change following Tribune reports that detailed the alleged bribery scheme. At the time, Redflex had been the front-runner to win the speed camera contract. The company even hired Greg Goldner, a longtime Emanuel political ally and former campaign manager, as a national consultant.
But Redflex speed-camera aspirations in Chicago were doomed amid the Tribune reports that not only revealed corruption but also exposed how Emanuel had used bogus safety claims to sell the expansion to speed cameras. The newspaper also detailed how tens of thousands of drivers were unfairly ticketed because of widespread malfunctions and failed oversight of the red-light camera program that the city’s inspector general later called “fundamentally deficient.”
The scandal prompted Redflex to jettison six of its top executives, including Finley. Federal authorities opened their bribery investigation that includes allegations of similar practices by Redflex in 13 states. Emanuel fired the company and ordered the removal of 80 red-light cameras, promising to improve oversight and management of the program.
Emanuel also scaled back his speed-camera plans. So far, the city has activated only about 150 speed cameras that have raised more than $81 million in fines. The older red-light camera program has generated more than $600 million in fines since 2003.
Bills retired from his $139,000-per-year job as the city’s managing deputy commissioner of transportation in 2011, just as Emanuel was taking over City Hall from departing Mayor Richard Daley.
Immediately upon his retirement, Bills took a job with Goldner’s consulting firm working on behalf of Redflex. Federal authorities say Redflex increased its payments on Goldner’s consulting contract to make up for Bills’ salary. Bills left Goldner’s employ shortly after the scandal broke.
Bills rose through the ranks in the Daley administration at City Hall as part of the vaunted patronage army of House Speaker Michael Madigan, earning a reputation as a top fund-raiser and vote-getter in Madigan’s 13thWard Democratic Organization.
He spent decades as a top precinct captain, helping to marshal troops and money for Daley, Madigan and other political candidates they supported.
Prosecutors have outlined in court papers how Redflex sought to use Bills’ connections in securing city business, prompting Bills as early as 2008 to reach out to Daley and later Madigan in an effort to legalize speed cameras. Authorities have not alleged that Madigan or Daley did anything improper.
In addition to his political ties, Bills’ family also has colorful connections to an even more insular organization — the Chicago mob.
Bills’ cousin Guy was an Outfit turncoat who entered the federal witness protection program, records show. During a brawl, his uncle was once shot by Angelo “The Hook” LaPietra, who would later become the infamous South Side mob boss. His dad, who spent 35 years working in the city’s forestry department, was arrested in his youth for taking bets on horses. [email protected]
CDOT's gift to citizens of Chicago are two new Speed Cameras.
12/13/15
(CBS) — The warnings are over. Two new city speed cameras will now be issuing tickets.
The cameras are on the Southwest Side near Mulberry Park, 3200 S. Archer, and on the Northwest Side near Keystone Park, 1754 N. Pulaski, 4053 W. North Ave, and 4042 W. North Ave.
They were installed last month, but were only issuing warnings, until now.
Many drivers are not welcoming the change.
“I think it’s a scam,” said Nicholas Pagliucha on the Archer speedcamera. “I’ve lived in this neighborhood since I was 17-years-old and it’s all the way on the other side of the buildings. I got a warning ticket there one time and I didn’t realize the park was all the way over there.”
The cameras will be on and issuing tickets to speeders from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. 7 days a week.
The cameras are on the Southwest Side near Mulberry Park, 3200 S. Archer, and on the Northwest Side near Keystone Park, 1754 N. Pulaski, 4053 W. North Ave, and 4042 W. North Ave.
They were installed last month, but were only issuing warnings, until now.
Many drivers are not welcoming the change.
“I think it’s a scam,” said Nicholas Pagliucha on the Archer speedcamera. “I’ve lived in this neighborhood since I was 17-years-old and it’s all the way on the other side of the buildings. I got a warning ticket there one time and I didn’t realize the park was all the way over there.”
The cameras will be on and issuing tickets to speeders from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. 7 days a week.
Feds allege Redflex conspirator talked to Madigan and Daley
Federal prosecutors allege a Chicago transportation manager now facing trial met with then-Mayor Richard M. Daley and House Speaker Michael Madigan as part of the push to bring red light cameras to Chicaago. The federal documents do not suggest Daley and Madigan did anything improper. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)
David KidwellContact ReporterChicago Tribune
Feds allege Redflex conspirator talked to Madigan and DaleyThe former city transportation manager indicted in a $2 million conspiracy to bring red light cameras to Chicago met with then-Mayor Richard M. Daley and House Speaker Michael Madigan as he championed the agenda of the company that was secretly bribing him, federal prosecutors alleged Wednesday.
It was the first time federal authorities alleged publicly that John Bills, the man at the center of the case, personally reached out to Chicago's two most powerful politicians in his efforts to steer lucrative contracts to Redflex Traffic Systems Inc.
Prosecutors also provided new details about Bills' alleged role in laying the foundation for speed cameras in Chicago. They alleged that as early as 2008, Bills was working to expand the Redflex footprint in Chicago by encouraging Daley, and later Madigan, to legalize speed cameras.
Redflex was the front-runner to win the speed camera contract from Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration in 2012 when the Tribune first began writing stories exposing Bills' cozy relationship with the Arizona company. Those stories led to the company's ouster from Chicago and the federal investigation that has resulted in the convictions of Redflex's chief executive officer and Bills' alleged bagman, both of whom are cooperating with prosecutors.
Bills has denied the allegations from the beginning. His attorney, Nishay Sanan, said Wednesday the government is relying on the flimsy testimony of several cooperating witnesses who "sold their souls for a better deal" and that U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardonis alleging meetings with power brokers "to hype up his theory on what Bills had the capability of doing, but he didn't have the capability to do anything."
Neither Madigan nor Daley returned telephone calls on Wednesday, and nothing in the federal documents released Wednesday suggests either of them did anything improper.
The 56-page filing by Fardon details much of the evidence his office intends to bring in Bills' January trial. It outlines in the fullest detail yet the extravagant lifestyle Bills allegedly enjoyed from his ill-gotten proceeds, the extent of his efforts to conceal cash payments, and his dogged work to ensure that Redflex got what it wanted from City Hall to the state Capitol.
In a rare move, Fardon himself is listed as the lead attorney in the case and his office confirmed Wednesday that he intends to try the case against Bills, now set for Jan. 11.
In a three-year series of stories, the Tribune first exposed the bribery scheme as well as City Hall's overblown safety claims, failed oversight and unfair enforcement practices throughout its automated camera enforcement programs that together have raised more than $700 million in ticket revenue for the city. The Tribune's early reports led Redflex to jettison six of its top executives and prompted Emanuel to fire the company. The mayor also scaled back his plans to pepper the city with speed cameras.
Federal authorities indicted Bills, former Redflex CEO Karen Finley, and a Bills friend — Martin O'Malley — who was hired by Redflex as a consultant to funnel the alleged bribes. Finley and O'Malley pleaded guilty and are cooperating with prosecutors.
Prosecutors cited the contents of internal email traffic at Redflex to suggest that Bills, who retired in 2011 as the managing deputy commissioner of the city Department of Transportation, met with then-Mayor Daley as early as 2003 to discuss the company's qualifications.
"My contact met with the Commissioner of the Chicago DOT (the head guy over the entire City) and Mayor Daley; and I have been fully assured that the best technology will win, with no undue political influence (but who actually knows),'' wrote top company salesman Aaron Rosenberg in one email to his boss, Finley. "My contact has already told me that he primed Mayor Daley that Redflex has the best system in the market — bar none."
At the time, Rosenberg — now cooperating with authorities under an immunity agreement — was already cultivating Bills and had picked up a hotel tab in San Diego for Bills and a group of his friends who were attending the Super Bowl, and Bills was already helping Redflex choose its subcontractors, the proffer said.
Many of the Rosenberg emails were sent to Finley, then a Redflex vice president, and to the company's CEO at the time, Bruce Higgins.
"We could not be in a better situation — trust me," Rosenberg wrote in a May 18, 2003, email to Higgins. "We have almost removed all the unknowns; the politics and we have positioned the evaluation to ensure a positive (and significant) Redflex outcome."
Higgins responded: "John B is on the ball."
One Redflex email discussed Bills' efforts to win the company an exclusive, or "sole source" contract with the city.
"If John does not get the revised contract by Friday," Finley wrote Rosenberg on Aug. 23, 2007. "He will chase it down early next week and if need be, use the Mayors' Office for extra pressure."
The federal proffer also lays out how Bills was a key player in bringing speed cameras to Illinois.
"Not only did Bills act as Redflex's champion in Chicago working to push through legislation related to speed enforcement, Bills also worked to keep Redflex's competitors at bay," Fardon wrote in the federal proffer.
One April 2010 email from O'Malley to Rosenberg highlighted those efforts.
"JB has talked to Speaker of the house Matigan about Speed," O'Malley wrote, misspelling Madigan's name. "Time for you to have private meeting & presentation!!!"
As early as 2007, Bills was suggesting what lobbyists Redflex should hire, prosecutors alleged. Those lobbyists, William Filan, Mark Fary and William Griffin, were referred to as the "three horsemen" by Redflex executives, prosecutors said. Filan has longtime ties to Madigan.
For decades Bills was a top-earning precinct captain for Madigan's 13th Ward political organization, always making his quotas and sometimes raking in as much as $10,000 in fundraising tickets, often picking up the slack for other captains who fell short and always working hard to get voters to the polls. Bills began his career in city government as a street lamp repairman in the city's Bureau of Electricity, dubbed "Madigan Electric" because of the number of 13th Ward loyalists employed there.
Bills retired from City Hall on June 30, 2011, and took a job working for Chicago consultant Greg Goldner, a former campaign manager for Emanuel and Daley. Goldner's company, Resolute Consulting, had been hired by Redflex to run a national campaign promoting automated enforcement programs through a series of Redflex-funded not-for-profits that claimed to be grass-roots organizations. Bills went to work for one called the Traffic Safety Coalition.
In the proffer released Wednesday, Fardon detailed how Redflex urged Goldner to hire Bills and increased its fees to Resolute to cover his salary. Prosecutors cited an email from the Redflex general counsel saying he introduced Bills to Goldner and Redflex lobbyist Michael Kasper.
Kasper, a longtime Madigan ally and lawyer for the state Democratic Party that Madigan runs, represented Emanuel in the residency dispute that could have derailed his run for mayor.
Kasper and Filan did not return telephone calls for comment. Goldner declined comment.
The federal document also offered more detail about Bills' lavish lifestyle, ritzy hotel stays and Redflex-covered meals at such spots as Carmichael's, Bertucci's, Gibsons, Chicago Chop House and Trump Tower, as well as golf outings at country clubs such as Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles, Cog Hill, Odyssey Country Club, Wyndham Golf Course, Troon North Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Gleneagles Country Club. The records detail other personal items for Bills that Redflex bought, such as computers, car rentals, a Mercedes Benz and even a condominium in Arizona.
The proffer detailed how Bills purchased the $178,000 condominium in O'Malley's name using alleged bribe money funneled through O'Malley.
"In the fall of 2012, after articles appeared in the Chicago Tribune about Redflex and Bills, O'Malley decided to sell the condo," Fardon wrote. "Bills agreed.
"Bills removed all his personal items from the condo and advised O'Malley that he should put pictures of his family in the condo to make it look like the condo was used by O'Malley and not by Bills, just in case investigators visited inside the condo," prosecutors wrote. "O'Malley purchased picture frames and put pictures of his family in the condo in order to trick investigators …"
The proffer also detailed the extent to which Bills allegedly tried to conceal his cash payments from Redflex, through O'Malley, who received bonuses and a $1,500 stipend for every new camera installed in Chicago.
According to Fardon, Bills would often ask his subordinates at City Hall and his friends to cover his expenses with their own credit cards and pay them back with cash.
"For example, Bills asked his administrative assistant at CDOT to charge airline tickets to her personal credit card on four separate occasions," Fardon wrote.
Tribune reporter Patrick M. O'Connell contributed.
Federal prosecutors allege a Chicago transportation manager now facing trial met with then-Mayor Richard M. Daley and House Speaker Michael Madigan as part of the push to bring red light cameras to Chicaago. The federal documents do not suggest Daley and Madigan did anything improper. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)
David KidwellContact ReporterChicago Tribune
Feds allege Redflex conspirator talked to Madigan and DaleyThe former city transportation manager indicted in a $2 million conspiracy to bring red light cameras to Chicago met with then-Mayor Richard M. Daley and House Speaker Michael Madigan as he championed the agenda of the company that was secretly bribing him, federal prosecutors alleged Wednesday.
It was the first time federal authorities alleged publicly that John Bills, the man at the center of the case, personally reached out to Chicago's two most powerful politicians in his efforts to steer lucrative contracts to Redflex Traffic Systems Inc.
Prosecutors also provided new details about Bills' alleged role in laying the foundation for speed cameras in Chicago. They alleged that as early as 2008, Bills was working to expand the Redflex footprint in Chicago by encouraging Daley, and later Madigan, to legalize speed cameras.
Redflex was the front-runner to win the speed camera contract from Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration in 2012 when the Tribune first began writing stories exposing Bills' cozy relationship with the Arizona company. Those stories led to the company's ouster from Chicago and the federal investigation that has resulted in the convictions of Redflex's chief executive officer and Bills' alleged bagman, both of whom are cooperating with prosecutors.
Bills has denied the allegations from the beginning. His attorney, Nishay Sanan, said Wednesday the government is relying on the flimsy testimony of several cooperating witnesses who "sold their souls for a better deal" and that U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardonis alleging meetings with power brokers "to hype up his theory on what Bills had the capability of doing, but he didn't have the capability to do anything."
Neither Madigan nor Daley returned telephone calls on Wednesday, and nothing in the federal documents released Wednesday suggests either of them did anything improper.
The 56-page filing by Fardon details much of the evidence his office intends to bring in Bills' January trial. It outlines in the fullest detail yet the extravagant lifestyle Bills allegedly enjoyed from his ill-gotten proceeds, the extent of his efforts to conceal cash payments, and his dogged work to ensure that Redflex got what it wanted from City Hall to the state Capitol.
In a rare move, Fardon himself is listed as the lead attorney in the case and his office confirmed Wednesday that he intends to try the case against Bills, now set for Jan. 11.
In a three-year series of stories, the Tribune first exposed the bribery scheme as well as City Hall's overblown safety claims, failed oversight and unfair enforcement practices throughout its automated camera enforcement programs that together have raised more than $700 million in ticket revenue for the city. The Tribune's early reports led Redflex to jettison six of its top executives and prompted Emanuel to fire the company. The mayor also scaled back his plans to pepper the city with speed cameras.
Federal authorities indicted Bills, former Redflex CEO Karen Finley, and a Bills friend — Martin O'Malley — who was hired by Redflex as a consultant to funnel the alleged bribes. Finley and O'Malley pleaded guilty and are cooperating with prosecutors.
Prosecutors cited the contents of internal email traffic at Redflex to suggest that Bills, who retired in 2011 as the managing deputy commissioner of the city Department of Transportation, met with then-Mayor Daley as early as 2003 to discuss the company's qualifications.
"My contact met with the Commissioner of the Chicago DOT (the head guy over the entire City) and Mayor Daley; and I have been fully assured that the best technology will win, with no undue political influence (but who actually knows),'' wrote top company salesman Aaron Rosenberg in one email to his boss, Finley. "My contact has already told me that he primed Mayor Daley that Redflex has the best system in the market — bar none."
At the time, Rosenberg — now cooperating with authorities under an immunity agreement — was already cultivating Bills and had picked up a hotel tab in San Diego for Bills and a group of his friends who were attending the Super Bowl, and Bills was already helping Redflex choose its subcontractors, the proffer said.
Many of the Rosenberg emails were sent to Finley, then a Redflex vice president, and to the company's CEO at the time, Bruce Higgins.
"We could not be in a better situation — trust me," Rosenberg wrote in a May 18, 2003, email to Higgins. "We have almost removed all the unknowns; the politics and we have positioned the evaluation to ensure a positive (and significant) Redflex outcome."
Higgins responded: "John B is on the ball."
One Redflex email discussed Bills' efforts to win the company an exclusive, or "sole source" contract with the city.
"If John does not get the revised contract by Friday," Finley wrote Rosenberg on Aug. 23, 2007. "He will chase it down early next week and if need be, use the Mayors' Office for extra pressure."
The federal proffer also lays out how Bills was a key player in bringing speed cameras to Illinois.
"Not only did Bills act as Redflex's champion in Chicago working to push through legislation related to speed enforcement, Bills also worked to keep Redflex's competitors at bay," Fardon wrote in the federal proffer.
One April 2010 email from O'Malley to Rosenberg highlighted those efforts.
"JB has talked to Speaker of the house Matigan about Speed," O'Malley wrote, misspelling Madigan's name. "Time for you to have private meeting & presentation!!!"
As early as 2007, Bills was suggesting what lobbyists Redflex should hire, prosecutors alleged. Those lobbyists, William Filan, Mark Fary and William Griffin, were referred to as the "three horsemen" by Redflex executives, prosecutors said. Filan has longtime ties to Madigan.
For decades Bills was a top-earning precinct captain for Madigan's 13th Ward political organization, always making his quotas and sometimes raking in as much as $10,000 in fundraising tickets, often picking up the slack for other captains who fell short and always working hard to get voters to the polls. Bills began his career in city government as a street lamp repairman in the city's Bureau of Electricity, dubbed "Madigan Electric" because of the number of 13th Ward loyalists employed there.
Bills retired from City Hall on June 30, 2011, and took a job working for Chicago consultant Greg Goldner, a former campaign manager for Emanuel and Daley. Goldner's company, Resolute Consulting, had been hired by Redflex to run a national campaign promoting automated enforcement programs through a series of Redflex-funded not-for-profits that claimed to be grass-roots organizations. Bills went to work for one called the Traffic Safety Coalition.
In the proffer released Wednesday, Fardon detailed how Redflex urged Goldner to hire Bills and increased its fees to Resolute to cover his salary. Prosecutors cited an email from the Redflex general counsel saying he introduced Bills to Goldner and Redflex lobbyist Michael Kasper.
Kasper, a longtime Madigan ally and lawyer for the state Democratic Party that Madigan runs, represented Emanuel in the residency dispute that could have derailed his run for mayor.
Kasper and Filan did not return telephone calls for comment. Goldner declined comment.
The federal document also offered more detail about Bills' lavish lifestyle, ritzy hotel stays and Redflex-covered meals at such spots as Carmichael's, Bertucci's, Gibsons, Chicago Chop House and Trump Tower, as well as golf outings at country clubs such as Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles, Cog Hill, Odyssey Country Club, Wyndham Golf Course, Troon North Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Gleneagles Country Club. The records detail other personal items for Bills that Redflex bought, such as computers, car rentals, a Mercedes Benz and even a condominium in Arizona.
The proffer detailed how Bills purchased the $178,000 condominium in O'Malley's name using alleged bribe money funneled through O'Malley.
"In the fall of 2012, after articles appeared in the Chicago Tribune about Redflex and Bills, O'Malley decided to sell the condo," Fardon wrote. "Bills agreed.
"Bills removed all his personal items from the condo and advised O'Malley that he should put pictures of his family in the condo to make it look like the condo was used by O'Malley and not by Bills, just in case investigators visited inside the condo," prosecutors wrote. "O'Malley purchased picture frames and put pictures of his family in the condo in order to trick investigators …"
The proffer also detailed the extent to which Bills allegedly tried to conceal his cash payments from Redflex, through O'Malley, who received bonuses and a $1,500 stipend for every new camera installed in Chicago.
According to Fardon, Bills would often ask his subordinates at City Hall and his friends to cover his expenses with their own credit cards and pay them back with cash.
"For example, Bills asked his administrative assistant at CDOT to charge airline tickets to her personal credit card on four separate occasions," Fardon wrote.
Tribune reporter Patrick M. O'Connell contributed.
Redflex CEO Confirms Photo Enforcement On The Decline
Redflex admits there is no more room for growth in the US red light camera or speed camera market.
Redflex Traffic Systems no longer considers the US red light camera and speed camera market an opportunity for growth. The firm's top leader told Australian investors on Wednesday that he had a plan to deal with the company's $38.6 million loss for the year -- ten times the red ink in 2014.
"Negative US public sentiment and emerging new vehicle technologies will reduce the demand for photo enforcement in the future," Redflex CEO Paul Clark said.
In California, for instance, more than sixty cities that once had photo enforcement have eliminated camera use, with automated ticketing being voted down at the ballot box three times. There are now more former red light camera customers than active users of cameras in the Golden State.
In previous statements, Redflex has hinted at its intention to shift focus away from photo ticketing. This year's annual general meeting served as an opportunity to explore those plans in greater detail. Redflex, for example, hopes to acquire smaller companies that would move Redflex out of the red light camera and speed camera business. This is a significant reversal of priorities, considering Redflex in 2007 divested its defense contracting business to focus exclusively on automated ticketing.
"Redflex's future is in providing Intelligent Traffic Systems or ITS solutions," Clark explained. "We need to leverage our ability to integrate hardware and software into the parking, tolling and traffic management markets... These markets will diversify us away from speed and red light which will continue to be impacted by negative public sentiment and increasing in-car automation."
Even if diversification is successful, the company's future remains clouded by an ongoing federal bribery investigation. Chicago, Illinois filed a $300 million "qui tam" lawsuit to recover the damage done by Redflex executives in the corruption scandal that has seen four individuals plead guilty, including Redflex executive vice president Aaron M. Rosenberg and US operations chief Karen Finley.
The company has since replaced its entire board of directors and top management, a move supported by investors on Wednesday. The move to new markets is seen as the company's only hope to return to profitability.
"The two capabilities that we need to develop are an ability to process, issue and receive payments for infringements, such as tolls and parking and to extract information that can be used to develop traffic management strategies," Clark said. "Redflex needs to be faster, smarter and better than our competitors. This has been an inherent part of our DNA but our execution needs to improve and the number of markets we operate in needs to expand."
Redflex admits there is no more room for growth in the US red light camera or speed camera market.
Redflex Traffic Systems no longer considers the US red light camera and speed camera market an opportunity for growth. The firm's top leader told Australian investors on Wednesday that he had a plan to deal with the company's $38.6 million loss for the year -- ten times the red ink in 2014.
"Negative US public sentiment and emerging new vehicle technologies will reduce the demand for photo enforcement in the future," Redflex CEO Paul Clark said.
In California, for instance, more than sixty cities that once had photo enforcement have eliminated camera use, with automated ticketing being voted down at the ballot box three times. There are now more former red light camera customers than active users of cameras in the Golden State.
In previous statements, Redflex has hinted at its intention to shift focus away from photo ticketing. This year's annual general meeting served as an opportunity to explore those plans in greater detail. Redflex, for example, hopes to acquire smaller companies that would move Redflex out of the red light camera and speed camera business. This is a significant reversal of priorities, considering Redflex in 2007 divested its defense contracting business to focus exclusively on automated ticketing.
"Redflex's future is in providing Intelligent Traffic Systems or ITS solutions," Clark explained. "We need to leverage our ability to integrate hardware and software into the parking, tolling and traffic management markets... These markets will diversify us away from speed and red light which will continue to be impacted by negative public sentiment and increasing in-car automation."
Even if diversification is successful, the company's future remains clouded by an ongoing federal bribery investigation. Chicago, Illinois filed a $300 million "qui tam" lawsuit to recover the damage done by Redflex executives in the corruption scandal that has seen four individuals plead guilty, including Redflex executive vice president Aaron M. Rosenberg and US operations chief Karen Finley.
The company has since replaced its entire board of directors and top management, a move supported by investors on Wednesday. The move to new markets is seen as the company's only hope to return to profitability.
"The two capabilities that we need to develop are an ability to process, issue and receive payments for infringements, such as tolls and parking and to extract information that can be used to develop traffic management strategies," Clark said. "Redflex needs to be faster, smarter and better than our competitors. This has been an inherent part of our DNA but our execution needs to improve and the number of markets we operate in needs to expand."
State Rep Lashawn Ford and Citizens to Abolish call for end to Chicago's failed Photo Enforcement Systems.
Nov 20, 2015
Tribune Exposes Thousands Of Erroneous Speed Camera Tickets
November 18, 2015
In an effort to make himself the most hated person on the 6th floor of City Hall, reporter David Kidwell dropped another blow to Chicago’s automated traffic enforcement industry in Wednesday’s Chicago Tribune.
The Trib story provides overwhelming evidence the city’s speed camera program has been issuing tens of thousands of erroneous violations costing unsuspecting drivers millions of dollars in fines.
Among the findings, the Tribune discovered more than 22,000 speed cam tickets were issued around parks which were closed for construction, over 11,000 speeding tickets were issued around parks past the parks posted hours, and 28,000 tickets were issued at locations where warning signs were either not posted or obscured.
Not only that, a random review of 1,500 tickets around school zones found a third had no children present in the video or photographs. And 62,000 school zone speeding tickets were issued during the summer–when school was out.
After the Trib began digging around this past summer, the city began moving to issue refunds for over 23,000 violations which were paid–despite the fact they should never have been issued.
In the story, transportation chief Rebekah Scheinfeld tries to defend the “Children’s Safety Zone Program”, despite overwhelming crash data that shows children are not getting struck by cars on major thoroughfares but on side streets.
The newspaper has setup a website for motorists to check to see if perhaps they’re eligible for a refund or for the ticket to be vacated.
November 18, 2015
In an effort to make himself the most hated person on the 6th floor of City Hall, reporter David Kidwell dropped another blow to Chicago’s automated traffic enforcement industry in Wednesday’s Chicago Tribune.
The Trib story provides overwhelming evidence the city’s speed camera program has been issuing tens of thousands of erroneous violations costing unsuspecting drivers millions of dollars in fines.
Among the findings, the Tribune discovered more than 22,000 speed cam tickets were issued around parks which were closed for construction, over 11,000 speeding tickets were issued around parks past the parks posted hours, and 28,000 tickets were issued at locations where warning signs were either not posted or obscured.
Not only that, a random review of 1,500 tickets around school zones found a third had no children present in the video or photographs. And 62,000 school zone speeding tickets were issued during the summer–when school was out.
After the Trib began digging around this past summer, the city began moving to issue refunds for over 23,000 violations which were paid–despite the fact they should never have been issued.
In the story, transportation chief Rebekah Scheinfeld tries to defend the “Children’s Safety Zone Program”, despite overwhelming crash data that shows children are not getting struck by cars on major thoroughfares but on side streets.
The newspaper has setup a website for motorists to check to see if perhaps they’re eligible for a refund or for the ticket to be vacated.
Tribune shines it's camera on Chicago's Speed Cameras
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TINY PARKS, BIG PAYOUTS
Major ticket-generating cameras tag cars after hours, during construction closings BY DAVID KIDWELL AND ABRAHAM EPTON CHICAGO TRIBUNE Until a couple of years ago, neighbors say few people even knew about tiny Challenger Play-lot Park, nestled under the thunder of the CTA Red Line tracks on the city’s North Side. That’s because the gravel dog walk surrounded by a chain-link fence isn’t really what many would consider a park. It has no playground equipment. No picnic table. But the park has become notorious for the one thing it does have — a nearby speed camera that has quickly racked up more than $2 million in tickets. Residents describe the camera, which went live in December 2013, as a poster child for what’s wrong with Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s “Children’s Safety Zone” program. “This is where they are saving children? This is a place to walk your dog,” said homeowner Alissa Friedman, who received two tickets from the camera. “No one’s in danger. No one is even remotely in danger.” The camera is on a well-traveled stretch of Irving Park Road, almost twice as far from the park as the law allows, and it has tagged thousands of drivers like Friedman after the park’s gate has closed at 9 p.m. A Tribune investigation of Chicago’s 2-year-old speed camera program found more than 60,000 tickets worth more than $2.4 million issued by park zone cameras under questionable circumstances. Either the parks were completely closed for construction, the cameras rolled after the parks were closed for the night or required warning signs were obscured, confusing or missing altogether. Already the Emanuel administration has begun to process refunds for some 23,000 tickets, worth more than $900,000, that it now acknowledges were issued improperly at three parks. Emanuel’s transportation chief, Rebekah Scheinfeld, said human error was responsible for some of the problems at park cameras but that the city is working hard to fine-tune the program. She said cameras are an important part of the city’s overall traffic safety system and are slowing down drivers throughout Chicago. “We have issued refunds and dismissed tickets where there has been a problem in implementation,” said Scheinfeld, commissioner of the Department of Transportation. “The point is we are continuously reviewing and managing this program to ensure that it continues to be effective.” Emanuel has said since his first year in office that expanding the city’s red light camera program to include speed cameras was central to his plan for protecting children near parks and schools. After a Tribune series last year documented a red light program run amok, the new investigation raises similar questions about whether the administration is running the speed cameras fairly. While the cameras near schools present the most thorny and complex legal issues, it is the cameras near parks that rake in the most fines and pose some of the most troubling questions about how the automated speed-enforcement program is run. Location is the ticket Although the number of school and park cameras is almost evenly divided, the park cameras generate the bulk of the tickets as well as $63 million of the $81 million in fines the program has generated since its inception. That’s in part because park zones have fewer restrictions on when and how they operate. But it’s also due to where the cameras are located. The 25 cameras that generate the most tickets in the city are all park cameras, and all are placed on well-traveled major streets where crash data show child pedestrians are least likely to be struck by speeders. While park cameras are allowed to operate between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m., the same municipal law prohibits their operation after the parks they are attached to are closed for the night. But several parks had a problem with after-hours tickets, including Schaefer Playlot Park on the North Side, Horan Park on the West Side and Rosenblum Park on the South Side. But the biggest after-hours problem was at Challenger, the park where Friedman was tagged. Hers were among 5,739 tickets worth $193,995 in fines that were issued after the sign says the gates are closed. The dog walk area is far beyond the one-eighth-mile legal limit for cameras, but the city apparently measured the distance to an access gate for the parking lot on Irving Park Road. From there, a visitor would have to walk the distance of nearly four football fields through a commuter parking lot to get to the park. The park can’t be seen from Irving Park Road without the aid of binoculars. The gates for the Challenger Park parking lot close at 9 p.m., but the camera has tagged thousands of drivers after 9 p.m., including Friedman twice as she was driving home from work. On the other side of the “L” tracks is the small Buena Circle Playlot Park, which has playground equipment but closes at dusk. “I am angry,” said the 51-year-old mother of two. “It’s a sneaky thing to do, insidious. It’s deceptive. The city is trying to make money off of people for its own purposes. It’s just wrong.” An examination of crash data shows that no children have been hit by speeding cars along the stretch of Irving Park Road near Challenger Park since at least 2004, even though some have been injured on the residential interior streets nearby. That scenario, using the city’s broader definition of speed-related accidents, plays out much the same at camera after camera throughout the city. The top ticketing camera in the city is on the Far South Side at the intersection of four-lane 127th Street and a bike trail in West Pullman. The camera raised nearly $4 million in fines, even though crash reports indicate no children have been hit by speeding cars on that stretch of 127th. “Have you been out there? Have you seen what they call a park?” said James Scott, 78, a retired mattress-maker who lives nearby and whose car was tagged eight times as his daughter passed the camera on her way to the hospital. “It’s not a park at all. It’s an abandoned railroad track they put a bike path on. “That camera is here to make money,” said Scott, who helped his now-deceased daughter unsuccessfully appeal each of her tickets. “It’s a trap. Nobody (has been) hit here. Nobody not even close.” A few miles away near the Indiana state border, the city’s third-most prolific camera has snapped $3.1 million in fines at 10318 S. Indianapolis Ave. Just off the six-lane thoroughfare is the entrance to the John “Beans” Beniac Greenway Park, another bike path that stretches into the adjoining residential neighborhood. The bike path runs adjacent to an alleyway that gives garage access to a neighborhood of single-family homes. “It’s unbelievable,” said John O’Connor, 75, who frequently drives from the city’s North Side to a nearby casino. “No way that camera is protecting children. There are no children walking along Indianapolis Avenue.” A review of crash data shows that six children have been struck by cars on the neighborhood streets around the bike path park since 2004, but none of those accidents occurred along Indianapolis Avenue where the city has installed the speed camera. The Tribune’s examination found some park cameras with multiple problems, such as those assigned to Schaefer Playlot Park. The tiny playground in a North Side neighborhood is bordered by homes, commercial buildings and a small side street. But the speed cameras set up to protect the children who might play there are blocks away on two major thoroughfares, Ashland and Clybourn avenues. Those cameras are also among the busiest in the city, catching tens of thousands of speeders going over the 30 mph limit there and generating nearly $1.7 million in ticket revenue. The Tribune found 3,673 tickets worth $157,980 that were issued after the park signs say Schaefer closes, and another 4,681 tickets worth $176,640 issued during a time that warning signs at one of the cameras on Ashland were missing. An additional 9,577 tickets were issued late in 2014 while the park was closed for renovation and the cameras should have been shut down. David Callahan, who lives four blocks away, received three speed camera tickets while the park was closed. “I had no idea that little park was even there,” said Callahan, a partner at the downtown law firm of Latham & Watkins who didn’t appeal his tickets. “How was I supposed to know it was closed?” “It’s the price of living in this city,” Callahan added. “It clearly has nothing to do with protecting children and everything to do with raising cash.” Schaefer Playlot Park was one of two parks where cameras tagged drivers for nearly $924,000 in fines while the parks were closed for construction. The other one was Ashmore Playlot Park, another small playground tucked into a residential neighborhood near Cicero and Lawrence avenues on the city’s Northwest Side. It was closed from March 12 through April 20 earlier this year. Long slated for rejuvenation under Emanuel’s Chicago Plays initiative to upgrade playground equipment throughout the city, the park was surrounded by a cyclone fence while speed cameras tagged drivers for nearly 13,000 tickets worth $518,855 in fines. In both cases, city officials acknowledge they failed to turn off the cameras as required. After the Tribune began interviewing people improperly ticketed and inquiring with city officials in July about the closed parks, the city moved last month to vacate the tickets. Callahan said the city sent him an application form for him to obtain refunds. He questioned the refund process as much as the undeserved tickets. “Why don’t they just send the check?” he said. “I am sure they have some formula that tells them how many people won’t even open the envelope, how many people won’t bother mailing in these forms.” City officials said those who paid by credit card will be refunded automatically, but they must confirm addresses before they put checks in the mail. Even when Schaefer and Ash-more parks are open, both are surrounded by wrought-iron fences, with access through a tiny gate on a neighborhood street. The entrance to Ashmore is on Gunnison Street, which is lined with modest homes and already equipped with speed bumps. The cameras affiliated with Ashmore have generated more than 94,000 citations worth more than $3.8 million in fines, making that park zone the third-largest revenue producer in the city. The Tribune examination also suggests that many drivers missed an opportunity to challenge an improper ticket. About 1 in 63 speed camera tickets is ever appealed by drivers, but when they are appealed the camera problems sometimes are readily apparent. For instance, administrative law judges have thrown out 68 tickets because signs did not meet the legal requirement to warn drivers of a speed camera. When the Tribune examined those rulings, it found multiple cameras near parks where judges found the same sign problems occurring at least five times, often over the course of weeks or months. During the time those cameras showed evidence of chronic problems with inadequate or missing warning signs, they generated more than 28,000 tickets worth more than $1 million in fines. Two other parks had sign problems that occurred slightly less frequently but for a longer period — more than a year. The number of questionable tickets more than doubles when those cameras are included. Scheinfeld questioned the Tribune’s findings on signs, saying the contract requires ATS to do weekly checks. “There is a weekly calibration requirement, a physical on-site inspection where they are checking the system operation and they are checking the sign-age.” One of the cameras experiencing a chronic problem with legally deficient signs was attached to Ashmore, where Timothy Moyer tried in vain to fight his tickets on grounds the park was closed. “I think $518,000 in five weeks is the reason they put the camera there,” Moyer said. “I think that is the reason they put a lot of the cameras in a lot of places. “It makes you wonder what else they are doing to screw people.” Chicago Tribune’s Jeff Coen contributed. [email protected] [email protected] Twitter @davidkidwell1 |
How the Tribune examined the speed camera program
November 18, 2015 To examine Chicago’s speed camera program, the Chicago Tribune used the state Freedom of Information Act to obtain numerous records, including data from every violation recorded since the first camera began generating tickets in October 2013 and continuing through Sept. 1. The Tribune also obtained records documenting all 33,474 ticket appeals through Sept. 1, Chicago crash data dating back to 2004 and Chicago Park District construction schedules since the inception of the camera program. Read a detailed explanation of our methodology at chicagotribune.com/speed-cams. Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s speed camera program improperly issued more than $2.4 million in fines to Chicago drivers, ticketing them when cameras were supposed to be off and when the required warning signs were confusing, obscured or missing, a Tribune investigation has found. At the same time, City Hall has systematically ticketed drivers near schools without the legally required evidence of a schoolchild. A Tribune random-sample analysis puts the number of those questionable tickets at about 110,000. And while it was pitched by the mayor as a way to protect youngsters walking near parks and schools, the most prolific cameras in the 2-year-old “Children’s Safety Zone” initiative can be found along major roadways, where crash data show child pedestrians are least likely to be struck by speeders. Even as city officials refused for months to discuss the problems with the Tribune, the Emanuel administration was quietly moving to get out in front of the issues. Since the newspaper first began asking city officials about the program in July, the administration has altered guidelines for ticketing and begun to vacate nearly $1 million in tickets. Emanuel has said his goal was simple — to prevent speeding drivers from hurting children near schools and parks. But skepticism about the aims of the program and concerns about overreaching gave rise to a complicated set of rules that govern when, where and how drivers can be tagged by the automated cameras now in place at 63 schools and parks throughout the city. In its six-month examination, the Tribune found those rules were both broadly interpreted and repeatedly ignored since the program issued its first fine in October 2013. Among the findings: • More than 22,000 tickets were sent to owners of cars tagged by cameras near parks that were closed for construction for months, in apparent violation of the speed camera ordinance. • More than 11,000 tickets were issued at hours after parks were closed for the night, according to the posted times on Chicago Park District signs or its website. • More than 28,000 tickets were issued at cameras plagued by problems with warning signs that did not meet the minimum legal requirements. The required signs were either missing entirely, obscured by trees and construction, or so confusing that drivers could not figure out which speed limit was being enforced. • A ticket-by-ticket review of 1,500 randomly chosen citations from school zones found no children were present in the photographic evidence for nearly a third of the cases, even though a child’s presence was required. That review suggests that about 110,000 tickets may have been issued without legal justification. • More than 62,000 school zone tickets were issued over the summer months when school activity is often so limited that drivers are left to guess whether school is in session. The law says tickets can be issued only “on school days,” typically defined as during the regular school year. A class-action lawsuit challenging the practice was dismissed by a Cook County judge but is on appeal. After Tribune inquiries, the Emanuel administration says it is moving to issue refunds for nearly 23,000 tickets City Hall now admits should never have been mailed in the first place. “That’s great, but why did it take the Chicago Tribune to figure this out?” said Timothy Moyer, 46, who earlier this year unsuccessfully appealed five speeding tickets near a tiny neighborhood playground on the Northwest Side on grounds the park was closed. He received an error notice from the city after the Tribune inquiries. “Of course it was closed, you could see the dump trucks lined up outside,” Moyer said. “I knew it was closed, but it didn’t do me any good. This is amazing to me.” City officials have in recent weeks acknowledged mistakes and said they are working to fix any issues in what industry experts describe as one of the most complex automated speed-enforcement programs in the country. Administration officials declined repeated requests to explain the program until nearly the eve of publication, when the mayor’s top transportation officials sat down at City Hall for a 90-minute meeting with Tribune reporters. Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld said the speed camera program is a needed safety measure to slow drivers down near parks and schools where children are most likely to gather. “Speeding is a serious problem in this city,” she said. “It’s responsible for about a quarter of crashes resulting in injury or fatality every year. So we take that very seriously. “We believe the system is working,” Scheinfeld added. “The system is only 2 years old, barely, and we already see positive results in changing driver behavior.” Administration officials say the speed cameras are placed where crash statistics show the biggest safety problems. The data posted on the city’s website to justify the camera placement show more than 47,700 accidents from 2009 through 2012 with a connection to speed but that include a broad definition of when speed is a factor and count all types of crashes, involving not just pedestrians and involving people of all ages. The Tribune examination of Chicago Police Department crash data from 2004 through 2014 revealed 108 children on foot or on bicycle were injured in accidents where the police cited “exceeding the authorized speed limit” as a contributing factor. The majority of those accidents happened on side streets, not on the major streets where speed cameras are typically placed. “We have looked carefully at the crash data, and we are not going to wait for a kid to be killed before putting the cameras up somewhere where we see a high risk and significant evidence of traffic crashes and speeding problems,” Scheinfeld said. A young sibling to red light program From his earliest days in office, Emanuel was pushing to expand the city’s red light camera program, the largest in the country, to include speed cameras, telling lawmakers and reporters alike: “My goal is only one thing, the safety of our kids.” At the time, Chicago’s red light camera program was held up as the model for how automated traffic enforcement programs should be run. The city’s longtime vendor, Redflex Traffic Systems, was a front-runner to win the new contract and helped in the mayor’s push for expansion. The company even hired a longtime Emanuel political ally as a national consultant. Despite skepticism from some, Emanuel quickly won approval from state lawmakers and Chicago aldermen. But the Redflex speed-camera bid was doomed amid a series of Tribune reports that revealed the company won its red-light camera business in Chicago with the help of a $2 million bribery scheme, the city used overblown safety claims to sell the program to the public, and tens of thousands of drivers were unfairly ticketed because of widespread malfunction and failed oversight that the city’s inspector general called “fundamentally deficient.” The Tribune reporting led to a federal bribery investigation and a guilty plea from Redflex’s former CEO, who admitted her role in a conspiracy to pay a former city manager $1,500 for each of the nearly 400 cameras that peppered the city. The ex-manager’s trial is set for January. Emanuel has since ordered the removal of 80 red light cameras and promised reforms to improve oversight and management of the program. Amid the controversy and questions about the reach of automated traffic cameras, Emanuel scaled back his speed camera plans. The cameras were limited by state law to within one-eighth of a mile of schools and parks, so-called Children’s Safety Zones. City ordinance caps the number of safety zones at 300, and so far the city has activated 150 cameras, including four that came online Nov. 9. Emanuel has refused requests for an interview, and for years he has fought Tribune efforts to get a look at city records on the camera programs — including his own emails, texts and memos on the topic. Administration officials also have declined requests for a tour of the facilities where speed violation evidence is reviewed. The speed camera program has doled out more than 2.1 million tickets, most of them warnings, along with more than $81 million in fines. Scheinfeld said the administration has been judicious and forgiving in rolling out the program. The city issues no fines to anyone going less than 10 mph over the speed limit even though the law provides for fines at 6 mph over the limit, she noted, and everyone gets a “mulligan” for their first ticket, with no fine. In its six-month examination, the Tribune pored over thousands of tickets and appeals, visited more than 30 parks and schools, interviewed dozens of drivers and talked with leading traffic safety experts. The examination did not include four cameras in two zones that came online this month. As part of its investigation, the Tribune created an interactive Web database that profiles every speed camera in the system, highlights those with a history of improper ticketing and allows readers to plug in their license plate number to see whether they were tagged at problem spots. Deborah Lowery, 51, a nurse who lives on the South Side, has been ticketed several times. She successfully appealed two tickets, including one for going 35 mph in a school zone, where the 30 mph limit drops to 20 mph when a child is present. A hearing officer ruled there was no child present and threw out the ticket. “I wish the mayor would listen to us and stop targeting the working people because we are not doing anything wrong,” Lowery said. “We’re just driving from day to day going back and forth to work and it’s not fair. “They are giving out all these tickets in the middle of the day when the kids are in classes,” she said. “There were not kids out there. They are robbing people, and it’s just not fair.” [email protected] [email protected] Twitter @davidkidwell1 |
Protesters Call Archer Avenue Speed Camera A 'Scam'
By Ed Komenda | November 9, 2015
@ejkomenda
Protesters stood in the solidarity near 3200 S. Archer Ave., where the city activated a controversial speed camera Monday.
DNAinfo/Ed KomendaMCKINLEY PARK — Drawing about a dozen protesters to fight a controversial speed camera activated in the neighborhood Monday, Ald. George Cardenas (12th) said city bosses are using the technology to pickpocket citizens.
“They have no understanding of communities or their needs,” Cardenas said just after 10 a.m., standing in the cold at 3200 S. Archer Ave. “This is completely wrong.”
Since its installation in 2014, the speed camera has drawn criticism from local residents and organizations calling the camera a money-grabbing scheme disguised as a safety solution.
The city pitched the camera as a way to protect children playing at Mulberry Playlot Park — but the camera isn’t very close to the park, Cardenas said.
Though the city's transportation department lists the camera at 3200 S. Archer Ave., it's about a block south of Archer on Robinson Street — an access road often used by semi-trucks as a shortcut to the Stevenson Expressway.
“If it’s about safety, let’s talk about safety,” Cardenas said. “But that’s not the debate here. You’re telling me you’re putting it here because some people are going into the park? It’s a complete lie.”
In front of television cameras, Cardenas offered his own solution: Relocate the playlot to a park where more children play.
"That’s smart money," he said. "This is not smart money."
Some residents said the camera will do little more than contribute to the erosion of the middle class.
“This is a scam,” said Robert Kubitz. “It’s a means in order to generate revenue. It’s all to line the city’s coffers.”
By some accounts, the city’s speed camera campaign — doling out fines of $35-$100 — has been successful at one thing: Making money.
A DNAinfo analysis published in Maydiscovered more than $100,000 in speed camera fines were issued per day citywide. That translates to more than 2,900 tickets per day — or $58 million in speed camera fines citywide.
The city began planting the cameras outside schools and parks in 2013 as a way to curb pedestrian accidents in "children's safety zones."
To Kubitz, the camera’s activation represents nothing more than another fee locals will have to worry about on top of other mounting bills.
“The citizens of this area are middle class. We’re not making a lot of money and yet this fee is going up and that fee is going up,” he said. “My wages aren’t going up, but yet I’m being nickel-and-dimed. … You’ve got people working two-three-four jobs in order to makes ends meet, and here you’re being nickel-and-dimed. It’s insane.”
The 44-year-old McKinley Park lifer said the city would be better off spending taxpayer dollars to station more policemen on the streets.
“We’ve been standing out here for 20 minutes and I’ve yet to see a cop roll by here," Kibitz said. “That’s pretty sad. This neighborhood isn’t as safe as it once was.”
Veronica Vicenteno supports the camera. She has lived across the street from its new home for almost a decade.
The camera makes her feel safe walking home from the bust top.
“There’s a lot of drag racing here,” Vicenteno said. “At first I was against the camera, and then when I realized it helped me as a pedestrian to cross the street, I was in favor of it.”
Vicenteno said it appeared most of the people at the protest came from different neighborhoods.
“I’d like to know who these people are, because I’ve never seen them,” she said. “They don’t understand how it is crossing the street here all year long.”
One of those non-residents included Mark Wallace, a South Shore native and head ofCitizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras, a group working to end both the city's red-light and speed-camera programs.
“It is immoral for the city to continue to defend a defenseless program that is riddled with corruption,” Wallace said.
Cardenas plans to take the neighborhood’s complaints Downtown.
“The next step,” he said, “is to talk to folks in City Hall and see if we can negotiate.”
By Ed Komenda | November 9, 2015
@ejkomenda
Protesters stood in the solidarity near 3200 S. Archer Ave., where the city activated a controversial speed camera Monday.
DNAinfo/Ed KomendaMCKINLEY PARK — Drawing about a dozen protesters to fight a controversial speed camera activated in the neighborhood Monday, Ald. George Cardenas (12th) said city bosses are using the technology to pickpocket citizens.
“They have no understanding of communities or their needs,” Cardenas said just after 10 a.m., standing in the cold at 3200 S. Archer Ave. “This is completely wrong.”
Since its installation in 2014, the speed camera has drawn criticism from local residents and organizations calling the camera a money-grabbing scheme disguised as a safety solution.
The city pitched the camera as a way to protect children playing at Mulberry Playlot Park — but the camera isn’t very close to the park, Cardenas said.
Though the city's transportation department lists the camera at 3200 S. Archer Ave., it's about a block south of Archer on Robinson Street — an access road often used by semi-trucks as a shortcut to the Stevenson Expressway.
“If it’s about safety, let’s talk about safety,” Cardenas said. “But that’s not the debate here. You’re telling me you’re putting it here because some people are going into the park? It’s a complete lie.”
In front of television cameras, Cardenas offered his own solution: Relocate the playlot to a park where more children play.
"That’s smart money," he said. "This is not smart money."
Some residents said the camera will do little more than contribute to the erosion of the middle class.
“This is a scam,” said Robert Kubitz. “It’s a means in order to generate revenue. It’s all to line the city’s coffers.”
By some accounts, the city’s speed camera campaign — doling out fines of $35-$100 — has been successful at one thing: Making money.
A DNAinfo analysis published in Maydiscovered more than $100,000 in speed camera fines were issued per day citywide. That translates to more than 2,900 tickets per day — or $58 million in speed camera fines citywide.
The city began planting the cameras outside schools and parks in 2013 as a way to curb pedestrian accidents in "children's safety zones."
To Kubitz, the camera’s activation represents nothing more than another fee locals will have to worry about on top of other mounting bills.
“The citizens of this area are middle class. We’re not making a lot of money and yet this fee is going up and that fee is going up,” he said. “My wages aren’t going up, but yet I’m being nickel-and-dimed. … You’ve got people working two-three-four jobs in order to makes ends meet, and here you’re being nickel-and-dimed. It’s insane.”
The 44-year-old McKinley Park lifer said the city would be better off spending taxpayer dollars to station more policemen on the streets.
“We’ve been standing out here for 20 minutes and I’ve yet to see a cop roll by here," Kibitz said. “That’s pretty sad. This neighborhood isn’t as safe as it once was.”
Veronica Vicenteno supports the camera. She has lived across the street from its new home for almost a decade.
The camera makes her feel safe walking home from the bust top.
“There’s a lot of drag racing here,” Vicenteno said. “At first I was against the camera, and then when I realized it helped me as a pedestrian to cross the street, I was in favor of it.”
Vicenteno said it appeared most of the people at the protest came from different neighborhoods.
“I’d like to know who these people are, because I’ve never seen them,” she said. “They don’t understand how it is crossing the street here all year long.”
One of those non-residents included Mark Wallace, a South Shore native and head ofCitizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras, a group working to end both the city's red-light and speed-camera programs.
“It is immoral for the city to continue to defend a defenseless program that is riddled with corruption,” Wallace said.
Cardenas plans to take the neighborhood’s complaints Downtown.
“The next step,” he said, “is to talk to folks in City Hall and see if we can negotiate.”
Alderman Cardenas Denounces Archer Speed Camera Activation as Aggressive City Hall Tactic; Protest To Be Held Monday November 9th, 2015
TODAY – Alderman Cardenas denounced the upcoming activation of the speed camera at 3200 S Archer. The speed camera was installed in September of 2014 and instantly opposed by both the Alderman, local community members, and the Citizens to Abolish Redlight Cameras. Alderman Cardenas was recently informed that the camera will go live on Monday, November 9th, 2015.
“This camera is nothing more than an aggressive tactic to nickel and dime the taxpayers of this area,” said Alderman Cardenas, “These minor park investments are lipstick on a pig. The community knows this is a playlot that children do not use. To truly make this park safe and inviting for children, a properly placed camera is needed, not one that is over 200 feet away and in the opposite direction. I will take any and all action necessary to fight City Hall and remove this camera immediately. I encourage the community to join me in protesting this camera.”
Mulberry Playlot is located at 3120 S. Robinson, a one-way street that can only be accessed from Ashland Avenue. Entrance to the park can only be from Robinson Street. The speed camera is located at 3200 S. Archer and is blocked by buildings and an alley making it impossible for cars driving past it to see or hear children. Over 1000 community members signed a petition to remove the speed camera. In a survey of over 700 ward residents, over 65% of them disagreed with the camera and its location.
Who: Alderman Cardenas, 12th Ward Residents, and Citizens To Abolish Red Light Cameras
What: Protest To Remove Archer Speed Camera
Where: 3200 S Archer Avenue
When: Monday, November 9th, 2015
Time: 10:00am
TODAY – Alderman Cardenas denounced the upcoming activation of the speed camera at 3200 S Archer. The speed camera was installed in September of 2014 and instantly opposed by both the Alderman, local community members, and the Citizens to Abolish Redlight Cameras. Alderman Cardenas was recently informed that the camera will go live on Monday, November 9th, 2015.
“This camera is nothing more than an aggressive tactic to nickel and dime the taxpayers of this area,” said Alderman Cardenas, “These minor park investments are lipstick on a pig. The community knows this is a playlot that children do not use. To truly make this park safe and inviting for children, a properly placed camera is needed, not one that is over 200 feet away and in the opposite direction. I will take any and all action necessary to fight City Hall and remove this camera immediately. I encourage the community to join me in protesting this camera.”
Mulberry Playlot is located at 3120 S. Robinson, a one-way street that can only be accessed from Ashland Avenue. Entrance to the park can only be from Robinson Street. The speed camera is located at 3200 S. Archer and is blocked by buildings and an alley making it impossible for cars driving past it to see or hear children. Over 1000 community members signed a petition to remove the speed camera. In a survey of over 700 ward residents, over 65% of them disagreed with the camera and its location.
Who: Alderman Cardenas, 12th Ward Residents, and Citizens To Abolish Red Light Cameras
What: Protest To Remove Archer Speed Camera
Where: 3200 S Archer Avenue
When: Monday, November 9th, 2015
Time: 10:00am
You can fight City Hall - And Win
St. Louis to refund motorists for $5.6 million in red-light camera tickets
August 19, 2015
ST. LOUIS • The city pledged on Wednesday that it will refund roughly $5.6 million to motorists who paid red-light camera tickets.
On Tuesday, the Missouri Supreme Court struck down the ordinance governing red-light cameras in St. Louis. The city immediately stopped the red-light camera program and dismissed all pending cases.
Now, St. Louis begins the daunting task of returning the money paid over the last 18 months by offending drivers. Officials say they are still considering the best way to do it — all while contemplating the creation of a new red-light camera ordinance that can pass legal muster.
Full refunds will go only to motorists who paid tickets between Feb. 14, 2014 and Tuesday. Anyone who paid a ticket before that period will not receive a refund, the city said. Motorists who paid red-light tickets prior to that were eligible for a class-action settlement that amounted to about $20 per ticket.
Circuit Judge Steven Ohmer last year invalidated the city’s red-light ordinance in a case brought by Sarah Tupper and Sandra Thurmond after their vehicles were photographed running red lights. Both said someone else had been driving at the time.
Ohmer placed his order on hold to allow proponents of the St. Louis ordinance to mount an appeal. On Feb. 14, 2014, Ohmer allowed the city to continue issuing tickets, but ordered that the money collected be placed in an escrow account that could be returned if the city lost the appeal.
“The ordinance was essentially valid until it was found invalid,” said Maggie Crane, the spokeswoman for St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay. “We can only give refunds to the backdate of when the escrow account was created.”
The state’s high court ended all debate on Tuesday when it said the ordinance “is unconstitutional because it creates a rebuttable presumption that improperly shifts the burden of persuasion onto the defendant to prove that he or she was not operating the motor vehicle at the time of the violation.”
Crane said it could take a while for the city to establish a system for refunds.
“We will follow the spirit of the law,” Crane said. “We just don’t know how the mechanics will work.”
Crane said that while the city could contact people by mail, that could prove complicated because some people have moved to different addresses. She said the city is considering setting up a website where motorists could go to claim refunds, similar to how governments return unclaimed property.
Crane said the city will return any payments that might have been mailed before the ruling came down.
But red-light cameras in the city aren’t going anywhere. While their use is temporarily halted, the mayor’s office is considering a new ordinance to fit with Tuesday’s judicial ruling.
Crane said the cameras are a public safety help because statistics show they reduce accidents at high-traffic intersections and can also be used by police to help solve crimes. She said they expect there is political support for keeping the program because money generated from the cameras would be used to hire additional police officers in the city.
Tom Shepard, the chief to staff to Aldermanic President Lewis Reed, said his office doesn’t yet have an opinion on any future ordinance.
American Traffic Solutions, the company that operates the cameras, said it will begin working with Missouri municipalities to restart the programs, which because of the court ruling must have a way to identify the driver behind the wheel.
Across the state in Kansas City, which suspended its red-light ticket program in 2013, official told the Kansas City Star that the plans to re-establish a camera program that conforms with the law at its most dangerous intersections.
Meanwhile in St. Peters, city officials reiterated their decision announced last February to keep red-light cameras turned off for good.
However, 35 people with pending camera-generated tickets issued under a revised version of the city ordinance passed in 2013 still must deal with them, officials said.
August 19, 2015
ST. LOUIS • The city pledged on Wednesday that it will refund roughly $5.6 million to motorists who paid red-light camera tickets.
On Tuesday, the Missouri Supreme Court struck down the ordinance governing red-light cameras in St. Louis. The city immediately stopped the red-light camera program and dismissed all pending cases.
Now, St. Louis begins the daunting task of returning the money paid over the last 18 months by offending drivers. Officials say they are still considering the best way to do it — all while contemplating the creation of a new red-light camera ordinance that can pass legal muster.
Full refunds will go only to motorists who paid tickets between Feb. 14, 2014 and Tuesday. Anyone who paid a ticket before that period will not receive a refund, the city said. Motorists who paid red-light tickets prior to that were eligible for a class-action settlement that amounted to about $20 per ticket.
Circuit Judge Steven Ohmer last year invalidated the city’s red-light ordinance in a case brought by Sarah Tupper and Sandra Thurmond after their vehicles were photographed running red lights. Both said someone else had been driving at the time.
Ohmer placed his order on hold to allow proponents of the St. Louis ordinance to mount an appeal. On Feb. 14, 2014, Ohmer allowed the city to continue issuing tickets, but ordered that the money collected be placed in an escrow account that could be returned if the city lost the appeal.
“The ordinance was essentially valid until it was found invalid,” said Maggie Crane, the spokeswoman for St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay. “We can only give refunds to the backdate of when the escrow account was created.”
The state’s high court ended all debate on Tuesday when it said the ordinance “is unconstitutional because it creates a rebuttable presumption that improperly shifts the burden of persuasion onto the defendant to prove that he or she was not operating the motor vehicle at the time of the violation.”
Crane said it could take a while for the city to establish a system for refunds.
“We will follow the spirit of the law,” Crane said. “We just don’t know how the mechanics will work.”
Crane said that while the city could contact people by mail, that could prove complicated because some people have moved to different addresses. She said the city is considering setting up a website where motorists could go to claim refunds, similar to how governments return unclaimed property.
Crane said the city will return any payments that might have been mailed before the ruling came down.
But red-light cameras in the city aren’t going anywhere. While their use is temporarily halted, the mayor’s office is considering a new ordinance to fit with Tuesday’s judicial ruling.
Crane said the cameras are a public safety help because statistics show they reduce accidents at high-traffic intersections and can also be used by police to help solve crimes. She said they expect there is political support for keeping the program because money generated from the cameras would be used to hire additional police officers in the city.
Tom Shepard, the chief to staff to Aldermanic President Lewis Reed, said his office doesn’t yet have an opinion on any future ordinance.
American Traffic Solutions, the company that operates the cameras, said it will begin working with Missouri municipalities to restart the programs, which because of the court ruling must have a way to identify the driver behind the wheel.
Across the state in Kansas City, which suspended its red-light ticket program in 2013, official told the Kansas City Star that the plans to re-establish a camera program that conforms with the law at its most dangerous intersections.
Meanwhile in St. Peters, city officials reiterated their decision announced last February to keep red-light cameras turned off for good.
However, 35 people with pending camera-generated tickets issued under a revised version of the city ordinance passed in 2013 still must deal with them, officials said.
Chicago Class Action Suit to be ruled on December 10, 2015
(Chicago) The Circuit Court of Cook County will hear arguments on October 6th, 2015 on a Motion by the City of Chicago to dismiss the class action lawsuit which seeks to have Chicago’s entire red light camera program declared legally unauthorized. The lawsuit also asserts that the state law permitting red light cameras in only specifically named communities is unconstitutional. The City’s previous attempts to have the case dismissed, on the basis that all tickets were paid ”voluntarily” and that an earlier lawsuit barred the case, were denied by the Circuit Court of July 30, 2015.
The class action, which seeks restitution from the City for all tickets paid, also challenges Chicago’s yellow light durations, which are shorter than federal legal standards. The City claims that it need not refund any tickets issued, despite improperly short yellow light times (less than the three seconds specified under federal law) because there is “no legal basis” under either the federal Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) or the Illinois law requiring statewide adoption of the manual “to impose minimum yellow light durations upon the City.” (City Reply Brief p. 22) However, the MUTCD dictates that the minimum yellow light duration for a street with a 30 mile per hour speed limit should be between 3.2 and 3.6 seconds. Chicago has admitted to its Inspector General that its yellow light durations at such intersections are as low as 2.89 seconds.
The arguments were submitted in support of the City’s motion to dismiss a class action case originally filed against it in 2012, and substantially revised after news reports in 2014 revealed irregularities with the yellow light durations at many city intersections. The case, Terie L Kata et. al v. City of Chicago, No 12 CH 14186, is currently pending in the Circuit Court of Cook County.
The hearing on the City’s remaining arguments is scheduled before Associate Judge Rita Novak on TuesdayOctober 6, 2015 at 10:30 a.m. in Courtroom 2402 of the Richard J. Daley Center, 50 W. Washington Street.
(NOTE: This hearing is open to the press and public. Cameras not permitted inside the courtroom. Plaintiffs’ counsel will have press availability following the hearing, about noon, outside the courtroom.)
The Kata class action asserts that Chicago’s Red Light Camera program, which was begun in 2003 and is the largest and most lucrative in the nation, has never been legally authorized for several reasons, including:
1) The Chicago program and the Ordinance creating it was void ab initio (“from the beginning”) in 2003, because the Illinois Vehicle Code expressly prohibited all Illinois municipalities (including home rule units) from adopting alternative enforcement schemes for violations of the rules of the road and similar offenses, and the city never repealed or reenacted a compliant camera ordinance after state law was changed in 2006;
2) The hurriedly-drafted 2006 Amendment to the Vehicle Code to allow red light cameras statewide, intended as “legislative cover” for Chicago’s illegal program, could not pass the state senate until after legislators whittled away 94 counties where, according to its sponsor, legislators “didn’t want to have this option in their counties.” The resulting law, Public Act 94-795 explicitly stated that “This Section applies only to the Counties of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, Madison, McHenry, St. Clair, and Will and to municipalities located within those counties.” In the rush to protect the City, the General Assembly passed a rare piece of facially “local legislation,” which is barred by the state constitution; Article 4 Section 13 states that “The General Assembly shall pass no special or local law when a general law is or can be made applicable. Whether a general law is or can be made applicable shall be a matter for judicial determination.”; and
3) The City’s failure to meet the federal standards for yellow light durations renders the million-plus tickets issued with actual yellow light times below 3.0 seconds (including 77,000 tickets which on their faceshowed yellow lights in the 2.0 to 2.99 second category) void and invalid.
Plaintiffs seek class certification, a declaration that the City program is unauthorized and restitution for the estimated one million plus vehicle owners improperly assessed one or more $100 fines under the illegal Chicago ordinance.
An earlier class action case filed against the City reached the Illinois Supreme Court last year, but was dismissed when two of the seven justices, Chicago Democrat Anne Burke and downstate Republican Lloyd Karmeier, recused themselves for undisclosed reasons and the remaining five justices split 3-2, short of the constitutionally required minimum of four votes to reach a decision. The dismissal had no precedential effect.
Plaintiffs in this case are represented by Patrick J. Keating of Roberts McGivney Zagotta LLC, 55 W. Monroe Street, Chicago IL , (www.rmczlaw.com), Andrea Bierstein of the New York, NY office of Simmons Hanly Conroy LLC, (www.simmonsfirm.com) and Derek Y. Brandt of Brandt Law LLC , Edwardsville IL, (http://www.superlawyers.com/illinois/lawyer/Derek-Y-Brandt/85545b39-1580-4381-b75b-4d2e973cf38c.html )
The City of Chicago is represented by Corporation Counsel Stephen Patton.
Copies of the Court filings are available on request or may be located athttps://www.scribd.com/patrick4j4keating
The class action, which seeks restitution from the City for all tickets paid, also challenges Chicago’s yellow light durations, which are shorter than federal legal standards. The City claims that it need not refund any tickets issued, despite improperly short yellow light times (less than the three seconds specified under federal law) because there is “no legal basis” under either the federal Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) or the Illinois law requiring statewide adoption of the manual “to impose minimum yellow light durations upon the City.” (City Reply Brief p. 22) However, the MUTCD dictates that the minimum yellow light duration for a street with a 30 mile per hour speed limit should be between 3.2 and 3.6 seconds. Chicago has admitted to its Inspector General that its yellow light durations at such intersections are as low as 2.89 seconds.
The arguments were submitted in support of the City’s motion to dismiss a class action case originally filed against it in 2012, and substantially revised after news reports in 2014 revealed irregularities with the yellow light durations at many city intersections. The case, Terie L Kata et. al v. City of Chicago, No 12 CH 14186, is currently pending in the Circuit Court of Cook County.
The hearing on the City’s remaining arguments is scheduled before Associate Judge Rita Novak on TuesdayOctober 6, 2015 at 10:30 a.m. in Courtroom 2402 of the Richard J. Daley Center, 50 W. Washington Street.
(NOTE: This hearing is open to the press and public. Cameras not permitted inside the courtroom. Plaintiffs’ counsel will have press availability following the hearing, about noon, outside the courtroom.)
The Kata class action asserts that Chicago’s Red Light Camera program, which was begun in 2003 and is the largest and most lucrative in the nation, has never been legally authorized for several reasons, including:
1) The Chicago program and the Ordinance creating it was void ab initio (“from the beginning”) in 2003, because the Illinois Vehicle Code expressly prohibited all Illinois municipalities (including home rule units) from adopting alternative enforcement schemes for violations of the rules of the road and similar offenses, and the city never repealed or reenacted a compliant camera ordinance after state law was changed in 2006;
2) The hurriedly-drafted 2006 Amendment to the Vehicle Code to allow red light cameras statewide, intended as “legislative cover” for Chicago’s illegal program, could not pass the state senate until after legislators whittled away 94 counties where, according to its sponsor, legislators “didn’t want to have this option in their counties.” The resulting law, Public Act 94-795 explicitly stated that “This Section applies only to the Counties of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, Madison, McHenry, St. Clair, and Will and to municipalities located within those counties.” In the rush to protect the City, the General Assembly passed a rare piece of facially “local legislation,” which is barred by the state constitution; Article 4 Section 13 states that “The General Assembly shall pass no special or local law when a general law is or can be made applicable. Whether a general law is or can be made applicable shall be a matter for judicial determination.”; and
3) The City’s failure to meet the federal standards for yellow light durations renders the million-plus tickets issued with actual yellow light times below 3.0 seconds (including 77,000 tickets which on their faceshowed yellow lights in the 2.0 to 2.99 second category) void and invalid.
Plaintiffs seek class certification, a declaration that the City program is unauthorized and restitution for the estimated one million plus vehicle owners improperly assessed one or more $100 fines under the illegal Chicago ordinance.
An earlier class action case filed against the City reached the Illinois Supreme Court last year, but was dismissed when two of the seven justices, Chicago Democrat Anne Burke and downstate Republican Lloyd Karmeier, recused themselves for undisclosed reasons and the remaining five justices split 3-2, short of the constitutionally required minimum of four votes to reach a decision. The dismissal had no precedential effect.
Plaintiffs in this case are represented by Patrick J. Keating of Roberts McGivney Zagotta LLC, 55 W. Monroe Street, Chicago IL , (www.rmczlaw.com), Andrea Bierstein of the New York, NY office of Simmons Hanly Conroy LLC, (www.simmonsfirm.com) and Derek Y. Brandt of Brandt Law LLC , Edwardsville IL, (http://www.superlawyers.com/illinois/lawyer/Derek-Y-Brandt/85545b39-1580-4381-b75b-4d2e973cf38c.html )
The City of Chicago is represented by Corporation Counsel Stephen Patton.
Copies of the Court filings are available on request or may be located athttps://www.scribd.com/patrick4j4keating
Chicago sues red light camera firm for $300 million
August 31, 2015
By David KidwellChicago Tribunecontact the reporter
Red light camera firm that won contract with bribes is sued by Chicago.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration has sued Chicago's former red light camera operator, Redflex Traffic Systems, for more than $300 million on grounds the entire program was built on a $2 million bribery scheme at City Hall that has already led to federal corruption convictions.
According to court filings unsealed late last week, the Emanuel administration has joined forces with a former executive vice president at Redflex who says he helped orchestrate the scheme under orders from his bosses. The city moved earlier in August to intervene as a plaintiff in a whistleblower case filed under seal by the fired executive, Aaron Rosenberg, in Cook County Circuit Court more than a year ago.
Mayor Emanuel's administration is suing Redflex for $300M. Aug. 31, 2015. (WGN-TV)
The embattled program, which has raised more than $500 million in traffic fines since it began in 2003, has been beset with oversight failures, unfair ticketing practices and corruption allegations exposed by a series of Tribune investigations that began three years ago. Redflex's former chief executive Karen Finley pleaded guilty Aug. 20 in a conspiracy to bribe a former top city transportation executive who she says helped steer the contract to the company.
That official, John Bills, is set to stand trial in federal court in January.
The 20-page lawsuit seeks triple the $124 million Redflex collected on the Chicago contract both before and after it was fired by Emanuel amid the scandal, as well as a civil penalty of up to $10,000 for each time the company made a false statement to the city.
The case, first filed under seal by Rosenberg on April 15, 2014, named the city as a co-plaintiff in an effort to seek City Hall's intervention. Such a strategy could enable Rosenberg to collect a percentage of any judgment awarded to Chicago.
The lawsuit details an alleged conspiracy in which Redflex executives teamed up with Bills to orchestrate cash payments to him through a consultant acting as a bagman, as well as providing Bills with vacation trips, computers, golf outings and other perks. In exchange, according to the lawsuit, Bills coached Redflex on how to beat its competitors, orchestrated key votes at City Hall, manipulated field tests to favor the company, covered up problems with Redflex's performance and cost taxpayers millions by encouraging city officials to buy Redflex cameras instead of leasing them.
The suit refers to repeated declarations by company executives that it had conducted itself within the law and ethics code of the city of Chicago.
"Had the City known that these statements were false, the City would have canceled the contracts with Redflex," the suit alleges. "The City suffered damages in reliance of Redflex's false statements that it had not engaged in bribery or attempted to bribe any employee of the City."
The lawsuit alleges that the competitive bidding process was corrupted by Bills' actions to steer the contract to Redflex, and that his actions defrauded Chicago taxpayers by orchestrating a better deal for the vendor at taxpayer expense. For example:
"Although leasing the cameras was a better option for the city, Mr. Higgins directed Rosenberg to convince Bills to have the city purchase the cameras,'' the lawsuit says, referring to Bruce Higgins, a former Redflex CEO. "The city's purchase of the cameras would help Redflex with cash-capitalization issues and make it harder for the city later (to) change vendors from Redflex since the city would already own Redflex cameras." Higgins could not be reached Monday for comment.
Also, the lawsuit alleges, Bills orchestrated renewing the Redflex contract without going out to bid and was constantly looking for ways to expand Redflex fees because he got extra commissions for all work that went to Redflex outside the scope of its contract.
"Mr. Bills was always looking for out of scope work to be added to the project," the lawsuit says. "Indeed, Mr. Bills would say that his favorite words were 'out of scope.'"
Bills' attorney, Nishay Sanan, said he was unaware of the lawsuit but that his client has consistently denied the criminal allegations that have led to the guilty plea of Finley as well as admitted bagman Martin O'Malley, a longtime Bills friend.
"The city of Chicago is going to do whatever it has to do to show they had nothing to do with anything, but we all know that's not the case," Sanan said. "It was about revenue for them, it was always about the revenue."
RedFlex announcement of City of Chicago 'whistle blower' suit
In the wake of Tribune revelations, the city's contractor was fired, that company's top executives were ousted and federal prosecutors charged Bills, Finley and O'Malley on allegations that Redflex funneled as much as $2 million to Bills to help the firm build its Chicago business into the largest automated traffic enforcement program in the country. At its peak, the system had more than 380 cameras.
In O'Malley's guilty plea last year, he acknowledged that the scheme earned the men at least $1,500 for every new red light camera installed in the city.
While the alleged corruption largely dates to the administration of former Mayor Richard M. Daley, Emanuel has defended the red light program as a much-needed safety measure and used it to justify his launch of speed cameras.
After exposing the potential bribery scheme in a series of stories, the Tribune launched a 2014 investigation that documented how thousands of drivers were tagged during unexplained ticket surges at malfunctioning red light cameras. In response, the city inspector general reported that both the Daley and Emanuel administrations could not document how and where they chose to place cameras, abdicated their responsibility to ensure the camera system was working properly and instead focused on keeping the cameras rolling.
Emanuel shut down dozens of cameras, promised to improve oversight, played down the significance of the findings and sought to refocus public attention on safety benefits.
After the Tribune series, the city offered to review the tickets of some drivers caught in unexplained ticket spikes. Ultimately fewer than 200 tickets were refunded.
The city on Monday declined requests to interview Emanuel's top lawyer, Steve Patton, about the lawsuit and did not respond to questions about whether the city intends to use any potential award from the lawsuit to reimburse wrongly ticketed drivers. Instead, the Law Department issued a statement.
"The City has filed notice that it is intervening in a pending whistleblower lawsuit against Redflex Traffic Systems, Inc., which has been unsealed in state court," the statement said. "The suit is brought under the City's False Claims Ordinance and seeks damages, plus civil penalties, attorneys' fees and costs, as a result of Redflex's fraudulent conduct in obtaining its 2003 and subsequent contracts with the City ....
"This action is the latest example of the administration fighting on behalf of Chicago taxpayers."
Redflex, a subsidiary of the publicly traded Australian company Redflex Holdings, announced the city's legal action in a new report to stockholders.
"We understand that this legal action was previously commenced by Mr. Rosenberg, but by order of the court, the existence of the legal action was suppressed and was not brought to the company's attention until now," Redflex reported in its Aug. 31 statement to stockholders.
Ex-Redflex exec pleads guilty to helping orchestrate $2M bribery scheme
"The legal action makes certain allegations against RTSI relating to alleged breaches of city ordinances and bribery of public officials in the City of Chicago," the statement says. "Amongst other civil penalties, the legal action claims an award of damages treble the amount paid to RTSI by the City of Chicago under the now terminated contracts."
Redflex has previously acknowledged to stockholders that its top U.S. officials were involved in what authorities would consider bribery and the U.S. firm in 2013 fired and sued Rosenberg, blaming the scandal on his actions. Rosenberg countersued, acknowledging he was cooperating with federal investigators and alleging that he was following orders that involved similar practices across the country.
Shares of the company, which had traded at more than $4 apiece before the scandal, had plummeted to 17 cents per share Monday.
[email protected]
August 31, 2015
By David KidwellChicago Tribunecontact the reporter
Red light camera firm that won contract with bribes is sued by Chicago.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration has sued Chicago's former red light camera operator, Redflex Traffic Systems, for more than $300 million on grounds the entire program was built on a $2 million bribery scheme at City Hall that has already led to federal corruption convictions.
According to court filings unsealed late last week, the Emanuel administration has joined forces with a former executive vice president at Redflex who says he helped orchestrate the scheme under orders from his bosses. The city moved earlier in August to intervene as a plaintiff in a whistleblower case filed under seal by the fired executive, Aaron Rosenberg, in Cook County Circuit Court more than a year ago.
Mayor Emanuel's administration is suing Redflex for $300M. Aug. 31, 2015. (WGN-TV)
The embattled program, which has raised more than $500 million in traffic fines since it began in 2003, has been beset with oversight failures, unfair ticketing practices and corruption allegations exposed by a series of Tribune investigations that began three years ago. Redflex's former chief executive Karen Finley pleaded guilty Aug. 20 in a conspiracy to bribe a former top city transportation executive who she says helped steer the contract to the company.
That official, John Bills, is set to stand trial in federal court in January.
The 20-page lawsuit seeks triple the $124 million Redflex collected on the Chicago contract both before and after it was fired by Emanuel amid the scandal, as well as a civil penalty of up to $10,000 for each time the company made a false statement to the city.
The case, first filed under seal by Rosenberg on April 15, 2014, named the city as a co-plaintiff in an effort to seek City Hall's intervention. Such a strategy could enable Rosenberg to collect a percentage of any judgment awarded to Chicago.
The lawsuit details an alleged conspiracy in which Redflex executives teamed up with Bills to orchestrate cash payments to him through a consultant acting as a bagman, as well as providing Bills with vacation trips, computers, golf outings and other perks. In exchange, according to the lawsuit, Bills coached Redflex on how to beat its competitors, orchestrated key votes at City Hall, manipulated field tests to favor the company, covered up problems with Redflex's performance and cost taxpayers millions by encouraging city officials to buy Redflex cameras instead of leasing them.
The suit refers to repeated declarations by company executives that it had conducted itself within the law and ethics code of the city of Chicago.
"Had the City known that these statements were false, the City would have canceled the contracts with Redflex," the suit alleges. "The City suffered damages in reliance of Redflex's false statements that it had not engaged in bribery or attempted to bribe any employee of the City."
The lawsuit alleges that the competitive bidding process was corrupted by Bills' actions to steer the contract to Redflex, and that his actions defrauded Chicago taxpayers by orchestrating a better deal for the vendor at taxpayer expense. For example:
"Although leasing the cameras was a better option for the city, Mr. Higgins directed Rosenberg to convince Bills to have the city purchase the cameras,'' the lawsuit says, referring to Bruce Higgins, a former Redflex CEO. "The city's purchase of the cameras would help Redflex with cash-capitalization issues and make it harder for the city later (to) change vendors from Redflex since the city would already own Redflex cameras." Higgins could not be reached Monday for comment.
Also, the lawsuit alleges, Bills orchestrated renewing the Redflex contract without going out to bid and was constantly looking for ways to expand Redflex fees because he got extra commissions for all work that went to Redflex outside the scope of its contract.
"Mr. Bills was always looking for out of scope work to be added to the project," the lawsuit says. "Indeed, Mr. Bills would say that his favorite words were 'out of scope.'"
Bills' attorney, Nishay Sanan, said he was unaware of the lawsuit but that his client has consistently denied the criminal allegations that have led to the guilty plea of Finley as well as admitted bagman Martin O'Malley, a longtime Bills friend.
"The city of Chicago is going to do whatever it has to do to show they had nothing to do with anything, but we all know that's not the case," Sanan said. "It was about revenue for them, it was always about the revenue."
RedFlex announcement of City of Chicago 'whistle blower' suit
In the wake of Tribune revelations, the city's contractor was fired, that company's top executives were ousted and federal prosecutors charged Bills, Finley and O'Malley on allegations that Redflex funneled as much as $2 million to Bills to help the firm build its Chicago business into the largest automated traffic enforcement program in the country. At its peak, the system had more than 380 cameras.
In O'Malley's guilty plea last year, he acknowledged that the scheme earned the men at least $1,500 for every new red light camera installed in the city.
While the alleged corruption largely dates to the administration of former Mayor Richard M. Daley, Emanuel has defended the red light program as a much-needed safety measure and used it to justify his launch of speed cameras.
After exposing the potential bribery scheme in a series of stories, the Tribune launched a 2014 investigation that documented how thousands of drivers were tagged during unexplained ticket surges at malfunctioning red light cameras. In response, the city inspector general reported that both the Daley and Emanuel administrations could not document how and where they chose to place cameras, abdicated their responsibility to ensure the camera system was working properly and instead focused on keeping the cameras rolling.
Emanuel shut down dozens of cameras, promised to improve oversight, played down the significance of the findings and sought to refocus public attention on safety benefits.
After the Tribune series, the city offered to review the tickets of some drivers caught in unexplained ticket spikes. Ultimately fewer than 200 tickets were refunded.
The city on Monday declined requests to interview Emanuel's top lawyer, Steve Patton, about the lawsuit and did not respond to questions about whether the city intends to use any potential award from the lawsuit to reimburse wrongly ticketed drivers. Instead, the Law Department issued a statement.
"The City has filed notice that it is intervening in a pending whistleblower lawsuit against Redflex Traffic Systems, Inc., which has been unsealed in state court," the statement said. "The suit is brought under the City's False Claims Ordinance and seeks damages, plus civil penalties, attorneys' fees and costs, as a result of Redflex's fraudulent conduct in obtaining its 2003 and subsequent contracts with the City ....
"This action is the latest example of the administration fighting on behalf of Chicago taxpayers."
Redflex, a subsidiary of the publicly traded Australian company Redflex Holdings, announced the city's legal action in a new report to stockholders.
"We understand that this legal action was previously commenced by Mr. Rosenberg, but by order of the court, the existence of the legal action was suppressed and was not brought to the company's attention until now," Redflex reported in its Aug. 31 statement to stockholders.
Ex-Redflex exec pleads guilty to helping orchestrate $2M bribery scheme
"The legal action makes certain allegations against RTSI relating to alleged breaches of city ordinances and bribery of public officials in the City of Chicago," the statement says. "Amongst other civil penalties, the legal action claims an award of damages treble the amount paid to RTSI by the City of Chicago under the now terminated contracts."
Redflex has previously acknowledged to stockholders that its top U.S. officials were involved in what authorities would consider bribery and the U.S. firm in 2013 fired and sued Rosenberg, blaming the scandal on his actions. Rosenberg countersued, acknowledging he was cooperating with federal investigators and alleging that he was following orders that involved similar practices across the country.
Shares of the company, which had traded at more than $4 apiece before the scandal, had plummeted to 17 cents per share Monday.
[email protected]
Red light camera violations have increased every month since February
By Clayton GusePosted: Thursday August 27 2015, 1:40pm
Last March, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that he would remove 50 red light cameras at 25 intersections across town. The removal came during a heated runoff election campaign against Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, who promised to eradicate the cameras altogether.
Chicago's red light cameras have been shrouded in scandal and controversy since the program was launched under Mayor Richard M. Daley. From a bribery conviction to a lawsuit, Chicago motorists are understandably upset at the millions of dollars in tickets that the cameras have brought in.
Even with the reduction in camera locations in the spring, the city has seen an increase in red light camera violations every month since February. According to the city data portal, there were 47,864 violations in July—an increase of more than 50 percent from the 31,836 recorded in February.
In total, red light cameras pinged motorists with 273,101 violations during the first seven months of the year. Nearly a quarter of those violations came from just 10 intersections. The city's most lucrative red light camera intersection, at Lake Shore Drive and Belmont (the only camera on Lake Shore Drive), racked up 10,183 violations during that span.
Here are the 10 worst red light camera intersections in the city for motorists, and how many violations each occurred at each from January through July.
Lake Shore Drive and Belmont: 10,183 violations
Van Buren and Western: 9,518 violations
California and Diversey: 6,551 violations
Lafayette and 87th: 6,016 violations
Archer and Cicero: 5,841 violations
Wentworth and Garfield: 5,553 violations
Hollywood and Sheridan: 5,395 violations
State and 79th: 5,245 violations
Stoney Island and 76th: 5,125 violations
Laramie and Madison: 4,487 violations
So if you're passing through one of those intersections, be wary of the the cameras. It doesn't look like Rahm is going to curb the red light camera program any time soon—the city is desperate for revenue
By Clayton GusePosted: Thursday August 27 2015, 1:40pm
Last March, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that he would remove 50 red light cameras at 25 intersections across town. The removal came during a heated runoff election campaign against Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, who promised to eradicate the cameras altogether.
Chicago's red light cameras have been shrouded in scandal and controversy since the program was launched under Mayor Richard M. Daley. From a bribery conviction to a lawsuit, Chicago motorists are understandably upset at the millions of dollars in tickets that the cameras have brought in.
Even with the reduction in camera locations in the spring, the city has seen an increase in red light camera violations every month since February. According to the city data portal, there were 47,864 violations in July—an increase of more than 50 percent from the 31,836 recorded in February.
In total, red light cameras pinged motorists with 273,101 violations during the first seven months of the year. Nearly a quarter of those violations came from just 10 intersections. The city's most lucrative red light camera intersection, at Lake Shore Drive and Belmont (the only camera on Lake Shore Drive), racked up 10,183 violations during that span.
Here are the 10 worst red light camera intersections in the city for motorists, and how many violations each occurred at each from January through July.
Lake Shore Drive and Belmont: 10,183 violations
Van Buren and Western: 9,518 violations
California and Diversey: 6,551 violations
Lafayette and 87th: 6,016 violations
Archer and Cicero: 5,841 violations
Wentworth and Garfield: 5,553 violations
Hollywood and Sheridan: 5,395 violations
State and 79th: 5,245 violations
Stoney Island and 76th: 5,125 violations
Laramie and Madison: 4,487 violations
So if you're passing through one of those intersections, be wary of the the cameras. It doesn't look like Rahm is going to curb the red light camera program any time soon—the city is desperate for revenue
Two Northwest Side Red Light Cameras On The Way Out
By Heather Cherone | August 24, 2015 7:48am @HeatherCherone
The cameras at Elston and Foster avenues and Montrose and Pulaski avenues are set to be removed.View Full CaptionMike Brockway
FOREST GLEN — Two red-light cameras in the 39th Ward are set to be removed, Ald. Margaret Laurino(39th) said.
The camera at Montrose and Pulaski avenues in Albany Park and the eye-in-the-sky at Foster and Elston avenues are set to be removed by the Chicago Department of Transportation, Laurino said in a statement.
Before the cameras are removed, city officials will hold a hearing from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Mayfair Community Church, 5040 N. Pulaski Ave.
City transportation officials will discuss the criteria for removing the cameras that issue $100 fines and answer questions about the department's traffic safety programs, Laurino said.
A Chicago Sun-Times investigation found the controversial cameras had raked in $284.9 million in fines citywide since Mayor Rahm Emanuel took office.
The camera at Montrose and Pulaski avenues generated $427,630 in fines after issuing 3,555 tickets from 2011 through July, according to information obtained by the newspaper.
The camera at Elston and Foster avenues generated $491,415 in fines after issuing 3,693 tickets from 2011 through July, according to information obtained by the newspaper.
For more information, email [email protected] or call 773-736-5594.
By Heather Cherone | August 24, 2015 7:48am @HeatherCherone
The cameras at Elston and Foster avenues and Montrose and Pulaski avenues are set to be removed.View Full CaptionMike Brockway
FOREST GLEN — Two red-light cameras in the 39th Ward are set to be removed, Ald. Margaret Laurino(39th) said.
The camera at Montrose and Pulaski avenues in Albany Park and the eye-in-the-sky at Foster and Elston avenues are set to be removed by the Chicago Department of Transportation, Laurino said in a statement.
Before the cameras are removed, city officials will hold a hearing from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Mayfair Community Church, 5040 N. Pulaski Ave.
City transportation officials will discuss the criteria for removing the cameras that issue $100 fines and answer questions about the department's traffic safety programs, Laurino said.
A Chicago Sun-Times investigation found the controversial cameras had raked in $284.9 million in fines citywide since Mayor Rahm Emanuel took office.
The camera at Montrose and Pulaski avenues generated $427,630 in fines after issuing 3,555 tickets from 2011 through July, according to information obtained by the newspaper.
The camera at Elston and Foster avenues generated $491,415 in fines after issuing 3,693 tickets from 2011 through July, according to information obtained by the newspaper.
For more information, email [email protected] or call 773-736-5594.
Some Speed Cameras Are Racking Up Millions, While Others Issue Few Tickets
By Benjamin Woodard and Tanveer Ali |
May 6, 2015 5:43am | Updated on May 6, 2015 8:25am
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FOREST GLEN — More than 180 times a day, a speed camera on Cicero Avenue on the Northwest Side nabs speeders — a rate higher than any other camera in the city.
But Downtown, a camera at 18 W. Superior St. issued just 133 tickets since it went live a year ago.
Since the city's speed camera program went into effect in October 2013, drivers racked up nearly 1.6 million tickets.
DNAinfo Chicago analyzed the tickets issued by the city's 146 cameras now spread around town. The tickets from the start of the program until April 2 show a huge range in the number of speeders nabbed by each camera on a daily basis.
In fact, just 21 of those cameras — which are placed within 1/8 of a mile of parks or schools — spit out a majority of the nearly $58 million in fines that have enriched the city's coffers since 2013.
The most productive camera can ring up more than $7,000 in fines a day, on average.
The busiest cameras tend to be on stretches where drivers feel comfortable letting loose. The top four revenue-producing cameras, for example, are found on long stretches of open road, sometimes near expressways or industrial areas, with little cross traffic.
“If it looks and feels like a highway, well, you’re going to go faster,” said Active Transportation Alliance Executive Director Ron Burke. “If it looks like a typical residential side street, you’re going to go slower.
The busiest 21 cameras are spread across the city, with 11 on the South Side, seven on the North Side and three on the West Side.
Meanwhile, at least 15 cameras issued a mere five or fewer tickets a day. Two of those are in congested areas Downtown, and issued just 675 total tickets combined in the past year.
One quietest camera in the city, at 2417 W. 103rd St., has issued just $2,150 in fines since November, the lowest figure for any camera that went live before 2015.
And many neighborhoods — including Back of the Yards, Bronzeville, Edison Park, Englewood, Rogers Park and Logan Square — still don't have any speed cameras at all.
The analysis also found:
• The cameras overall issued nearly 3,000 tickets per day for a total of nearly $109,000 in fines.
• The most common time to get a ticket? Between noon and 1 p.m., when nearly 140,000 violations were issued, or 8.8 percent of the total. The second highest number were given from 3-4 p.m.
• Be on the lookout this month: More speeders have gotten nabbed in May (160,000) than any other month since the camera program began.
Washington Park
The data analyzed by DNAinfo Chicago includes warnings that are issued to drivers the first time they are caught speeding.
The city ordinance authorizing the speed cameras in the city stipulates drivers traveling 6-10 mph over the posted limit be fined $35. Violators traveling 11 mph over are slapped with a $100 ticket. But so far the city is only issuing tickets to drivers going 10 mph or more over the limit.
The speed cameras planted near parks are active when the parks are open, generally from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily and have a 30 mph speed limit.
In school zones, the cameras are on from 7 a.m to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday when school is in session. The speed limit differs from 20 to 30 mph, depending on if children are present in the area.
By Benjamin Woodard and Tanveer Ali |
May 6, 2015 5:43am | Updated on May 6, 2015 8:25am
TwitterFacebookEmailMore
FOREST GLEN — More than 180 times a day, a speed camera on Cicero Avenue on the Northwest Side nabs speeders — a rate higher than any other camera in the city.
But Downtown, a camera at 18 W. Superior St. issued just 133 tickets since it went live a year ago.
Since the city's speed camera program went into effect in October 2013, drivers racked up nearly 1.6 million tickets.
DNAinfo Chicago analyzed the tickets issued by the city's 146 cameras now spread around town. The tickets from the start of the program until April 2 show a huge range in the number of speeders nabbed by each camera on a daily basis.
In fact, just 21 of those cameras — which are placed within 1/8 of a mile of parks or schools — spit out a majority of the nearly $58 million in fines that have enriched the city's coffers since 2013.
The most productive camera can ring up more than $7,000 in fines a day, on average.
The busiest cameras tend to be on stretches where drivers feel comfortable letting loose. The top four revenue-producing cameras, for example, are found on long stretches of open road, sometimes near expressways or industrial areas, with little cross traffic.
“If it looks and feels like a highway, well, you’re going to go faster,” said Active Transportation Alliance Executive Director Ron Burke. “If it looks like a typical residential side street, you’re going to go slower.
The busiest 21 cameras are spread across the city, with 11 on the South Side, seven on the North Side and three on the West Side.
Meanwhile, at least 15 cameras issued a mere five or fewer tickets a day. Two of those are in congested areas Downtown, and issued just 675 total tickets combined in the past year.
One quietest camera in the city, at 2417 W. 103rd St., has issued just $2,150 in fines since November, the lowest figure for any camera that went live before 2015.
And many neighborhoods — including Back of the Yards, Bronzeville, Edison Park, Englewood, Rogers Park and Logan Square — still don't have any speed cameras at all.
The analysis also found:
• The cameras overall issued nearly 3,000 tickets per day for a total of nearly $109,000 in fines.
• The most common time to get a ticket? Between noon and 1 p.m., when nearly 140,000 violations were issued, or 8.8 percent of the total. The second highest number were given from 3-4 p.m.
• Be on the lookout this month: More speeders have gotten nabbed in May (160,000) than any other month since the camera program began.
Washington Park
The data analyzed by DNAinfo Chicago includes warnings that are issued to drivers the first time they are caught speeding.
The city ordinance authorizing the speed cameras in the city stipulates drivers traveling 6-10 mph over the posted limit be fined $35. Violators traveling 11 mph over are slapped with a $100 ticket. But so far the city is only issuing tickets to drivers going 10 mph or more over the limit.
The speed cameras planted near parks are active when the parks are open, generally from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily and have a 30 mph speed limit.
In school zones, the cameras are on from 7 a.m to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday when school is in session. The speed limit differs from 20 to 30 mph, depending on if children are present in the area.
http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20150506/washington-park/chicago-speed-cameras-mapped-how-active-is-camera-your-hood
TRIBUNE WATCHDOG UPDATE 8/21/15
Former Redflex exec pleads guilty
Admits bribery for red light camera business; may testify against associate
BY JASON MEISNER AND DAVID KIDWELL CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Former Redflex CEO Karen Finley, shown Thursday with attorney Michael Monico, center, could be called to testify in John Bills’ trial. Her co-conspirator Martin O’Malley pleaded guilty in December and is also cooperating with authorities.
As a young executive at an up-and-coming red light camera company a decade ago, Karen Finley placed a small help-wanted ad in a Chicago newspaper that quietly made a record of what would become one of the biggest bribery scandals in the city’s notorious history.
The May 2003 advertisement sought an account manager for Redflex Traffic Systems Inc.’s burgeoning Chicago red light camera program. But the ad failed to note that the position wasn’t really open to applicants. And it left out the one true duty of the job: bagman.
On Thursday, Finley stood in a Chicago courtroom and admitted her role in orchestrating a $2 million scheme to bribe a top city transportation official to steer tens of millions of dollars in city business to the Arizona-based firm.
At the center of the scandal
— first disclosed by the Tribune in 2012 — was the man Finley had agreed to hire years ago, Martin O’Malley, who had been told to look for the ad placed by Finley. O’Malley has admitted he greased his longtime friend, John Bills, former managing deputy commissioner of transportation, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, vacation trips and personal gifts.
“Guilty, your honor,” Finley, 55, who resigned as CEO amid the widening scandal in May 2013, said in a firm voice when U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall asked for her plea to one count of bribery conspiracy. Finley’s 21-page plea agreement with prosecutors disclosed for the first time she is cooperating in the continuing federal investigation and could be called to testify at Bills’ trial in January.
The Tribune revealed the questionable relationship between Bills and Redflex in fall 2012 after obtaining a 2-year-old internal whistle-blower memo written by an ousted Redflex vice president. The reporting prompted Mayor Rahm Emanuel to fire Redflex and overhaul the city’s red light camera program, which has raked in more than $500 million in traffic fines and remains the largest in the nation. The Tribune investigation also sparked a federal probe that led to Thursday’s guilty plea.
The judge postponed Finley’s sentencing hearing until after Bills’ trial. The bribery conspiracy charge carries a maximum of five years in prison, but Finley also faces sentencing in a separate bribery scheme in Ohio in which Redflex made campaign contributions to elected officials in return for keeping red light camera contracts, court records show.
Finley, who is free on bond, left the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse without comment.
The guilty plea marked the second conviction in a scandal that by size alone ranks among the largest in Chicago’s long history of corruption. O’Malley, 73, of suburban Worth, pleaded guilty in December to a single count of conspiracy to bribe a public official and is also cooperating with authorities.
Finley was the vice president of operations at Red-flex when she and five other company executives flew to Chicago in February 2003 for a key gathering at City Hall to discuss the city’s fledgling red light camera program. The night before, Finley and the others had met secretly at the swanky Signature Lounge atop the John Hancock Center, where Bills coached them on what to say to impress city officials, the Tribune has previously reported. Former Redflex software engineer Michael Schmidt, who testified about the meeting to a federal grand jury, has told the Tribune that Bills warned the group to “pretend like we never met” the next day at City Hall so everything appeared to be on the up-and-up.
“I remember glancing over at Karen, and she just put her finger to her mouth quietly as if to say, ‘Ssshh.’ ” Schmidt said. “There was a deal under the table to get that contract before we even went to the Hancock that night.”
After Redflex was awarded the first Chicago contract in May 2003, Finley and the company’s then-CEO, identified in court records only as Individual B, agreed they should hire O’Malley as an independent contractor to keep Bills happy. Finley and Individual B drew up O’Malley’s contract to provide a $60,000 base salary as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions and bonuses as more red light cameras were added in Chicago, court records show.
Finley admitted she knew the contract contained unusually lucrative payouts, especially since O’Malley was a “customer liaison” and not actually selling cameras to the city.
Bruce Higgins, who served as Redflex’s CEO during that time period, could not be reached Thursday for comment. He has not been charged with wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, Finley was aware that Redflex was paying Bills’ personal expenses. In one case in December 2003, Finley approved reimbursement for airline tickets to Phoenix, car rental, meals and golf outings that O’Malley had bought for a five-day trip to Arizona for himself, Bills and Bills’ friend, her plea agreement said.
After Finley became CEO in 2007 and O’Malley’s commissions increased again, Redflex employees began to question the contract and suggested renegotiating the terms. But Finley avoided the issue “to keep Bills happy and to ensure that Bills would assist Red-flex in the awarding of new red light camera contracts,” according to the plea.
Bills helped Redflex win one contract by giving Finley the opportunity to draft documents that would give the company an advantage in its bid. In an email exchange, Finley admonished another top Redflex executive — previously identified by authorities as Aaron Rosenberg — for communicating with O’Malley about the drafts in writing, saying she was deleting her emails, the plea agreement said.
Rosenberg is cooperating with authorities under an immunity agreement and has not been charged.
In addition to the perks provided by Redflex, Finley suspected that O’Malley was passing much of his income on to Bills as further bribes but “willfully avoided learning the truth,” her plea agreement said.
Even after the October 2010 whistleblower memo accused O’Malley of paying Bills, resulting in an internal investigation at the company, Finley admitted she never asked either of them about the allegations. In fact, when the board chairman at Redflex’s parent company noted O’Malley’s salary was quite high, Finley defended the compensation “despite her suspicions” that much of the money was being passed to Bills, the plea deal said.
O’Malley has admitted paying Bills a total of $570,000 in cash from 2004 to 2012, in addition to paying for some of Bills’ personal debts and even buying a Gilbert, Ariz., condo for Bills’ use. He also wrote checks to cover Bills’ retirement party from the city as well as to an undisclosed “political organization,” according to his plea agreement. O’Malley then included those costs on his expense reports, which Redflex reimbursed.
To conceal the scheme, O’Malley had Redflex send his commission checks to a post office box he had set up at a shipping store in the Morgan Park neighborhood. When he received a check, O’Malley would arrange to meet Bills for lunch at Chicago-area restaurants. Bills often arrived in his city-issued vehicle.
In 2011, when Bills was planning to retire from his city position, Finley and other Redflex executives discussed the need to find him a job in return for all his assistance with the Chicago contracts, according to the plea agreement. Bills eventually landed a new position with a nonprofit corporation with Redflex’s help.
Finley’s plea deal does not identify the company, but the Tribune previously reported it was the Traffic Safety Coalition, which is run by a Chicago political consultant with strong ties to Emanuel and former Mayor Richard Daley.
Former Redflex exec pleads guilty
Admits bribery for red light camera business; may testify against associate
BY JASON MEISNER AND DAVID KIDWELL CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Former Redflex CEO Karen Finley, shown Thursday with attorney Michael Monico, center, could be called to testify in John Bills’ trial. Her co-conspirator Martin O’Malley pleaded guilty in December and is also cooperating with authorities.
As a young executive at an up-and-coming red light camera company a decade ago, Karen Finley placed a small help-wanted ad in a Chicago newspaper that quietly made a record of what would become one of the biggest bribery scandals in the city’s notorious history.
The May 2003 advertisement sought an account manager for Redflex Traffic Systems Inc.’s burgeoning Chicago red light camera program. But the ad failed to note that the position wasn’t really open to applicants. And it left out the one true duty of the job: bagman.
On Thursday, Finley stood in a Chicago courtroom and admitted her role in orchestrating a $2 million scheme to bribe a top city transportation official to steer tens of millions of dollars in city business to the Arizona-based firm.
At the center of the scandal
— first disclosed by the Tribune in 2012 — was the man Finley had agreed to hire years ago, Martin O’Malley, who had been told to look for the ad placed by Finley. O’Malley has admitted he greased his longtime friend, John Bills, former managing deputy commissioner of transportation, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, vacation trips and personal gifts.
“Guilty, your honor,” Finley, 55, who resigned as CEO amid the widening scandal in May 2013, said in a firm voice when U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall asked for her plea to one count of bribery conspiracy. Finley’s 21-page plea agreement with prosecutors disclosed for the first time she is cooperating in the continuing federal investigation and could be called to testify at Bills’ trial in January.
The Tribune revealed the questionable relationship between Bills and Redflex in fall 2012 after obtaining a 2-year-old internal whistle-blower memo written by an ousted Redflex vice president. The reporting prompted Mayor Rahm Emanuel to fire Redflex and overhaul the city’s red light camera program, which has raked in more than $500 million in traffic fines and remains the largest in the nation. The Tribune investigation also sparked a federal probe that led to Thursday’s guilty plea.
The judge postponed Finley’s sentencing hearing until after Bills’ trial. The bribery conspiracy charge carries a maximum of five years in prison, but Finley also faces sentencing in a separate bribery scheme in Ohio in which Redflex made campaign contributions to elected officials in return for keeping red light camera contracts, court records show.
Finley, who is free on bond, left the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse without comment.
The guilty plea marked the second conviction in a scandal that by size alone ranks among the largest in Chicago’s long history of corruption. O’Malley, 73, of suburban Worth, pleaded guilty in December to a single count of conspiracy to bribe a public official and is also cooperating with authorities.
Finley was the vice president of operations at Red-flex when she and five other company executives flew to Chicago in February 2003 for a key gathering at City Hall to discuss the city’s fledgling red light camera program. The night before, Finley and the others had met secretly at the swanky Signature Lounge atop the John Hancock Center, where Bills coached them on what to say to impress city officials, the Tribune has previously reported. Former Redflex software engineer Michael Schmidt, who testified about the meeting to a federal grand jury, has told the Tribune that Bills warned the group to “pretend like we never met” the next day at City Hall so everything appeared to be on the up-and-up.
“I remember glancing over at Karen, and she just put her finger to her mouth quietly as if to say, ‘Ssshh.’ ” Schmidt said. “There was a deal under the table to get that contract before we even went to the Hancock that night.”
After Redflex was awarded the first Chicago contract in May 2003, Finley and the company’s then-CEO, identified in court records only as Individual B, agreed they should hire O’Malley as an independent contractor to keep Bills happy. Finley and Individual B drew up O’Malley’s contract to provide a $60,000 base salary as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions and bonuses as more red light cameras were added in Chicago, court records show.
Finley admitted she knew the contract contained unusually lucrative payouts, especially since O’Malley was a “customer liaison” and not actually selling cameras to the city.
Bruce Higgins, who served as Redflex’s CEO during that time period, could not be reached Thursday for comment. He has not been charged with wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, Finley was aware that Redflex was paying Bills’ personal expenses. In one case in December 2003, Finley approved reimbursement for airline tickets to Phoenix, car rental, meals and golf outings that O’Malley had bought for a five-day trip to Arizona for himself, Bills and Bills’ friend, her plea agreement said.
After Finley became CEO in 2007 and O’Malley’s commissions increased again, Redflex employees began to question the contract and suggested renegotiating the terms. But Finley avoided the issue “to keep Bills happy and to ensure that Bills would assist Red-flex in the awarding of new red light camera contracts,” according to the plea.
Bills helped Redflex win one contract by giving Finley the opportunity to draft documents that would give the company an advantage in its bid. In an email exchange, Finley admonished another top Redflex executive — previously identified by authorities as Aaron Rosenberg — for communicating with O’Malley about the drafts in writing, saying she was deleting her emails, the plea agreement said.
Rosenberg is cooperating with authorities under an immunity agreement and has not been charged.
In addition to the perks provided by Redflex, Finley suspected that O’Malley was passing much of his income on to Bills as further bribes but “willfully avoided learning the truth,” her plea agreement said.
Even after the October 2010 whistleblower memo accused O’Malley of paying Bills, resulting in an internal investigation at the company, Finley admitted she never asked either of them about the allegations. In fact, when the board chairman at Redflex’s parent company noted O’Malley’s salary was quite high, Finley defended the compensation “despite her suspicions” that much of the money was being passed to Bills, the plea deal said.
O’Malley has admitted paying Bills a total of $570,000 in cash from 2004 to 2012, in addition to paying for some of Bills’ personal debts and even buying a Gilbert, Ariz., condo for Bills’ use. He also wrote checks to cover Bills’ retirement party from the city as well as to an undisclosed “political organization,” according to his plea agreement. O’Malley then included those costs on his expense reports, which Redflex reimbursed.
To conceal the scheme, O’Malley had Redflex send his commission checks to a post office box he had set up at a shipping store in the Morgan Park neighborhood. When he received a check, O’Malley would arrange to meet Bills for lunch at Chicago-area restaurants. Bills often arrived in his city-issued vehicle.
In 2011, when Bills was planning to retire from his city position, Finley and other Redflex executives discussed the need to find him a job in return for all his assistance with the Chicago contracts, according to the plea agreement. Bills eventually landed a new position with a nonprofit corporation with Redflex’s help.
Finley’s plea deal does not identify the company, but the Tribune previously reported it was the Traffic Safety Coalition, which is run by a Chicago political consultant with strong ties to Emanuel and former Mayor Richard Daley.
Emanuel rakes in $284.9M from red-light cameras
WRITTEN BY FRAN SPIELMAN POSTED: 08/16/2015, 08:58PM
Tickets from red-light cameras brought in $284.9 million for the city. | AP File Photo
Red-light cameras have churned out 2.2 million tickets and generated $284.9 million in fines since Mayor Rahm Emanuel took office, a revenue source the cash-strapped city simply cannot afford to relinquish, records show.
The biggest conveyor belts of those dreaded $100 tickets are the red-light cameras at Lake Shore Drive and Belmont, $8.1 million since May 2011; 4200 South Cicero, $7.46 million; Van Buren and Western, $6.3 million; and 87th and Lafayette, $5.8 million, according to records released to the Chicago Sun-Times in response to a Freedom of Information request.
Other moneymakers are at 95th and Stony Island Avenue, $4.9 million; 89th and Stony Island, $4.4 million; 79th and State, $4.1 million; 76th and Stony Island, $4.02 million; and 95th and Halsted, $3.5 million, the records show.
“Public safety, I believe, is only 25 percent of the red-light camera system. It’s 75 percent revenue-driven,” said Ald. Anthony Beale (9th), chairman of the City Council’s Transportation Committee.
“But with the budget crunch we’re in now, it would be almost impossible to do away with any of them. We can’t afford to get rid of them,” Beale said. “However, the yellow light issue still needs to be addressed. We’re still waiting for the federal government to come out with standards for yellow lights so we can incorporate that standard.”
Through July 31, the city had collected $33.2 million in red-light camera revenue, a monthly take of $4.74 million a month. That’s down from $63 million and $5.25 million a month in 2014, and $72.8 million and $6 million a month in 2013, but only because the number of cameras has been reduced.
Earlier this year, Emanuel removed 50 red-light cameras at 25 Chicago intersections, where accidents have been reduced, to put out a political fire that had threatened to burn him in the April 7 runoff.
That left Chicago with 298 red-light cameras at 149 intersections — a 20 percent reduction in the nation’s largest red-light camera program installed by former Mayor Richard M. Daley.
Vanquished mayoral challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia had promised to end what he called the “red light rip-off” by removing every one of Chicago’s red-light cameras on his first day in office. He never said how he would replace the money.
Millionaire businessman Willie Wilson, who got 25 percent of the black vote on Feb. 24, also made red-light cameras an issue before throwing his support to Garcia in Round 2.
“Those red-light cameras on the backs of the poor. Eliminating 50 of them was not enough. They want ‘em all gone,” Wilson said on that day.
To restore public confidence in the scandal-scarred program, Emanuel also sped up the timetable for installation of countdown clocks at 42 red-light intersections that still didn’t have them and embraced red-light camera reforms championed by a pair of influential aldermen.
After the election, the reforms sought by Beale and Tom Tunney (44th), chairman of the Economic, Capital and Technology Development Committee, were watered down.
Beale and Tunney wanted yellow lights at red-light intersections to be “no less than 3.2 seconds or the recognized national standards, plus one additional second, whichever is greater,” but they settled for no change.
And instead of mandating City Council approval before new red-light cameras are “removed, moved or added,” the aldermen settled for a neighborhood hearing and payment plan reforms.
The Chicago Department of Transportation also promised to engage a team of academics with expertise in traffic engineering and traffic safety to conduct a “comprehensive review” of the red-light camera program after examining “best practices” across the nation to determine criteria for future removal and placement of cameras.
Still, Emanuel remained committed to the program that Chicago motorists love to hate, and the records released by City Hall explain why.
At a time when Emanuel needs to find at least $754 million in new revenue to erase a 2016 budget shortfall that makes three risky and rosy assumptions, he cannot afford to kill the cash cow that red-light cameras have become.
Last month, the same circuit court judge who overturned Emanuel’s plan to save two of four city employee pension funds denied the city’s motion to throw out a class-action lawsuit challenging the red-light camera program.
The suit claims that the city did not have the authority it needed from the Illinois General Assembly before red-light cameras were installed in 2003 and it questions the timing of yellow lights.
Emanuel inherited the red-light camera program from Daley and has had nothing but headaches from it ever since.
He fired the Arizona contractor at the center of a $2 million bribery scandal and replaced Redflex Traffic Systems with Xerox State & Local Traffic Solutions.
When a Chicago Tribune investigation questioned the legitimacy of thousands of $100 tickets, Emanuel asked Inspector General Joe Ferguson to conduct an exhaustive review of the red-light camera program.
Last fall, Ferguson faulted the Chicago Department of Transportation for exercising “benign neglect” in its oversight of Redflex, allowing both suspicious ticketing spikes and equipment failures that may have cost the city millions to go unnoticed.
The inspector general said he found no evidence of “willful manipulation” by either the city or Redflex to ratchet up the number of tickets.
To the contrary, he found that the city’s failure to exercise its legal obligation to oversee the now-fired contractor may have cost the city money.
Changes in the timing of yellow lights did not contribute to the ticketing spikes, the IG concluded. But he nevertheless recommended that CDOT “restore a prior hard 3.0 second yellow-light threshold for violations” to ensure clarity and consistency.
When Xerox took over for Redflex, CDOT gave the new contractor the go-ahead to accept tickets with a yellow light duration of 2.9 seconds to account for slight variations from the signal power source. That generated roughly 77,000 tickets.
The inspector general had previously concluded there was no evidence to substantiate the city’s claim that red-light cameras had either reduced accidents or were installed at the most dangerous intersections.
Ferguson said CDOT was unable to produce evidence that accident data was used in the selection of red-light camera locations or that CDOT continually evaluates accident data to relocate cameras to the most dangerous spots.
In fact, in the decade since the program began, Ferguson noted that only 10 cameras at five intersections have been moved.
Last fall, a City Council committee held a hearing on the red-light camera program that provided a forum for the Emanuel administration to showcase its efforts to restore public trust severely shaken by unexplained ticket spikes.
Ferguson emphasized then that there had been a sea change between CDOT’s negligent oversight over Redflex and the department’s diligence in monitoring Xerox.
WRITTEN BY FRAN SPIELMAN POSTED: 08/16/2015, 08:58PM
Tickets from red-light cameras brought in $284.9 million for the city. | AP File Photo
Red-light cameras have churned out 2.2 million tickets and generated $284.9 million in fines since Mayor Rahm Emanuel took office, a revenue source the cash-strapped city simply cannot afford to relinquish, records show.
The biggest conveyor belts of those dreaded $100 tickets are the red-light cameras at Lake Shore Drive and Belmont, $8.1 million since May 2011; 4200 South Cicero, $7.46 million; Van Buren and Western, $6.3 million; and 87th and Lafayette, $5.8 million, according to records released to the Chicago Sun-Times in response to a Freedom of Information request.
Other moneymakers are at 95th and Stony Island Avenue, $4.9 million; 89th and Stony Island, $4.4 million; 79th and State, $4.1 million; 76th and Stony Island, $4.02 million; and 95th and Halsted, $3.5 million, the records show.
“Public safety, I believe, is only 25 percent of the red-light camera system. It’s 75 percent revenue-driven,” said Ald. Anthony Beale (9th), chairman of the City Council’s Transportation Committee.
“But with the budget crunch we’re in now, it would be almost impossible to do away with any of them. We can’t afford to get rid of them,” Beale said. “However, the yellow light issue still needs to be addressed. We’re still waiting for the federal government to come out with standards for yellow lights so we can incorporate that standard.”
Through July 31, the city had collected $33.2 million in red-light camera revenue, a monthly take of $4.74 million a month. That’s down from $63 million and $5.25 million a month in 2014, and $72.8 million and $6 million a month in 2013, but only because the number of cameras has been reduced.
Earlier this year, Emanuel removed 50 red-light cameras at 25 Chicago intersections, where accidents have been reduced, to put out a political fire that had threatened to burn him in the April 7 runoff.
That left Chicago with 298 red-light cameras at 149 intersections — a 20 percent reduction in the nation’s largest red-light camera program installed by former Mayor Richard M. Daley.
Vanquished mayoral challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia had promised to end what he called the “red light rip-off” by removing every one of Chicago’s red-light cameras on his first day in office. He never said how he would replace the money.
Millionaire businessman Willie Wilson, who got 25 percent of the black vote on Feb. 24, also made red-light cameras an issue before throwing his support to Garcia in Round 2.
“Those red-light cameras on the backs of the poor. Eliminating 50 of them was not enough. They want ‘em all gone,” Wilson said on that day.
To restore public confidence in the scandal-scarred program, Emanuel also sped up the timetable for installation of countdown clocks at 42 red-light intersections that still didn’t have them and embraced red-light camera reforms championed by a pair of influential aldermen.
After the election, the reforms sought by Beale and Tom Tunney (44th), chairman of the Economic, Capital and Technology Development Committee, were watered down.
Beale and Tunney wanted yellow lights at red-light intersections to be “no less than 3.2 seconds or the recognized national standards, plus one additional second, whichever is greater,” but they settled for no change.
And instead of mandating City Council approval before new red-light cameras are “removed, moved or added,” the aldermen settled for a neighborhood hearing and payment plan reforms.
The Chicago Department of Transportation also promised to engage a team of academics with expertise in traffic engineering and traffic safety to conduct a “comprehensive review” of the red-light camera program after examining “best practices” across the nation to determine criteria for future removal and placement of cameras.
Still, Emanuel remained committed to the program that Chicago motorists love to hate, and the records released by City Hall explain why.
At a time when Emanuel needs to find at least $754 million in new revenue to erase a 2016 budget shortfall that makes three risky and rosy assumptions, he cannot afford to kill the cash cow that red-light cameras have become.
Last month, the same circuit court judge who overturned Emanuel’s plan to save two of four city employee pension funds denied the city’s motion to throw out a class-action lawsuit challenging the red-light camera program.
The suit claims that the city did not have the authority it needed from the Illinois General Assembly before red-light cameras were installed in 2003 and it questions the timing of yellow lights.
Emanuel inherited the red-light camera program from Daley and has had nothing but headaches from it ever since.
He fired the Arizona contractor at the center of a $2 million bribery scandal and replaced Redflex Traffic Systems with Xerox State & Local Traffic Solutions.
When a Chicago Tribune investigation questioned the legitimacy of thousands of $100 tickets, Emanuel asked Inspector General Joe Ferguson to conduct an exhaustive review of the red-light camera program.
Last fall, Ferguson faulted the Chicago Department of Transportation for exercising “benign neglect” in its oversight of Redflex, allowing both suspicious ticketing spikes and equipment failures that may have cost the city millions to go unnoticed.
The inspector general said he found no evidence of “willful manipulation” by either the city or Redflex to ratchet up the number of tickets.
To the contrary, he found that the city’s failure to exercise its legal obligation to oversee the now-fired contractor may have cost the city money.
Changes in the timing of yellow lights did not contribute to the ticketing spikes, the IG concluded. But he nevertheless recommended that CDOT “restore a prior hard 3.0 second yellow-light threshold for violations” to ensure clarity and consistency.
When Xerox took over for Redflex, CDOT gave the new contractor the go-ahead to accept tickets with a yellow light duration of 2.9 seconds to account for slight variations from the signal power source. That generated roughly 77,000 tickets.
The inspector general had previously concluded there was no evidence to substantiate the city’s claim that red-light cameras had either reduced accidents or were installed at the most dangerous intersections.
Ferguson said CDOT was unable to produce evidence that accident data was used in the selection of red-light camera locations or that CDOT continually evaluates accident data to relocate cameras to the most dangerous spots.
In fact, in the decade since the program began, Ferguson noted that only 10 cameras at five intersections have been moved.
Last fall, a City Council committee held a hearing on the red-light camera program that provided a forum for the Emanuel administration to showcase its efforts to restore public trust severely shaken by unexplained ticket spikes.
Ferguson emphasized then that there had been a sea change between CDOT’s negligent oversight over Redflex and the department’s diligence in monitoring Xerox.
All Red Light Ticket Payments are “Voluntary” and Chicago need not Comply with Federal Standards for Yellow Lights, City Lawyers tell Court.
July 27,2015
(Chicago) The City of Chicago has filed legal briefs telling a court that even if Chicago’s red light camera program was never legally authorized, no red light tickets can be refunded because all motorist funds collected by the City were “voluntarily paid” and so “cannot be recovered.” (City Brief p. 28 ) The City also claims that it need not refund any tickets issued despite improperly short yellow light times (less than the three seconds specified under federal law) because there is “no legal basis “under either the federal Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) or the Illinois law requiring statewide adoption of the manual “to impose minimum yellow light durations upon the City.” (City Reply Brief p. 22)
The arguments were submitted in support of the City’s motion to dismiss a class action case originally filed against it in 2012, and substantially revised after reporting in the Chicago Tribune in 2014 revealed irregularities with the yellow light durations at many city intersections. The case, Terie L Kata et. al v. City of Chicago, No 12 CH 14186, is currently pending in the Circuit Court of Cook County. Oral arguments on whether the case will get a green light to proceed are currently scheduled before Associate Judge Rita Novak on July 30, 2015 at 10:30 a.m. in Courtroom 2402 of the Richard J. Daley Center, 50 W. Washington Street.
(NOTE: This hearing is open to the press and public. Cameras not permitted inside the courtroom. Plaintiffs’ counsel will have press availability following the hearing, about noon, outside the courtroom.)
The Kata class action asserts that Chicago’s Red Light Camera program, which was begun in 2003 and is the largest and most lucrative in the nation, has never been legally authorized for several reasons, including:
1) The Chicago program was void “ab initio” (“from the beginning”) when adopted, because the Illinois Vehicle Code expressly prohibited all Illinois municipalities (including home rule units) from adopting alternative enforcement schemes for violations of the rules of the road and similar offenses;
2) A hurriedly-drafted 2006 Amendment to the Vehicle Code to allow red light cameras statewide, intended as “legislative cover” for Chicago’s illegal program, could not pass the state senate until legislators whittled away 94 countied where legislators “didn’t want to have this option.” The resulting law, Public Act 94-795 was local legislation, as it explicitly stated that “This Section applies only to the Counties of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, Madison, McHenry, St. Clair, and Will and to municipalities located within those counties.” Such “local legislation” is barred by the state constitution, Article 4 Section 13; and
3) The City’s failure to meet the federal standards for yellow light durations ender’s all tickets with actual yellow light times below 3.0 seconds (including 77,000 tickets which on their face showed yellow lights in the 2.0 to 2.99 second category, renders those tickets invalid.
Plaintiffs seek a declaration that the City program is unauthorized and restitution for the estimated one million vehicle owners improperly assessed one or more $100 fines under the illegal city ordinance.
An earlier class action case filed against the City reached the Illinois Supreme Court last year, but was dismissed when two of the Supreme Court justices, Chicago Democrat Anne Burke and downstate Republican Lloyd Karmeier, recused themselves and the remaining five justices split 3-2, short of the Constitutionally required minimum of four votes. The dismissal had no precedential effect.
Plaintiffs in this case are represented by Patrick Keating of Roberts McGivney Zagotta LLC, 55 W, Monroe Street, Chicago IL , (www.rmczlaw.com), Andrea Bierstein of the New York, NY office of Simmons Hanly Conroy LLC, New York, NY (www.simmonsfirm.com) and Derek Y. Brandt of Brandt Law LLC , Edwardsville IL, (http://www.superlawyers.com/illinois/lawyer/Derek-Y-Brandt/85545b39-1580-4381-b75b-4d2e973cf38c.html)
The City of Chicago is represented by Corporation Counsel Stephen Patton.
Copies of the Court filings are available on request or may be located athttps://www.scribd.com/patrick4j4keating
July 27,2015
(Chicago) The City of Chicago has filed legal briefs telling a court that even if Chicago’s red light camera program was never legally authorized, no red light tickets can be refunded because all motorist funds collected by the City were “voluntarily paid” and so “cannot be recovered.” (City Brief p. 28 ) The City also claims that it need not refund any tickets issued despite improperly short yellow light times (less than the three seconds specified under federal law) because there is “no legal basis “under either the federal Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) or the Illinois law requiring statewide adoption of the manual “to impose minimum yellow light durations upon the City.” (City Reply Brief p. 22)
The arguments were submitted in support of the City’s motion to dismiss a class action case originally filed against it in 2012, and substantially revised after reporting in the Chicago Tribune in 2014 revealed irregularities with the yellow light durations at many city intersections. The case, Terie L Kata et. al v. City of Chicago, No 12 CH 14186, is currently pending in the Circuit Court of Cook County. Oral arguments on whether the case will get a green light to proceed are currently scheduled before Associate Judge Rita Novak on July 30, 2015 at 10:30 a.m. in Courtroom 2402 of the Richard J. Daley Center, 50 W. Washington Street.
(NOTE: This hearing is open to the press and public. Cameras not permitted inside the courtroom. Plaintiffs’ counsel will have press availability following the hearing, about noon, outside the courtroom.)
The Kata class action asserts that Chicago’s Red Light Camera program, which was begun in 2003 and is the largest and most lucrative in the nation, has never been legally authorized for several reasons, including:
1) The Chicago program was void “ab initio” (“from the beginning”) when adopted, because the Illinois Vehicle Code expressly prohibited all Illinois municipalities (including home rule units) from adopting alternative enforcement schemes for violations of the rules of the road and similar offenses;
2) A hurriedly-drafted 2006 Amendment to the Vehicle Code to allow red light cameras statewide, intended as “legislative cover” for Chicago’s illegal program, could not pass the state senate until legislators whittled away 94 countied where legislators “didn’t want to have this option.” The resulting law, Public Act 94-795 was local legislation, as it explicitly stated that “This Section applies only to the Counties of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, Madison, McHenry, St. Clair, and Will and to municipalities located within those counties.” Such “local legislation” is barred by the state constitution, Article 4 Section 13; and
3) The City’s failure to meet the federal standards for yellow light durations ender’s all tickets with actual yellow light times below 3.0 seconds (including 77,000 tickets which on their face showed yellow lights in the 2.0 to 2.99 second category, renders those tickets invalid.
Plaintiffs seek a declaration that the City program is unauthorized and restitution for the estimated one million vehicle owners improperly assessed one or more $100 fines under the illegal city ordinance.
An earlier class action case filed against the City reached the Illinois Supreme Court last year, but was dismissed when two of the Supreme Court justices, Chicago Democrat Anne Burke and downstate Republican Lloyd Karmeier, recused themselves and the remaining five justices split 3-2, short of the Constitutionally required minimum of four votes. The dismissal had no precedential effect.
Plaintiffs in this case are represented by Patrick Keating of Roberts McGivney Zagotta LLC, 55 W, Monroe Street, Chicago IL , (www.rmczlaw.com), Andrea Bierstein of the New York, NY office of Simmons Hanly Conroy LLC, New York, NY (www.simmonsfirm.com) and Derek Y. Brandt of Brandt Law LLC , Edwardsville IL, (http://www.superlawyers.com/illinois/lawyer/Derek-Y-Brandt/85545b39-1580-4381-b75b-4d2e973cf38c.html)
The City of Chicago is represented by Corporation Counsel Stephen Patton.
Copies of the Court filings are available on request or may be located athttps://www.scribd.com/patrick4j4keating
Six months after New Jersey red light cameras go dark, world hasn’t ended
By Josh Kaib / June 17, 2015 /
When New Jersey’s red light camera program expired six months ago, both local governments and industry lost a significant source of cash.
By Josh Kaib | Watchdog Arena
Red light cameras were supposed to reduce crashes in New Jersey and make people safer, but since cameras stopped issuing tickets, pedestrians and drivers may actually be less likely to get into an accident.
The red light camera lobby warned of the dire consequences if New Jersey’s cameras went dark. And in the six months since, they claim Jersey drivers are back to their old ways, running red lights with reckless abandon.
In the first three months after the cameras went dark, red light running reportedly surged in one city. The Traffic Safety Coalition, a group that includes red light camera company Redflex among its ‘partners,’ claims that red light running increased by 116 percent in three months.
Though the cameras are no longer issuing tickets, they are still keeping track of violations:
According to data provided by the City of Newark Department of Engineering Division of Traffic and Signals, 47,445 violations were detected from February 16, 2015 to March 17, 2015 compared to just 21,965 violations during the same time period last year – an increase of 25,000 violations during a one month time period.
Watchdog reached out to Jack Nata, Manager of Newark’s Division of Traffic and Signals for comment. He directed us to the city’s press office, which said the numbers “seem to be accurate.” Final numbers are expected to be released soon.
Rick Short is the founder of Stop Robo Cops, an organization in New Jersey that was formed to oppose red light cameras. When I sent him the Traffic Safety Coalition’s claims, he expressed skepticism about the numbers.
“The Traffic Safety Coalition said an average of 20,000 tickets pre-camera [shutoff]…that would mean 20,000 times for 12 months, which comes out to 240,000 tickets per year. That’s impossible,” Short said. “Hey you’ve seen fake press releases before, but that has a video with it.”
According to Nicholas Juliano of the Traffic Safety Coalition, the police aren’t reviewing the footage, something they did when drivers were ticketed for violations. In certain cases, tickets would not be issued if a police officer reviewing the footage thought the camera detected a violation in error.
“Those detections counted as violations are instances in which cars entered the intersection while the light was red, and are based off of an analysis of all intersections equipped with traffic safety cameras,” Juliano said. “The police department is not reviewing footage, as they were during the period of enforcement.”
Rick Short from Stop Robo Cops has taken a look at crash data and found an interesting statistic of his own.
His analysis shows that in the first year of red light cameras, there was a 94 percent increase in accidents involving pedestrians.
“Remember, a pedestrian hit hurts more than a car because people don’t walk around with air bags on their bodies,” Short quipped.
Short analyzed data from 70 of the 73 red light camera intersections in the state and used the first year that cameras were in operation because others years’ data is not yet available.
Stop Robo Cops plans more data analysis in the coming months. You can expect the red light camera lobby to do the same.
But if the crash numbers seem complicated, one aspect of the red light camera program is pretty straight forward: the money. By allowing the program to expire, the legislature and governor removed a significant revenue stream for local governments. They want it back.
Back in January, NJ.com reported on the financials of red light cameras in Newark:
Before the cameras went dark last month, Newark brought in more than $34 million in revenue from the nearly 400,000 tickets paid since the program began five years ago, nearly half of which landed in municipal coffers, according to data provided on Friday by the city.
Of those fines paid between 2010 and 2014, the city received about $16.2 million, or roughly $3.2 million on average each year, the data shows.
The remaining dollars included about $4.5 million in revenue for the state and roughly $13.3 million for Redflex Traffic Systems, the Phoenix-based company contracted to maintain the city’s cameras, the data shows.
That’s a significant amount of lost revenue for all parties involved, so it should be no surprise that the Traffic Safety Coalition includes cities from across the country, including the City of Newark, and the company that provides the city’s cameras.
They want the cameras back, but for public safety or the money?
This article was written by a contributor of Watchdog Arena, Franklin Center’s network of writers, bloggers, and citizen journalists.
By Josh Kaib / June 17, 2015 /
When New Jersey’s red light camera program expired six months ago, both local governments and industry lost a significant source of cash.
By Josh Kaib | Watchdog Arena
Red light cameras were supposed to reduce crashes in New Jersey and make people safer, but since cameras stopped issuing tickets, pedestrians and drivers may actually be less likely to get into an accident.
The red light camera lobby warned of the dire consequences if New Jersey’s cameras went dark. And in the six months since, they claim Jersey drivers are back to their old ways, running red lights with reckless abandon.
In the first three months after the cameras went dark, red light running reportedly surged in one city. The Traffic Safety Coalition, a group that includes red light camera company Redflex among its ‘partners,’ claims that red light running increased by 116 percent in three months.
Though the cameras are no longer issuing tickets, they are still keeping track of violations:
According to data provided by the City of Newark Department of Engineering Division of Traffic and Signals, 47,445 violations were detected from February 16, 2015 to March 17, 2015 compared to just 21,965 violations during the same time period last year – an increase of 25,000 violations during a one month time period.
Watchdog reached out to Jack Nata, Manager of Newark’s Division of Traffic and Signals for comment. He directed us to the city’s press office, which said the numbers “seem to be accurate.” Final numbers are expected to be released soon.
Rick Short is the founder of Stop Robo Cops, an organization in New Jersey that was formed to oppose red light cameras. When I sent him the Traffic Safety Coalition’s claims, he expressed skepticism about the numbers.
“The Traffic Safety Coalition said an average of 20,000 tickets pre-camera [shutoff]…that would mean 20,000 times for 12 months, which comes out to 240,000 tickets per year. That’s impossible,” Short said. “Hey you’ve seen fake press releases before, but that has a video with it.”
According to Nicholas Juliano of the Traffic Safety Coalition, the police aren’t reviewing the footage, something they did when drivers were ticketed for violations. In certain cases, tickets would not be issued if a police officer reviewing the footage thought the camera detected a violation in error.
“Those detections counted as violations are instances in which cars entered the intersection while the light was red, and are based off of an analysis of all intersections equipped with traffic safety cameras,” Juliano said. “The police department is not reviewing footage, as they were during the period of enforcement.”
Rick Short from Stop Robo Cops has taken a look at crash data and found an interesting statistic of his own.
His analysis shows that in the first year of red light cameras, there was a 94 percent increase in accidents involving pedestrians.
“Remember, a pedestrian hit hurts more than a car because people don’t walk around with air bags on their bodies,” Short quipped.
Short analyzed data from 70 of the 73 red light camera intersections in the state and used the first year that cameras were in operation because others years’ data is not yet available.
Stop Robo Cops plans more data analysis in the coming months. You can expect the red light camera lobby to do the same.
But if the crash numbers seem complicated, one aspect of the red light camera program is pretty straight forward: the money. By allowing the program to expire, the legislature and governor removed a significant revenue stream for local governments. They want it back.
Back in January, NJ.com reported on the financials of red light cameras in Newark:
Before the cameras went dark last month, Newark brought in more than $34 million in revenue from the nearly 400,000 tickets paid since the program began five years ago, nearly half of which landed in municipal coffers, according to data provided on Friday by the city.
Of those fines paid between 2010 and 2014, the city received about $16.2 million, or roughly $3.2 million on average each year, the data shows.
The remaining dollars included about $4.5 million in revenue for the state and roughly $13.3 million for Redflex Traffic Systems, the Phoenix-based company contracted to maintain the city’s cameras, the data shows.
That’s a significant amount of lost revenue for all parties involved, so it should be no surprise that the Traffic Safety Coalition includes cities from across the country, including the City of Newark, and the company that provides the city’s cameras.
They want the cameras back, but for public safety or the money?
This article was written by a contributor of Watchdog Arena, Franklin Center’s network of writers, bloggers, and citizen journalists.
As you go to the polls in Chicago April 7th it's time to take back the city and take back the party. Vote for these candidates that have pledged to Abolish Red Light & Speed Cameras in Chicago
Chuy Garcia - Mayor
Gregory Mitchell - 7th Ward
Susan Garza - 10th Ward
Rafael Yanez - 15th Ward
Toni Foulkes - 16th Ward
Derrick Curtis - 18th Ward
Kevin Bailey - 20th Wad
Marvin McNeil - 21st Ward
Election day is fast approaching in Chicago and Rahm is out with his new "I Hear You" ads but can we really believe him and are we satisfied with taking some of the cameras down. In both cases the answer is no. I don't think we can trust him and we want all of the camera gone.
Rahm says he will take some of the cameras down and Chuy says his first act in office will be turning them all off. Chuy gets it and he gets my vote because not only does he understand the Red Light Camera Issue but he also understands that the practice of fines and fees on the poor and working class to balance the budget must end.
Rahm's money has paid for a lot of commercials and slick flyers telling us what he has done for Chicago but take a look at this to see what he has done to Chicago during his four years.
The Tribune today, in another front page story, uses the cities data to prove that Chicago's lights are not timed right and in fact are set up to grab revenue. The more we learn the more we know it's time to end this failed fraud plagued system. Join us tonight as we demonstrate at the Speed Camera across the street from the debate.
TRIBUNE WATCHDOG
3/16/15
City data show fast times at yellows
Reports support contention that red light signal interval too short
By David Kidwell Tribune reporter
For nearly two years, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration has had strong evidence that Chicago’s yellow light times are too short for traffic conditions, thanks to a series of radar gun surveys the city conducted to support its speed camera program, the Tribune has found.
Nearly 20,000 drivers were clocked in the 168 spot surveys beginning in mid-2013, most traveling significantly faster than posted speed limits around the city. The previously undisclosed reports were obtained by the Tribune through a public records request.
The speed findings bolster concerns from national experts who say Chicago drivers are at a greater risk for rear-end accidents due to the combination of red light cameras and 3-second yellow lights that are out of step with national practices.
Those experts say the prevailing speeds — not the posted speeds — should be used in setting yellow light times and that Chicago’s data mean yellow lights should be lengthened to at least 3.5 seconds on its 30-mph streets. Research indicates such a change could bring down rear-end crashes caused by drivers slamming on their brakes, while also reducing red light camera tickets that have generated more than half a billion dollars for the city.
“Three seconds is too short even when people are driving at 30 miles per hour,” said Robert Seyfried, a Northwestern University traffic safety expert who edited the nationally recognized engineering handbook on signal timing. “And it’s clear from this data that at many locations they are traveling significantly faster.”
Chicago transportation officials say the yellow light times are appropriate for such a dense urban environment. They also warned against drawing broad conclusions about traffic safety from the surveys, saying they are not an accurate representation of prevailing speeds throughout Chicago.
But the national experts who reviewed the data for the Tribune disagreed, saying it was odd for the city to use such surveys to support speed cameras yet ignore their value for re-evaluating speed limits and signal timing.
“I have never seen speed surveys specifically designed to go out and support speed cameras but not address any other safety considerations,” said Hugh Mc-Gee, a safety consultant who led the nationwide study that formed the basis for proposed new national standards on signal timing.
“It is even more evidence that they want to use these things selectively as a way to collect revenue, unfortunately,” McGee said.
“What I see here tells me that in many cases throughout the city, the yellow lights are too short and the speed limits are too low,” he said. “That is a problem.”
Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration has defended the red light camera system and the city’s decadeslong policy on yellow light times in response to a Tribune investigation calling into question the safety benefits — and City Hall’s management — of the nation’s largest automated traffic enforcement program.
In December, the Tribune reported that its scientific study found Chicago red light cameras do not reduce injury-related crashes overall because of a trade-off between a 15 percent reduction in typically more dangerous right-angle crashes and a corresponding 22 percent increase in rear-end crashes. The Tribune also reported that some states and many major cities require longer yellow light times — especially where red light cameras are involved — to reduce accidents caused by drivers slamming on their brakes to avoid a ticket.
Emanuel aides said they would review the Tribune’s findings as they considered changes to the program. But the administration did not respond until a week ago, when pressed by a Tribune reporter amid the heat of Emanuel’s re-election battle with a challenger calling for an end to the cameras.
At a news conference a week ago, Emanuel announced plans to pull cameras from 25 of the 174 intersections in the program and proposed letting first-time offenders take an online safety course in lieu of paying the $100 fine, among other changes.
“Ultimately,” Emanuel said, “it’s about bringing safety and security to our streets.”
But the mayor did not address the issue of yellow light timing, even though proposed legislation in the City Council and the state legislature would mandate longer yellow times for Chicago stoplights. Both proposals call for a minimum of 3.2 seconds.
Rep. Jaime Andrade, D-Chicago, said he filed House Bill 3365 in response to Tribune reports.
“I just couldn’t believe how far behind Chicago is compared to the rest of the country,” Andrade said. “The yellow lights are too short, and I think something has to be done about it.”
Emanuel and his transportation chief, Rebekah Scheinfeld, declined to be interviewed for this report. But in December Scheinfeld and her top staff insisted the city’s yellow light times are appropriate for such a dense urban environment as Chicago and that the city was following national guidelines. They said lengthening the city’s yellow light times would encourage drivers to violate the speed limit.
But experts around the country say Chicago is out of sync with the recommended practices of the national Institute of Transportation Engineers. Those guidelines say that if drivers are traveling 30 mph, the yellow light times should be set to at least 3.2 seconds.
Because drivers typically travel faster than posted limits, the national group recommends local officials do studies to ensure that signals are timed to the real speeds on the streets. If officials don’t do such studies, they should compensate by adding a cushion in their calculations, the ITE suggests in a new set of proposed recommendations published earlier this month.
In Chicago, with its standard 30 mph posted limits, that would put yellow times at 3.7 seconds.
Chicago officials have said they don’t do so-called prevailing speed studies to set their signal timing, relying instead on their interpretation of engineering formulas. They denied a Tribune records request last year for any speed data related to red light cameras. But in interviews several months ago, city officials acknowledged they conducted a series of speed surveys to support Emanuel’s push for an automated speed camera program.
The Tribune requested those records, and in response the city provided individual reports on 168 speed tests conducted throughout Chicago from July 2013 through August 2014. Each test clocked more than 100 drivers using radar guns and avoided rush hours. The vast majority of the streets had 30 mph limits, but a few had 20 mph, 25 mph or 35 mph limits.
The surveys determined the “85th percentile,” or prevailing speed at which most of the cars were traveling. National traffic agencies recommend using the 85th percentile speed to set both speed limits and yellow light times.
The prevailing speed in 130 of the 168 surveys was above the posted limit, and in many cases drivers were going at least 5 mph faster.
The Tribune plotted and mapped each stretch of Chicago street included in the speed surveys and found that 65 of the studied stretches of roadway were immediately adjacent to or within one or two blocks of an intersection with red light cameras. In a dozen surveys near red light cameras, prevailing speeds were less than 3 mph over the limit, and in a few they were even below.
But in most of the surveys near red light camera locations, the prevailing speeds were at least 5 mph over the limit.
For instance, a survey conducted one sunny afternoon in July 2013 on the Southwest Side showed a prevailing speed of 38 mph on a stretch of Western Avenue approaching the Pershing Road intersection. A few days later on the Southwest Side, prevailing speeds reached 39 mph on a stretch of Pulaski Road near the intersection with 79th Street.
The speed limit is 30 mph at both red light camera locations.
City transportation officials cautioned against using the data to calculate prevailing speeds.
“This spot speed count data is not representative of prevailing speeds in Chicago generally, nor at other specific intersections or locations ,” Chicago Department of Transportation officials said in the letter accompanying the records. “Therefore, CDOT has not used this data for any other purpose other than automated speed camera siting decisions.
“These locations are not directly adjacent to stop signs or signal controls,” the response continued. “Generally, these are midblock locations away from signalized intersections.”
But all three national traffic experts who reviewed the data for the Tribune said it was more than adequate to show that Chicago’s signal times are inappropriate, especially at red light cameras.
“They obviously have the data indicating where their speeding issues are, and it seems pretty clear to me that the yellow lights are not timed to the prevailing speeds — especially near red light cameras,” said Timothy Gates, a national traffic safety expert from Wayne State University who co-wrote the national study with McGee that led to the recently proposed recommendations by the traffic engineers institute.
“That does not coincide with recommended guidance,” he added.
Gates said the data showed that, on average, prevailing speeds were 5.3 mph above the speed limit near red light cameras and 3.1 mph above the limit elsewhere — evidence that speeding is a greater problem near red light cameras “and the yellows are too short.”
Drivers in Chicago have begun to compensate for the short yellow times by watching pedestrian countdown timers that are installed at many intersections. Drivers can gauge how soon the light will change by watching the countdown.
Emanuel and supportive aldermen have promised to accelerate the installation of the timers at red light camera intersections as part of their proposed changes.
Experts interviewed, however, say the timers — while popular among many drivers — are designed to help pedestrians, not motorists, and should not be used as a surrogate for appropriate yellow light times. “It’s a misapplication to install countdown timers for drivers,” Seyfried said. “The danger is that people will see how much more time they have and hit the gas pedal instead of the brakes.”
The Tribune’s long-running investigation of red light cameras in Chicago, which led to federal charges that the program was born of a $2 million bribery scheme, also exposed the Emanuel administration’s failed oversight, unfair enforcement practices and unsupported claims about safety benefits.
The reports also highlighted concerns about City Hall’s handling of signal times at camera intersections, including the correlation between yellow light times and the number of tickets for running red lights.
Emanuel’s administration quietly lowered the threshold for issuing red light tickets last year, tagging drivers for an additional 77,000 citations despite the fact that yellow light times in those cases were below the federal minimum of 3 seconds. Emanuel suspended that practice after Tribune inquiries but declined to refund drivers the nearly $8 million in revenue captured by the six-month change in ticketing standards.
A decade-old study by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, since bolstered by other research, found that increasing yellow times by just half a second resulted in a decrease in accidents of up to 25 percent and a decrease in red light violations of up to 40 percent.[email protected]
3/16/15
City data show fast times at yellows
Reports support contention that red light signal interval too short
By David Kidwell Tribune reporter
For nearly two years, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration has had strong evidence that Chicago’s yellow light times are too short for traffic conditions, thanks to a series of radar gun surveys the city conducted to support its speed camera program, the Tribune has found.
Nearly 20,000 drivers were clocked in the 168 spot surveys beginning in mid-2013, most traveling significantly faster than posted speed limits around the city. The previously undisclosed reports were obtained by the Tribune through a public records request.
The speed findings bolster concerns from national experts who say Chicago drivers are at a greater risk for rear-end accidents due to the combination of red light cameras and 3-second yellow lights that are out of step with national practices.
Those experts say the prevailing speeds — not the posted speeds — should be used in setting yellow light times and that Chicago’s data mean yellow lights should be lengthened to at least 3.5 seconds on its 30-mph streets. Research indicates such a change could bring down rear-end crashes caused by drivers slamming on their brakes, while also reducing red light camera tickets that have generated more than half a billion dollars for the city.
“Three seconds is too short even when people are driving at 30 miles per hour,” said Robert Seyfried, a Northwestern University traffic safety expert who edited the nationally recognized engineering handbook on signal timing. “And it’s clear from this data that at many locations they are traveling significantly faster.”
Chicago transportation officials say the yellow light times are appropriate for such a dense urban environment. They also warned against drawing broad conclusions about traffic safety from the surveys, saying they are not an accurate representation of prevailing speeds throughout Chicago.
But the national experts who reviewed the data for the Tribune disagreed, saying it was odd for the city to use such surveys to support speed cameras yet ignore their value for re-evaluating speed limits and signal timing.
“I have never seen speed surveys specifically designed to go out and support speed cameras but not address any other safety considerations,” said Hugh Mc-Gee, a safety consultant who led the nationwide study that formed the basis for proposed new national standards on signal timing.
“It is even more evidence that they want to use these things selectively as a way to collect revenue, unfortunately,” McGee said.
“What I see here tells me that in many cases throughout the city, the yellow lights are too short and the speed limits are too low,” he said. “That is a problem.”
Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration has defended the red light camera system and the city’s decadeslong policy on yellow light times in response to a Tribune investigation calling into question the safety benefits — and City Hall’s management — of the nation’s largest automated traffic enforcement program.
In December, the Tribune reported that its scientific study found Chicago red light cameras do not reduce injury-related crashes overall because of a trade-off between a 15 percent reduction in typically more dangerous right-angle crashes and a corresponding 22 percent increase in rear-end crashes. The Tribune also reported that some states and many major cities require longer yellow light times — especially where red light cameras are involved — to reduce accidents caused by drivers slamming on their brakes to avoid a ticket.
Emanuel aides said they would review the Tribune’s findings as they considered changes to the program. But the administration did not respond until a week ago, when pressed by a Tribune reporter amid the heat of Emanuel’s re-election battle with a challenger calling for an end to the cameras.
At a news conference a week ago, Emanuel announced plans to pull cameras from 25 of the 174 intersections in the program and proposed letting first-time offenders take an online safety course in lieu of paying the $100 fine, among other changes.
“Ultimately,” Emanuel said, “it’s about bringing safety and security to our streets.”
But the mayor did not address the issue of yellow light timing, even though proposed legislation in the City Council and the state legislature would mandate longer yellow times for Chicago stoplights. Both proposals call for a minimum of 3.2 seconds.
Rep. Jaime Andrade, D-Chicago, said he filed House Bill 3365 in response to Tribune reports.
“I just couldn’t believe how far behind Chicago is compared to the rest of the country,” Andrade said. “The yellow lights are too short, and I think something has to be done about it.”
Emanuel and his transportation chief, Rebekah Scheinfeld, declined to be interviewed for this report. But in December Scheinfeld and her top staff insisted the city’s yellow light times are appropriate for such a dense urban environment as Chicago and that the city was following national guidelines. They said lengthening the city’s yellow light times would encourage drivers to violate the speed limit.
But experts around the country say Chicago is out of sync with the recommended practices of the national Institute of Transportation Engineers. Those guidelines say that if drivers are traveling 30 mph, the yellow light times should be set to at least 3.2 seconds.
Because drivers typically travel faster than posted limits, the national group recommends local officials do studies to ensure that signals are timed to the real speeds on the streets. If officials don’t do such studies, they should compensate by adding a cushion in their calculations, the ITE suggests in a new set of proposed recommendations published earlier this month.
In Chicago, with its standard 30 mph posted limits, that would put yellow times at 3.7 seconds.
Chicago officials have said they don’t do so-called prevailing speed studies to set their signal timing, relying instead on their interpretation of engineering formulas. They denied a Tribune records request last year for any speed data related to red light cameras. But in interviews several months ago, city officials acknowledged they conducted a series of speed surveys to support Emanuel’s push for an automated speed camera program.
The Tribune requested those records, and in response the city provided individual reports on 168 speed tests conducted throughout Chicago from July 2013 through August 2014. Each test clocked more than 100 drivers using radar guns and avoided rush hours. The vast majority of the streets had 30 mph limits, but a few had 20 mph, 25 mph or 35 mph limits.
The surveys determined the “85th percentile,” or prevailing speed at which most of the cars were traveling. National traffic agencies recommend using the 85th percentile speed to set both speed limits and yellow light times.
The prevailing speed in 130 of the 168 surveys was above the posted limit, and in many cases drivers were going at least 5 mph faster.
The Tribune plotted and mapped each stretch of Chicago street included in the speed surveys and found that 65 of the studied stretches of roadway were immediately adjacent to or within one or two blocks of an intersection with red light cameras. In a dozen surveys near red light cameras, prevailing speeds were less than 3 mph over the limit, and in a few they were even below.
But in most of the surveys near red light camera locations, the prevailing speeds were at least 5 mph over the limit.
For instance, a survey conducted one sunny afternoon in July 2013 on the Southwest Side showed a prevailing speed of 38 mph on a stretch of Western Avenue approaching the Pershing Road intersection. A few days later on the Southwest Side, prevailing speeds reached 39 mph on a stretch of Pulaski Road near the intersection with 79th Street.
The speed limit is 30 mph at both red light camera locations.
City transportation officials cautioned against using the data to calculate prevailing speeds.
“This spot speed count data is not representative of prevailing speeds in Chicago generally, nor at other specific intersections or locations ,” Chicago Department of Transportation officials said in the letter accompanying the records. “Therefore, CDOT has not used this data for any other purpose other than automated speed camera siting decisions.
“These locations are not directly adjacent to stop signs or signal controls,” the response continued. “Generally, these are midblock locations away from signalized intersections.”
But all three national traffic experts who reviewed the data for the Tribune said it was more than adequate to show that Chicago’s signal times are inappropriate, especially at red light cameras.
“They obviously have the data indicating where their speeding issues are, and it seems pretty clear to me that the yellow lights are not timed to the prevailing speeds — especially near red light cameras,” said Timothy Gates, a national traffic safety expert from Wayne State University who co-wrote the national study with McGee that led to the recently proposed recommendations by the traffic engineers institute.
“That does not coincide with recommended guidance,” he added.
Gates said the data showed that, on average, prevailing speeds were 5.3 mph above the speed limit near red light cameras and 3.1 mph above the limit elsewhere — evidence that speeding is a greater problem near red light cameras “and the yellows are too short.”
Drivers in Chicago have begun to compensate for the short yellow times by watching pedestrian countdown timers that are installed at many intersections. Drivers can gauge how soon the light will change by watching the countdown.
Emanuel and supportive aldermen have promised to accelerate the installation of the timers at red light camera intersections as part of their proposed changes.
Experts interviewed, however, say the timers — while popular among many drivers — are designed to help pedestrians, not motorists, and should not be used as a surrogate for appropriate yellow light times. “It’s a misapplication to install countdown timers for drivers,” Seyfried said. “The danger is that people will see how much more time they have and hit the gas pedal instead of the brakes.”
The Tribune’s long-running investigation of red light cameras in Chicago, which led to federal charges that the program was born of a $2 million bribery scheme, also exposed the Emanuel administration’s failed oversight, unfair enforcement practices and unsupported claims about safety benefits.
The reports also highlighted concerns about City Hall’s handling of signal times at camera intersections, including the correlation between yellow light times and the number of tickets for running red lights.
Emanuel’s administration quietly lowered the threshold for issuing red light tickets last year, tagging drivers for an additional 77,000 citations despite the fact that yellow light times in those cases were below the federal minimum of 3 seconds. Emanuel suspended that practice after Tribune inquiries but declined to refund drivers the nearly $8 million in revenue captured by the six-month change in ticketing standards.
A decade-old study by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, since bolstered by other research, found that increasing yellow times by just half a second resulted in a decrease in accidents of up to 25 percent and a decrease in red light violations of up to 40 percent.[email protected]
Too Little Too Late
Rahm is obviously starting to get the message but his reaction is much too little and much too late. Taking down cameras that should have never been there is a good first step but what he really needs to do is approach this as the revenue generating scheme it is and come up with a new Plan. As Carrie Austen said yesterday, no matter who gets elected there have to be new revenue sources. Let's start that discussion now with the understanding that the Red Light & Speed Camera revenue is gone because the cameras are gone and come up with a new plan that doesn't balance the budget off the back of the poor.
Chicago plans to eliminate 50 more red light cameras
Mayor Rahm Emanuel also proposed other reforms, including online classes for first-time offenders. (Brian Cassella/CBS Chicago)
By David KidwellChicago Tribunecontact the reporter
Chicago to shut down 50 more red light cameras
Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Sunday announced he would remove 50 red light cameras at 25 of the 174 intersections in the city's program and soften the penalty for first-time offenders, but he denied the moves were designed to help him in his intensifying election battle with challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia.
The announcement comes just days after Garcia, who faces Emanuel in the April 7 runoff election, promised an end to the program altogether, calling it Emanuel's “red light rip-off.”
Flanked by half a dozen aldermen and transportation chief, the mayor said he supports a proposed ordinance to give first-time offenders “a mulligan” by allowing them to avoid the $100 fine and instead take an online traffic course.
Emanuel deflected questions about the timing of his announcement by suggesting this is one in a series of reforms he has instituted in the past two and half years.
“This technology, enforced properly, where people have confidence and trust in its operation, can bring the level of safety and security we need, also freeing up our officers to do their jobs,” Emanuel said.
“Red light (cameras) have been proven time and again, in every study, to reduce the most dangerous type of crashes, which is the side crashes,” he said. “We know that while we are doing that, we also have to build the trust in the community and throughout the city of Chicago ... that this is going to be operated fairly, with a level of transparency.”
Emanuel has staunchly defended the program amid a series of Tribune investigations that exposed his administration's failed oversight, unfair and inconsistent enforcement, and unsupported safety claims. The mayor has been gradually removing cameras since the Tribune's series started, but even after the removal of 50 under the latest move, Chicago will still have more than 300.
It will remain the largest automated red light enforcement program in the nation.
In a statement released before the news conference began, Garcia accused Emanuel of panicking over the public opposition to the program.
“This new move by Mayor Emanuel is too little, too late,” said Garcia. “I am confident voters will see this announcement today for what it is — pure politics. It's time for a change.”
Sunday's announcement comes amid increasing political pressure — much of it from African-American voters whose help Emanuel needs for re-election — to curtail a program that has raised more than $500 million in $100 ticket fines since it began in 2003. Many of the intersections affected by Sunday's announcement are on the South Side.
Even the co-chairman of the mayor's re-election campaign, Secretary of State Jesse White, publicly advised the mayor to “rethink” his stance on the controversial program following Emanuel's failure in the Feb. 24 election to get enough votes to avoid the runoff.
Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, chairman of the City Council's transportation committee, appeared with Emanuel at the West Side news conference to say he was “excited” about the proposed reforms. But in an interview with the Tribune last week, Beale described the efforts as late in coming.
“I just got a call from the mayor's office saying they were crunching the numbers,” Beale said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “I got the impression they are open to tweaking the program. They asked me to wait and see what they are doing.”
Beale filed an proposed ordinance asking for many of the reforms in January following the latest series of Tribune reports questioning the program's safety records. He said he got silence for months, until now.
“It is beyond me why it has taken them so long, but I know it is a very hot issue in my community and it is not going away any time soon,” Beale said in the interview.
According to Emanuel, the new ordinance will also require public input before cameras can be removed or added, and he will hasten the installation of pedestrian countdown timers often used by drivers to predict the length of traffic light intervals as they approach the intersections.
Emanuel promised to have the countdown timers installed at all red light camera intersections by June 1. He said there are 42 not yet installed.
Neither Emanuel nor transportation chief Rebekah Scheinfeld would answer questions about what is being done at dozens of other intersections that have seen no safety benefit from the cameras, according to a Tribune-commissioned study published in December.
In that report, the Tribune listed 73 camera-equipped intersections that had fewer than four injury crashes per year before the cameras were installed. The first-ever scientific study of the program concluded that the cameras offered no benefit at those intersections. The report also suggested those intersections might even be more dangerous because of an increase in rear-end crashes attributed to the cameras.
Scheinfeld declined to say Sunday why only a dozen of those 73 cameras were on the list to be removed.
She said all the cameras on the list to be removed had only one or fewer right-angle — or T-bone crashes — in 2013, according to state statistics.
In December, Scheinfeld promised to re-examine the effectiveness of the program following a series of Tribune stories that questioned the camera's overall safety benefits and revealed that cameras may have caused an increase in injury-related crashes at many intersections.
The Tribune study conducted by researchers with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute belied Emanuel's claims that crashes are down 47 percent at red light cameras overall. The claim was based on faulty statistics and dubious science, according to national traffic safety experts.
The study found only a 15 percent reduction of the more dangerous T-bone injury crashes, offset by a 22 percent increase in rear-end crashes that resulted in injury. The cameras had no safety benefit at intersections that never had much of a crash problem prior to their installation, according to the study, raising questions about why they were installed in the first place.
The Tribune also found that Chicago's yellow light times are dangerously short and out of step with other major cities, citing national research and experts who said longer yellows significantly reduce crashes and red light citations.
Even before Sunday's announcement, Emanuel insisted he had reformed the program.
On the stump and during debates, the mayor has pointed out that he fired the former vendor amid Tribune reports detailing how the program was allegedly born of a $2 million bribery scheme at City Hall. He also says he has made changes to make the program more transparent, and last year he shut down cameras at 16 of the 190 camera-equipped intersections around the city.
But Emanuel's office has yet to explain the causes for dozens of wild spikes in tickets at intersections around the city that unfairly tagged tens of thousands of motorists. An inspector general's review in response to the Tribune stories was stymied by a lack of city records.
The Tribune also revealed how Emanuel's administration quietly lowered the threshold for issuing red light tickets last year, tagging drivers for an additional 77,000 citations despite the fact that yellow light times in those cases were below the federal minimum of 3 seconds. Emanuel suspended that practice following Tribune inquiries but declined to refund drivers the nearly $8 million in revenue captured by the six-month change in ticketing standards.
Asked Sunday about whether the timing of his move was geared for political advantage, Emanuel acknowledged he is open to that perception.
“I have no doubt that people are going to say that,” Emanuel said, adding that his action Sunday “is a further installment on a series of things” he has done to “right the operation.”
“It was corrupt in my view, literally from who got the contract to how it was operated,” Emanuel said. “So I will leave the questions to other people. ... I know what we have done going two and half years back.”
[email protected]
Twitter @DavidKidwell1
Mayor Rahm Emanuel also proposed other reforms, including online classes for first-time offenders. (Brian Cassella/CBS Chicago)
By David KidwellChicago Tribunecontact the reporter
Chicago to shut down 50 more red light cameras
Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Sunday announced he would remove 50 red light cameras at 25 of the 174 intersections in the city's program and soften the penalty for first-time offenders, but he denied the moves were designed to help him in his intensifying election battle with challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia.
The announcement comes just days after Garcia, who faces Emanuel in the April 7 runoff election, promised an end to the program altogether, calling it Emanuel's “red light rip-off.”
Flanked by half a dozen aldermen and transportation chief, the mayor said he supports a proposed ordinance to give first-time offenders “a mulligan” by allowing them to avoid the $100 fine and instead take an online traffic course.
Emanuel deflected questions about the timing of his announcement by suggesting this is one in a series of reforms he has instituted in the past two and half years.
“This technology, enforced properly, where people have confidence and trust in its operation, can bring the level of safety and security we need, also freeing up our officers to do their jobs,” Emanuel said.
“Red light (cameras) have been proven time and again, in every study, to reduce the most dangerous type of crashes, which is the side crashes,” he said. “We know that while we are doing that, we also have to build the trust in the community and throughout the city of Chicago ... that this is going to be operated fairly, with a level of transparency.”
Emanuel has staunchly defended the program amid a series of Tribune investigations that exposed his administration's failed oversight, unfair and inconsistent enforcement, and unsupported safety claims. The mayor has been gradually removing cameras since the Tribune's series started, but even after the removal of 50 under the latest move, Chicago will still have more than 300.
It will remain the largest automated red light enforcement program in the nation.
In a statement released before the news conference began, Garcia accused Emanuel of panicking over the public opposition to the program.
“This new move by Mayor Emanuel is too little, too late,” said Garcia. “I am confident voters will see this announcement today for what it is — pure politics. It's time for a change.”
Sunday's announcement comes amid increasing political pressure — much of it from African-American voters whose help Emanuel needs for re-election — to curtail a program that has raised more than $500 million in $100 ticket fines since it began in 2003. Many of the intersections affected by Sunday's announcement are on the South Side.
Even the co-chairman of the mayor's re-election campaign, Secretary of State Jesse White, publicly advised the mayor to “rethink” his stance on the controversial program following Emanuel's failure in the Feb. 24 election to get enough votes to avoid the runoff.
Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, chairman of the City Council's transportation committee, appeared with Emanuel at the West Side news conference to say he was “excited” about the proposed reforms. But in an interview with the Tribune last week, Beale described the efforts as late in coming.
“I just got a call from the mayor's office saying they were crunching the numbers,” Beale said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “I got the impression they are open to tweaking the program. They asked me to wait and see what they are doing.”
Beale filed an proposed ordinance asking for many of the reforms in January following the latest series of Tribune reports questioning the program's safety records. He said he got silence for months, until now.
“It is beyond me why it has taken them so long, but I know it is a very hot issue in my community and it is not going away any time soon,” Beale said in the interview.
According to Emanuel, the new ordinance will also require public input before cameras can be removed or added, and he will hasten the installation of pedestrian countdown timers often used by drivers to predict the length of traffic light intervals as they approach the intersections.
Emanuel promised to have the countdown timers installed at all red light camera intersections by June 1. He said there are 42 not yet installed.
Neither Emanuel nor transportation chief Rebekah Scheinfeld would answer questions about what is being done at dozens of other intersections that have seen no safety benefit from the cameras, according to a Tribune-commissioned study published in December.
In that report, the Tribune listed 73 camera-equipped intersections that had fewer than four injury crashes per year before the cameras were installed. The first-ever scientific study of the program concluded that the cameras offered no benefit at those intersections. The report also suggested those intersections might even be more dangerous because of an increase in rear-end crashes attributed to the cameras.
Scheinfeld declined to say Sunday why only a dozen of those 73 cameras were on the list to be removed.
She said all the cameras on the list to be removed had only one or fewer right-angle — or T-bone crashes — in 2013, according to state statistics.
In December, Scheinfeld promised to re-examine the effectiveness of the program following a series of Tribune stories that questioned the camera's overall safety benefits and revealed that cameras may have caused an increase in injury-related crashes at many intersections.
The Tribune study conducted by researchers with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute belied Emanuel's claims that crashes are down 47 percent at red light cameras overall. The claim was based on faulty statistics and dubious science, according to national traffic safety experts.
The study found only a 15 percent reduction of the more dangerous T-bone injury crashes, offset by a 22 percent increase in rear-end crashes that resulted in injury. The cameras had no safety benefit at intersections that never had much of a crash problem prior to their installation, according to the study, raising questions about why they were installed in the first place.
The Tribune also found that Chicago's yellow light times are dangerously short and out of step with other major cities, citing national research and experts who said longer yellows significantly reduce crashes and red light citations.
Even before Sunday's announcement, Emanuel insisted he had reformed the program.
On the stump and during debates, the mayor has pointed out that he fired the former vendor amid Tribune reports detailing how the program was allegedly born of a $2 million bribery scheme at City Hall. He also says he has made changes to make the program more transparent, and last year he shut down cameras at 16 of the 190 camera-equipped intersections around the city.
But Emanuel's office has yet to explain the causes for dozens of wild spikes in tickets at intersections around the city that unfairly tagged tens of thousands of motorists. An inspector general's review in response to the Tribune stories was stymied by a lack of city records.
The Tribune also revealed how Emanuel's administration quietly lowered the threshold for issuing red light tickets last year, tagging drivers for an additional 77,000 citations despite the fact that yellow light times in those cases were below the federal minimum of 3 seconds. Emanuel suspended that practice following Tribune inquiries but declined to refund drivers the nearly $8 million in revenue captured by the six-month change in ticketing standards.
Asked Sunday about whether the timing of his move was geared for political advantage, Emanuel acknowledged he is open to that perception.
“I have no doubt that people are going to say that,” Emanuel said, adding that his action Sunday “is a further installment on a series of things” he has done to “right the operation.”
“It was corrupt in my view, literally from who got the contract to how it was operated,” Emanuel said. “So I will leave the questions to other people. ... I know what we have done going two and half years back.”
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Twitter @DavidKidwell1
Chicago now has a clear choice on Red Light Cameras. Chuy says he will take them down and Rahm says he will keep them.
Register by March 10 and vote April 7th to Abolish Red Light Cameras
Garcia promises to remove red light cameras on first day in office
Chicago Mayoral candidate 'Chuy' Garcia says he'll remove red light cameras if elected. (WGN Chicago)
By Juan Perez, Jr. and David KidwellClout Streetcontact the reporters
Garcia revises position, promises to remove red light cameras
"This is about safety," mayoral challenger says with promise to remove red light cameras
Mayoral challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia promised to remove the city's controversial red light cameras on his first day in office, casting the automated ticketing program as a “rip-off” effort from Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
“It’s time to end the red light rip-off,” Garcia told reporters Thursday at his campaign headquarters on the Near West Side. “No more tickets.”
However, Garcia didn't specify how the city might recoup nearly $70 million a year in lost revenue from the camera-generated tickets. Detailed plans for Chicago's finances will come next week, said Garcia, who argued that his stance on the camera program has nothing to do with the city budget.
A new Chicago Tribune study finds Chicago's red light cameras fail to deliver the major safety benefits claimed by City Hall. Here's what traffic researchers and the city's transportation commissioner say about the study.
“This is not an issue of revenue,” said Garcia, a Cook County commissioner challenging Emanuel in the April 7 runoff. “This is about safety. This is about being honest with Chicagoans that the budget isn't going to be balanced on their backs.”
Garcia’s announcement Thursday marked his latest position on the red light camera program. In December he said he “would keep only those cameras that can be fully proven to have reduced accidents. And those cameras that simply provide the city another way to pick our pockets should be shut down immediately.”
In January, Garcia signed a protest group's pledge to repeal the program. And last month he called for suspending the program while “an independent study” determines which cameras improve traffic safety.
Asked about his previous positions Thursday, Garcia replied: “What I'm saying is that we will get rid of all the red light cameras because the program is flawed. The real motivation for it has always been to raise revenue.
“We will remain open to discussions and debate and analysis about whether anything is warranted,” he added. “But they will go because Chicagoans want them gone.”
Garcia’s revised position on red light cameras is his second change of course this week. On Monday he reversed his monthslong opposition to allowing a Barack Obama presidential library to be built on city parkland.
Rahm, Chuy — tell us the truth
The city has a red light contract with Xerox State & Local Solutions that it can suspend and end for a variety of reasons, but it could still be liable for early termination fees and other compensation. Garcia said Emanuel’s administration should be responsible for escaping the contract.
“The contract will be ended,” he said. “We have a responsibility to ensure the welfare and safety of Chicagoans. Ending the red light camera program is one of those ways that we will further that cause.”
On Thursday, Emanuel’s campaign issued a statement defending the red light camera ticketing program.
“These systems, which are used in hundreds of cities around the world, save lives and keep police on the beat taking on gangs and guns rather than writing speeding tickets,” said Steve Mayberry, a spokesman for Emanuel’s campaign.
A series of Tribune reports last year have exposed the Emanuel administration’s failed oversight, unfair enforcement practices and bogus claims about safety benefits from the cameras.
Election 2015: See latest coverage
Garcia referenced a Chicago Tribune-commissioned study from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute that belied Emanuel’s claims that the more dangerous T-bone crashes are down 47 percent at red light camera intersections. The claim was based on faulty statistics and dubious science, according to national traffic safety experts.
The Tribune study found only a 15 percent reduction of T-bone crashes with injuries, offset by a 22 percent increase in rear-end crashes that resulted in injury. The cameras had no safety benefit at intersections that never had much of a crash problem before their installation, according to the study, raising questions about why they were installed in the first place.
The Tribune also found that Chicago’s yellow light times are dangerously short and out of step with those of other major cities, citing national research and experts who said longer yellows significantly reduce crashes and red light citations.
On the stump and during debates, Emanuel points out that he fired the former vendor amid Tribune reports detailing how the program was allegedly born of a $2 million bribery scheme at City Hall. The mayor also says he has instituted reforms to make the program more transparent, and shut down 32 of 384 cameras around the city.
Emanuel’s office has yet to explain the causes for dozens of wild spikes in tickets at intersections around the city that unfairly tagged tens of thousands of motorists with $100 fines — spikes that national experts say were caused by human tinkering, faulty equipment or both. An inspector general’s investigation in response to the Tribune stories was stymied by a lack of city maintenance records.
Tribune reporters Bill Ruthhart and Hal Dardick contributed.
Chicago Mayoral candidate 'Chuy' Garcia says he'll remove red light cameras if elected. (WGN Chicago)
By Juan Perez, Jr. and David KidwellClout Streetcontact the reporters
Garcia revises position, promises to remove red light cameras
"This is about safety," mayoral challenger says with promise to remove red light cameras
Mayoral challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia promised to remove the city's controversial red light cameras on his first day in office, casting the automated ticketing program as a “rip-off” effort from Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
“It’s time to end the red light rip-off,” Garcia told reporters Thursday at his campaign headquarters on the Near West Side. “No more tickets.”
However, Garcia didn't specify how the city might recoup nearly $70 million a year in lost revenue from the camera-generated tickets. Detailed plans for Chicago's finances will come next week, said Garcia, who argued that his stance on the camera program has nothing to do with the city budget.
A new Chicago Tribune study finds Chicago's red light cameras fail to deliver the major safety benefits claimed by City Hall. Here's what traffic researchers and the city's transportation commissioner say about the study.
“This is not an issue of revenue,” said Garcia, a Cook County commissioner challenging Emanuel in the April 7 runoff. “This is about safety. This is about being honest with Chicagoans that the budget isn't going to be balanced on their backs.”
Garcia’s announcement Thursday marked his latest position on the red light camera program. In December he said he “would keep only those cameras that can be fully proven to have reduced accidents. And those cameras that simply provide the city another way to pick our pockets should be shut down immediately.”
In January, Garcia signed a protest group's pledge to repeal the program. And last month he called for suspending the program while “an independent study” determines which cameras improve traffic safety.
Asked about his previous positions Thursday, Garcia replied: “What I'm saying is that we will get rid of all the red light cameras because the program is flawed. The real motivation for it has always been to raise revenue.
“We will remain open to discussions and debate and analysis about whether anything is warranted,” he added. “But they will go because Chicagoans want them gone.”
Garcia’s revised position on red light cameras is his second change of course this week. On Monday he reversed his monthslong opposition to allowing a Barack Obama presidential library to be built on city parkland.
Rahm, Chuy — tell us the truth
The city has a red light contract with Xerox State & Local Solutions that it can suspend and end for a variety of reasons, but it could still be liable for early termination fees and other compensation. Garcia said Emanuel’s administration should be responsible for escaping the contract.
“The contract will be ended,” he said. “We have a responsibility to ensure the welfare and safety of Chicagoans. Ending the red light camera program is one of those ways that we will further that cause.”
On Thursday, Emanuel’s campaign issued a statement defending the red light camera ticketing program.
“These systems, which are used in hundreds of cities around the world, save lives and keep police on the beat taking on gangs and guns rather than writing speeding tickets,” said Steve Mayberry, a spokesman for Emanuel’s campaign.
A series of Tribune reports last year have exposed the Emanuel administration’s failed oversight, unfair enforcement practices and bogus claims about safety benefits from the cameras.
Election 2015: See latest coverage
Garcia referenced a Chicago Tribune-commissioned study from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute that belied Emanuel’s claims that the more dangerous T-bone crashes are down 47 percent at red light camera intersections. The claim was based on faulty statistics and dubious science, according to national traffic safety experts.
The Tribune study found only a 15 percent reduction of T-bone crashes with injuries, offset by a 22 percent increase in rear-end crashes that resulted in injury. The cameras had no safety benefit at intersections that never had much of a crash problem before their installation, according to the study, raising questions about why they were installed in the first place.
The Tribune also found that Chicago’s yellow light times are dangerously short and out of step with those of other major cities, citing national research and experts who said longer yellows significantly reduce crashes and red light citations.
On the stump and during debates, Emanuel points out that he fired the former vendor amid Tribune reports detailing how the program was allegedly born of a $2 million bribery scheme at City Hall. The mayor also says he has instituted reforms to make the program more transparent, and shut down 32 of 384 cameras around the city.
Emanuel’s office has yet to explain the causes for dozens of wild spikes in tickets at intersections around the city that unfairly tagged tens of thousands of motorists with $100 fines — spikes that national experts say were caused by human tinkering, faulty equipment or both. An inspector general’s investigation in response to the Tribune stories was stymied by a lack of city maintenance records.
Tribune reporters Bill Ruthhart and Hal Dardick contributed.
Chicago Mayor Tied to Lobbyist for City's Red Light Camera Firm,
Review ShowsBy Matthew Cunningham-Cook @mattcunninghamc[email protected]
David Sirota @davidsirota [email protected] on
March 03 2015 1:03 PM EST
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel faces a stiff challenge in his bid for re-election, and the April 7 runoff could hinge on his support for controversial red-light cameras. The devices -- which automatically ticket cars that appear to have violated Chicago traffic laws -- have generated $500 million in revenue since they were introduced in 2002. But with the cameras often ticketing cars that only ran through yellow lights or went just a few miles per hour over the speed limit, and with a study showing the cameras deliver few safety benefits, polls show two-thirds of Chicagoans consider the camera program “a bad idea.”
Emanuel’s opponent, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, has pledged to suspend the red-light camera program if he is elected. And though one of Emanuel’s most prominent allies has called on the mayor to “rethink” the program, Emanuel steadfastly supports the cameras, saying they are “supposed to work as a deterrent" to unsafe driving.
An International Business Times review of city records shows the mayor’s support for the program may be about something more than traffic safety or generating revenue. Those records reveal just days before Emanuel awarded a lucrative red-light camera contract to Xerox State and Municipal Solutions, his former top congressional aide, John Borovicka, became a lobbyist for a government relations firm representing Xerox.
The ties run deep between Borovicka and Emanuel, who both declined IBTimes request for comment. Borovicka first began working for Emanuel in 2001, eventually serving as his campaign manager in his successful 2002 race for Congress. Borovicka served as Emanuel’s political and district director for the six years Emanuel served in Congress. Federal records also show Borovicka met with Emanuel in the White House when Emanuel was serving as President Barack Obama’s chief of staff.
According to city records, Borovicka was hired in October 2013 by John C. Corrigan & Associates as a subcontractor to lobby on the firm’s behalf. Those records show Corrigan had been hired by Xerox in February of the same year. Just 18 days after Borovicka was hired by Corrigan, the Emanuel administration gave the $44 million red-light contract to Xerox.
City documents filed by Xerox show the company paid Borovicka to lobby for the contract in October 2013. Yet in city lobbying disclosures filed by Borovicka, his arrangement with Corrigan & Associates allowed him to obscure any connection between his lobbying work and Xerox’s business with the city. Borovicka was technically a Corrigan subcontractor. As a result, his city lobbying records did not disclose any connection among himself, his employer and Xerox. He listed only the lobbying firm itself as a client -- not the firm’s underlying corporate clients. Those records do show Borovicka lobbying the mayor’s office and the city's Department of Procurement Services just before Xerox’s red-light camera contract was sealed.
“Chicago unfortunately has a pay-to-play system, which stems from a failure of political leadership to enact campaign finance reform,” said David Melton, the executive director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, a nonpartisan good-government group. “The best practices for lobbying is complete disclosure of the entity which is hiring lobbyists. Unfortunately, every time a lobbying reform passes, lobbyists find a way to skirt the requirements.”
Questions have swirled around Emanuel’s support for the red-light cameras because the system is so unpopular. In 2012, the Chicago Tribune published an investigation showing Emanuel had substantial ties to the original company, Redflex, which had been hired in 2003 to run the cameras. Soon after becoming mayor, Emanuel pushed hard to expand the program, and he has endorsed their use as a matter of law and order -- even as his own motorcade was caught running red lights. Aclose Emanuel ally was found to have received money from Redflex to promote the cameras and to hire the city employee who had managed the program for the city. That employee, John Bills, and former Reflex CEO Karen Finley were indicted for bribery. Both Bills and Finley pleaded not guilty.
Emanuel’s administration gave a six-month contract extension to Redflex in January 2013, two months before federal law enforcement officials opened a criminal investigation into the company. The administration then finalized a new contract to Xerox in October 2013 while Borovicka was a subcontractor for Xerox’s lobbying firm.
Because subcontracting arrangements obscure the links among contracts, lobbyists and public officials, the American Bar Association has called for more disclosure of such arrangements.
“Subcontracting of lobbying activities is a very prevalent industry,” said Public Citizen’s Craig Holman, whose watchdog group has pressed for stronger lobbying disclosure laws in states and cities. “Frequently, those who wish to influence public policy or the awarding of a government contract and avoid disclosure hire a ‘strategy firm’ to manage the lobbying campaign. They will employ pollsters and public relations firms to handle communications with the public, buy television, radio and print ads, all intended to influence official actions by the government -- and yet none of it [is] disclosed to the public.”
Borovicka was hired directly by Xerox State and Local Solutions in October 2014, a year after the new contract was awarded. The most recent city records show he remains on contract with the firm.
Review ShowsBy Matthew Cunningham-Cook @mattcunninghamc[email protected]
David Sirota @davidsirota [email protected] on
March 03 2015 1:03 PM EST
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel faces a stiff challenge in his bid for re-election, and the April 7 runoff could hinge on his support for controversial red-light cameras. The devices -- which automatically ticket cars that appear to have violated Chicago traffic laws -- have generated $500 million in revenue since they were introduced in 2002. But with the cameras often ticketing cars that only ran through yellow lights or went just a few miles per hour over the speed limit, and with a study showing the cameras deliver few safety benefits, polls show two-thirds of Chicagoans consider the camera program “a bad idea.”
Emanuel’s opponent, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, has pledged to suspend the red-light camera program if he is elected. And though one of Emanuel’s most prominent allies has called on the mayor to “rethink” the program, Emanuel steadfastly supports the cameras, saying they are “supposed to work as a deterrent" to unsafe driving.
An International Business Times review of city records shows the mayor’s support for the program may be about something more than traffic safety or generating revenue. Those records reveal just days before Emanuel awarded a lucrative red-light camera contract to Xerox State and Municipal Solutions, his former top congressional aide, John Borovicka, became a lobbyist for a government relations firm representing Xerox.
The ties run deep between Borovicka and Emanuel, who both declined IBTimes request for comment. Borovicka first began working for Emanuel in 2001, eventually serving as his campaign manager in his successful 2002 race for Congress. Borovicka served as Emanuel’s political and district director for the six years Emanuel served in Congress. Federal records also show Borovicka met with Emanuel in the White House when Emanuel was serving as President Barack Obama’s chief of staff.
According to city records, Borovicka was hired in October 2013 by John C. Corrigan & Associates as a subcontractor to lobby on the firm’s behalf. Those records show Corrigan had been hired by Xerox in February of the same year. Just 18 days after Borovicka was hired by Corrigan, the Emanuel administration gave the $44 million red-light contract to Xerox.
City documents filed by Xerox show the company paid Borovicka to lobby for the contract in October 2013. Yet in city lobbying disclosures filed by Borovicka, his arrangement with Corrigan & Associates allowed him to obscure any connection between his lobbying work and Xerox’s business with the city. Borovicka was technically a Corrigan subcontractor. As a result, his city lobbying records did not disclose any connection among himself, his employer and Xerox. He listed only the lobbying firm itself as a client -- not the firm’s underlying corporate clients. Those records do show Borovicka lobbying the mayor’s office and the city's Department of Procurement Services just before Xerox’s red-light camera contract was sealed.
“Chicago unfortunately has a pay-to-play system, which stems from a failure of political leadership to enact campaign finance reform,” said David Melton, the executive director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, a nonpartisan good-government group. “The best practices for lobbying is complete disclosure of the entity which is hiring lobbyists. Unfortunately, every time a lobbying reform passes, lobbyists find a way to skirt the requirements.”
Questions have swirled around Emanuel’s support for the red-light cameras because the system is so unpopular. In 2012, the Chicago Tribune published an investigation showing Emanuel had substantial ties to the original company, Redflex, which had been hired in 2003 to run the cameras. Soon after becoming mayor, Emanuel pushed hard to expand the program, and he has endorsed their use as a matter of law and order -- even as his own motorcade was caught running red lights. Aclose Emanuel ally was found to have received money from Redflex to promote the cameras and to hire the city employee who had managed the program for the city. That employee, John Bills, and former Reflex CEO Karen Finley were indicted for bribery. Both Bills and Finley pleaded not guilty.
Emanuel’s administration gave a six-month contract extension to Redflex in January 2013, two months before federal law enforcement officials opened a criminal investigation into the company. The administration then finalized a new contract to Xerox in October 2013 while Borovicka was a subcontractor for Xerox’s lobbying firm.
Because subcontracting arrangements obscure the links among contracts, lobbyists and public officials, the American Bar Association has called for more disclosure of such arrangements.
“Subcontracting of lobbying activities is a very prevalent industry,” said Public Citizen’s Craig Holman, whose watchdog group has pressed for stronger lobbying disclosure laws in states and cities. “Frequently, those who wish to influence public policy or the awarding of a government contract and avoid disclosure hire a ‘strategy firm’ to manage the lobbying campaign. They will employ pollsters and public relations firms to handle communications with the public, buy television, radio and print ads, all intended to influence official actions by the government -- and yet none of it [is] disclosed to the public.”
Borovicka was hired directly by Xerox State and Local Solutions in October 2014, a year after the new contract was awarded. The most recent city records show he remains on contract with the firm.
It just keeps getting better, on the same day February 26 The Tribune told him one of his biggest mistakes was the Red Light Cameras and Secy of State Jesse White told him if he wanted to be reelected he had better rethink those Red Light Cameras.
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February 26, 2015
The Tribune got it right in their editorial today Telling Rahm why he was in a runoff this is what they said. "One example among many, Mr. Mayor: When people learned that red light cameras were cheating them systematically, you didn't man up. You didn't take ownership. You didn't fire one bureaucrat a day until you could give Chicagoans answers about who cheated them, how. Instead you lawyered up. You stonewalled reporters. You breezily said the camera system needs fixing. Is that so. You have six weeks, Mr. Mayor, to level with us. " Yes, The Tribune got it right again and if Rahm is listening he will end this failed program or be prepared to end his political career as a one term mayor. |
February 26, 2015
Jesse White: Emanuel “Has To Rethink” Red Light Camera Program Ahead Of Runoff by Todd FeurerCHICAGO (CBS) -- Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White said, as Mayor Rahm Emanuel prepares for the runoff election in April, he might need to think White co-chairs the mayor’s re-election campaign, and he said he’s prepared to take Emanuel to black churches and community meetings so he can regain African-American votes he’s lost in his first term. “He’s gotta educate the people that he’s concerned about the future of this wonderful city, concerned about educating our youth, making sure that they get the kind of education that they deserve, and that he’s going to be more visible in the African-American community than he has thus far,” he said. White acknowledged some voters remain angry over getting tickets from red light cameras. “He has to rethink those red lights and those cameras. That’s going to be up to him,” White said. Emanuel’s opponent in the runoff, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, has called for a moratorium on red light camera tickets, and said the program should be halted until an independent study shows they improve safety. Garcia said City Hall is blind to the red light camera problems because of the money they bring in. Since 2002, they’ve generated $500 million in tickets. The red light camera program has been plagued by a string of scandals in recent years. A former top city official and the former CEO of the city’s original camera vendor have been indicted in a bribery scheme tied to the red light camera program. John Bills, a former top official at CDOT, was arrested last year for allegedly accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to steer $124 million worth of red light camera contracts to the original contractor for the program. That firm has since been booted from the program, and its former CEO, Karen Finley, has pleaded not guilty to bribing Bills. Bills’ longtime friend, 73-year-old Martin O’Malley, also has been indicted on one count of conspiracy to commit bribery, for allegedly serving as the bagman for the bribes. The program repeatedly has come under fire from the city's inspector general, who said the Chicago Department of Transportation did not keep sufficient records to back up claims the cameras have been placed at the most dangerous intersections in Chicago. The inspector general's office also found the city quietly shifted the standard for issuing red light camera tickets in February 2014, allowing violations to be issued at intersections where the yellow light time is just under the three-second federal minimum standard. That change allowed the city to issue 77,000 more tickets -- and pull in $7.7 million in extra ticket revenue -- before the city again changed the threshold back to at least 3 seconds. The Chicago Tribune also published an investigation last year, which questioned several unexplained spikes in red light camera tickets since 2007, prompting the city to offer 9,000 motorists caught during one of the spikes a second chance to contest their tickets. However, the city ultimately offered only 126 refunds, while not explaining what caused the spikes in ticketing. Meantime, a study commissioned by the Tribune found, while right-angle T-bone crashes have gone down at intersections with red light cameras since 2005, the drop is not nearly as significant as the city has claimed. The city has boasted a 47 percent reduction in right-angle crashes at intersections with red light cameras. However, the Tribune study found the city did not factor in significant changes in the way the state tracks traffic accidents, the improved safety of modern vehicles, or changes in traffic flow due to the recession. The Tribune study showed a 15 percent drop in right-angle crashes, but also a 22 percent increase in rear-end crashes, likely due to drivers slamming on their brakes to avoid a ticket. If Emanuel wants to get more than the 45 percent of the vote he got on Tuesday, White said the red light camera program will be a big issue. |
THANK YOU CHICAGO VOTERS
ANYBODY BUT RAHM went toe to toe with Rahm yesterday and the people spoke loud and clear.
Now let's get ready to rumble!
The real battle begins now.
Rahm has from now until April 7th to agree to end Traffic Photo Enforcement in Chicago or be replaced by Chuy who will.
The People Spoke Yesterday
and they will again at the
Runoff Election April 7, 2015
ANYONE BUT RAHM
A vote for anyone but Rahm is a vote to Abolish Red Light Cameras because Rahm is the only mayoral candidate who wants to keep them. Let's force a runoff February 24th and pull these cameras down.
Seeing red: Traffic cameras hot topic in Chicago mayoral race By Mary Wisniewski
February 21, 2015 12:53 PM
CHICAGO (Reuters) - It is one of the most dreaded pieces of mail in Chicago - the $100 ticket that comes after being caught by one of the city's red light or speed cameras.
Chicago is hardly the only U.S. city to install such cameras. But the cost of the tickets, and whether the scandal-plagued program makes the city's streets safer, has become a hot topic for Chicago's Feb. 24 mayoral election.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who supports the nation's largest automated camera system, is polling slightly under the 50 percent plus one vote he needs to avoid a run-off against the second-highest vote-getter. Three of the four challengers seeking to topple Emanuel say the cameras should go.
Emanuel's closest rival, Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, who is polling at about 20 percent, said he would only keep cameras that have been proven to reduce accidents.
"It's one more way Chicagoans are pickpocketed every day," said Garcia, adding that the Emanuel administration is burdening the "little guys" in neighborhoods with regressive fees and fines.
Chicago has red-light cameras at 174 intersections and 144 speed cameras near schools and parks around the city. They have brought in $500 million since 2003, according to media reports, a figure Chicago has neither confirmed nor disputed. It's over $600 million and the speed cameras started in 2013 with approval to be twice as large as RLC's
Nearly three in four Chicago voters want to eliminate or reduce the camera program, according to a January Chicago Tribune/APC research poll.
"They're certainly a widespread source of irritation and anger and will be a factor," political consultant Don Rose said.
Robert Chiarito, 40, is among the skeptics who think the cameras cause more accidents than they prevent. He said he cannot pay the $750 in red light tickets and fines he owes and as a result, will not park on Chicago streets for fear that his car will get booted.
"Do I pay these stupid tickets or pay my rent?" Chiarito asked.
SAFE OR NOT?
Red light cameras are used in over 400 U.S. communities, but studies on their effectiveness vary, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The city of Chicago's website says dangerous right-angle crashes were down 47 percent at red-light camera intersections from 2005 to 2012 and rear-end crashes declined by 7 percent.
But a Texas A&M University study commissioned by the Chicago Tribune last year found the cameras reduced right-angle crashes that caused injuries by just 15 percent, and found a 22 percent increase in the rear-end crashes that can result when drivers slam on their brakes to avoid tickets.
Joseph Hummer, a transportation expert at Wayne State University who reviewed the study, said the cameras can make intersections safer, but Chicago's program was a wash.
"They should be used cautiously, as a last resort ... because it's so drastic, it takes so much money out of the pockets of people in Chicago," he said.
But the mayor, who has paid red light camera fines incurred by his own official motorcade, has said Chicago's cameras are about safety and he has ordered the removal of cameras at 16 intersections that have seen a reduction in serious crashes.
"I want the technology to reduce traffic accidents so our police officers are free to fight crime, gangs and guns," Emanuel said during a recent mayoral debate.
The camera program also has a checkered legal history.
A federal grand jury has indicted a former city official, a former Redflex Traffic Systems Inc chief executive and a former Redflex consultant of taking part in a $2 million bribery scheme over the program.
The consultant has pleaded guilty. A unit of Xerox Corp now runs the system.
Chicago Alderman Anthony Beale believes the cameras are needed at intersections notorious for red-light running, but has proposed adding countdown signals at camera-monitored intersections to give motorists more warning. He also wants to examine the duration of yellow lights.
"Right now people have no confidence in the system," Beale said.
(Reporting by Mary Wisniewski,; additional reporting by Fiona Ortiz; editing by Jill Serjeant and G Crosse)
Aldermanic Candidates Who Have Signed Our Pledge to Abolish Red Light Cameras
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Current Aldermen
Bob Fioretti 2nd Pat Dowell 3rd Leslie Hairston 5th Roderick Sawyer 6th Anthony Beale 9th Toni Fowlkes 16th |
Aldermanic Candidates
Bita Buenrostro 2nd Stacey Pfingsten 2nd Norman Bolden 4th Tracey Bey 4th Robin Boyd Clark 5th Brian Garner 6th Keiana Barrett 7th Flora Digby 7th Tara Baldridge 8th Faheem Shabazz 8th Michael LaFargue 9th Richard Martinez 10th Olga Bautista 10th Samantha Webb 10th Frank Corona 10th Maureen Sullivan 11th Pete DeMay 12th Rafael Yanez 15th Toni Fowlkes 16th Cynthia Lomax 16th David H. Moore 17th Derrick Curtis 18th Consandra Harris 18th Doris Lewis Brooks 21st Marvin McNeil 21st Neftalie Gonzalez 22nd Raul Montes 22nd Martin Arteaga 23rd Charles M. Hughes 23rd Roger Washington 24th Byron Sigcho 25th Adam Corona 26th Bob Galhotra 29th Oddis "OJ" Johnson 29th Sean Starr 31st Irma Cornier 31st Tim Meegan 33rd Shirley White 34th Charles Thomas 34th Maretta Brown-Miller 37th Otis Percy 37th Joseph Laiacona 39th Jerry Quandt 43rd Scott Davis 44th Mark Thomas 44th Rory Fiedler 47th Connie Gates-Brown 49th Donald Gordon 49th Peter Sifnotis 50th |
1/30/15
Last week we shared with you a proposal from Transportation Committee Chairman Beale for new rules for the Red Light Camera program. Now this week Rahm is telling reporters he might be open to one of the four changes they proposed. Don't be fooled. When Rahm negotiates with Beale he is negotiating with himself. Already on the table is countdown counters, longer yellows, aldermanic oversight and a moratorium on new cameras until they could be studied and justified. Rahm should stop the roll out of Speed Cameras until the rules are clear.
Emanuel open to countdowns for red light camera intersections
Mayor Rahm Emanuel listens while other candidates debate at the Tribune editorial board. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)
By John ByrneChicago Tribunecontact the reporter
Mayor Emanuel open to countdown timers at red light intersections
Re-election-seeking Emanuel turns Thursday into Infrastructure Day
Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Thursday appeared open to the idea of adding countdown timers to let drivers know how much time is left on green lights at intersections controlled by red light cameras.
The topic came up in response to a question about what the mayor meant this week when he said he would reform the troubled and unpopular red light camera ticketing system. Emanuel offered no specifics Thursday on a timeline or where he would find the money to add the new technology at intersections across the city.
"Finally, I also think if we look at the countdown, I want to make sure we have the countdown clock throughout the system," Emanuel said. "That's another additional reform."
Last week, two aldermen introduced a plan requiring countdowns be put in at all intersections with the cameras. That came after the Tribune reported last fall that the Emanuel administration quietly issued a new, shorter yellow light standard when the city began the transition from red light camera vendor Redflex Traffic Systems to Xerox State & Local Solutions in February 2014.
The switch to a 2.9-second yellow came after the city had long set the standard length for yellow lights at three seconds. About $7.7 million in tickets were issued to motorists caught driving through signals with yellow lights that were at least 2.9 seconds long. The city later returned to a three-second yellow light standard.
Last month, the Tribune published a story in which researchers it hired to analyze the effects of the city's red light cameras found that at nearly half the intersections in the study, the cameras did nothing to make drivers safer and may have caused an increase in injury-related crashes.
A re-election-seeking Emanuel turned Thursday into an Infrastructure Day of sorts as he gave a City Club speech on the topic, announced endorsements from several unions and plans by Amtrak to spend $12 million to renovate parts of Union Station. The tightly planned series of events and announcements helps Emanuel try to keep the focus of the day on the themes he wants to discuss, forcing the other mayoral candidates to react to him.
At the City Club, Emanuel attempted to make the case that he has stanched the deterioration of Chicago's infrastructure by prioritizing long-neglected improvements to city streets and public transportation and wringing money out of Springfield and Washington, D.C., to help pay for it.
The mayor emphasized the upgrades he has made to public transit in African-American neighborhoods. He's been working to shore up African-American support heading into the Feb. 24 mayoral election, where he faces four challengers who have hit him repeatedly on what they say has been his focus on the downtown area to the exclusion of poorer outlying neighborhoods.
"We also completely rebuilt Red Line south, on time and under budget," Emanuel said, referring to work to improve the Chicago Transit Authority line that serves several neighborhoods with large African-American populations.
He also touted sewer main work and pothole filling, and talked about a playground renovation program. The mayor argued that while infrastructure work "isn't so sexy," it helps position the city for the future.
Emanuel, however, did not mention the doubling of city sewer and water rates in his first term that covered the cost of much of the recent street work.
The overflow crowd at the City Club included many city department heads, lobbyists and contractors, who laughed along with the mayor and applauded him repeatedly during the speech.
Emanuel defended the controversial plan for bus rapid transit he has proposed for portions of Ashland Avenue as a key way to improve transportation options in the city, but his talk did not include the fact that he shut down several low-ridership bus lines after taking office.
[email protected]
Mayor Rahm Emanuel listens while other candidates debate at the Tribune editorial board. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)
By John ByrneChicago Tribunecontact the reporter
Mayor Emanuel open to countdown timers at red light intersections
Re-election-seeking Emanuel turns Thursday into Infrastructure Day
Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Thursday appeared open to the idea of adding countdown timers to let drivers know how much time is left on green lights at intersections controlled by red light cameras.
The topic came up in response to a question about what the mayor meant this week when he said he would reform the troubled and unpopular red light camera ticketing system. Emanuel offered no specifics Thursday on a timeline or where he would find the money to add the new technology at intersections across the city.
"Finally, I also think if we look at the countdown, I want to make sure we have the countdown clock throughout the system," Emanuel said. "That's another additional reform."
Last week, two aldermen introduced a plan requiring countdowns be put in at all intersections with the cameras. That came after the Tribune reported last fall that the Emanuel administration quietly issued a new, shorter yellow light standard when the city began the transition from red light camera vendor Redflex Traffic Systems to Xerox State & Local Solutions in February 2014.
The switch to a 2.9-second yellow came after the city had long set the standard length for yellow lights at three seconds. About $7.7 million in tickets were issued to motorists caught driving through signals with yellow lights that were at least 2.9 seconds long. The city later returned to a three-second yellow light standard.
Last month, the Tribune published a story in which researchers it hired to analyze the effects of the city's red light cameras found that at nearly half the intersections in the study, the cameras did nothing to make drivers safer and may have caused an increase in injury-related crashes.
A re-election-seeking Emanuel turned Thursday into an Infrastructure Day of sorts as he gave a City Club speech on the topic, announced endorsements from several unions and plans by Amtrak to spend $12 million to renovate parts of Union Station. The tightly planned series of events and announcements helps Emanuel try to keep the focus of the day on the themes he wants to discuss, forcing the other mayoral candidates to react to him.
At the City Club, Emanuel attempted to make the case that he has stanched the deterioration of Chicago's infrastructure by prioritizing long-neglected improvements to city streets and public transportation and wringing money out of Springfield and Washington, D.C., to help pay for it.
The mayor emphasized the upgrades he has made to public transit in African-American neighborhoods. He's been working to shore up African-American support heading into the Feb. 24 mayoral election, where he faces four challengers who have hit him repeatedly on what they say has been his focus on the downtown area to the exclusion of poorer outlying neighborhoods.
"We also completely rebuilt Red Line south, on time and under budget," Emanuel said, referring to work to improve the Chicago Transit Authority line that serves several neighborhoods with large African-American populations.
He also touted sewer main work and pothole filling, and talked about a playground renovation program. The mayor argued that while infrastructure work "isn't so sexy," it helps position the city for the future.
Emanuel, however, did not mention the doubling of city sewer and water rates in his first term that covered the cost of much of the recent street work.
The overflow crowd at the City Club included many city department heads, lobbyists and contractors, who laughed along with the mayor and applauded him repeatedly during the speech.
Emanuel defended the controversial plan for bus rapid transit he has proposed for portions of Ashland Avenue as a key way to improve transportation options in the city, but his talk did not include the fact that he shut down several low-ridership bus lines after taking office.
[email protected]
January 24, 2014 Hot off the presses. Departing Alderman leaves council with ordinance to Abolish Traffic Photo Enforcement in Chicago and the Tribune publishes an Op Ed asking how bad voters hate the cameras and mentioning the candidates that signed our pledge. Look
Chicago's red light cameras a hot issue in mayoral, aldermanic campaigns
Scott Stantis / Chicago Tribune
How bad do Chicago voters hate those red light cameras?
Nearly 50 candidates for the Chicago City Council have signed a pledge to work for the removal of red light and speed cameras.
On Tuesday, when the Tribune hosts the first mayoral debate of the 2015 campaign, Mayor Rahm Emanuel will be the only candidate at the table defending the cameras.
This month, the Tribune Editorial Board has held dozens of spirited meetings with aldermanic candidates whose names appear on the Feb. 24 ballot. We've heard a lot about what matters to voters in their neighborhoods, from the merits of tax increment financing to the scarcity of pizza parlors in the 26th Ward. One topic that never fails to get the table rocking is the traffic camera program.
GOP lawmaker proposes statewide ban on red light cameras
A complaint we've heard often is that those $100 tickets are an unreasonable and disproportionate burden on low-income residents. They can't afford the fine. They can't afford to take a day off to fight the ticket in court. They drive around in fear that their car will be "booted" over an unpaid ticket, all because they misjudged a traffic light by a fraction of a second.
Many drivers — and candidates — suspect the cameras have been placed at intersections where they'll bring in the most money, not where there's a demonstrated danger.
A 2013 review by city Inspector General Joe Ferguson backs them up: It found no evidence to support the city's claim that the red light cameras were installed at the most dangerous intersections.
"I voted against the mayor's speed camera legislation, which was designed to generate revenue and not to protect children as it was promoted," Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd, wrote in our candidate survey. "Too many examples of where the speed cameras are located happen to be places where there are no children."
Not everyone dislikes the cameras. Among their supporters is Tom Caravette, a 38th Ward candidate who admits he's been ticketed "several" times by both the red light and speed cameras. "The traffic light camera revenues are totally voluntary," he says. "If you feel the need to run a red light, then you contribute to the fund."
Drive safely and you won't get a ticket — that was our argument for a long time, too. It's been shredded by the work of Tribune reporters David Kidwell and Alex Richards. (You can see it at chicagotribune.com/redlight.)
Kidwell and Richards have written about the mysterious spikes in tickets generated by some red light cameras, the shortened yellow light intervals that resulted in 77,000 extra violations and the city's reliance on numbers it knew were bogus to support its claim that the cameras were reducing accidents.
The Tribune paid for a scientific study that showed the red light cameras have done little to make drivers safer and may have caused an increase in injury-related crashes.
Experts consulted by the Tribune questioned the city's practice of setting the yellow light cycle on almost all of its cameras at 3 seconds, the minimum under federal guidelines, creating a hazard at intersections where drivers need more space to stop safely.
"Yellow has become the new red," mayoral hopeful William "Dock" Walls III wrote in his candidate survey, noting that drivers slam on their brakes to avoid getting tickets.
The Tribune's stories build a strong case, in the words of Holman Jenkins Jr. in The Wall Street Journal, that Chicago has been "running its camera system for profits rather than safety."
That article was headlined: Can the red light camera be saved? It's a good question.
Only a handful of incumbent aldermen have pledged to take down the cameras. Maybe it's because they voted to put them up, after being sold on the safety benefits — first by Mayor Richard Daley, then by Emanuel. Maybe it's because they recognized that the city has made a sizable investment in the cameras and can't afford to dismantle them to score political points. Maybe it's because they can't imagine how they'd replace the lost revenue: Since 2002, the cameras have generated more than $500 million.
Ald. Tom Tunney, 44th, and Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, proposed an ordinance this week designed to repair the program's credibility.
Under their plan, the city would have to hold community meetings before installing a camera, and it would have to produce traffic studies to demonstrate the safety benefit at that particular intersection. Yellow light cycles would be set at a minimum of 3.2 seconds.
The City Council would have to approve all new cameras — a provision that gives us pause. Do we really want to interject aldermanic privilege in traffic enforcement? We'd prefer a clear and transparent standard, applied uniformly. The city should spell out its criteria publicly and prioritize the placement of cameras accordingly.
The ordinance also would require all intersections equipped with cameras to have "countdown" pedestrian signals so drivers can tell how much time is left before the light changes. We like that idea a lot. Many intersections already have them, and drivers already rely on them for guidance on whether to prepare to stop. It could cost at least $15,000 per intersection to install them and would likely lead to fewer tickets, aka less revenue. But that would mean the cameras are working, right?
Ald. Mike Zalewski, 23rd, told us he got an earful from constituents after a camera went up at Archer and Narragansett avenues, a problem intersection near Midway Airport. He paid for a countdown signal with his aldermanic menu money, and now he hears few complaints. The camera is still there, doing its job. Win-win.
"Take the cameras down" is a pithy campaign slogan. Tunney and Beale deserve credit for trying to salvage the program instead. The mayor ought to work with them to make it happen.
Scott Stantis / Chicago Tribune
How bad do Chicago voters hate those red light cameras?
Nearly 50 candidates for the Chicago City Council have signed a pledge to work for the removal of red light and speed cameras.
On Tuesday, when the Tribune hosts the first mayoral debate of the 2015 campaign, Mayor Rahm Emanuel will be the only candidate at the table defending the cameras.
This month, the Tribune Editorial Board has held dozens of spirited meetings with aldermanic candidates whose names appear on the Feb. 24 ballot. We've heard a lot about what matters to voters in their neighborhoods, from the merits of tax increment financing to the scarcity of pizza parlors in the 26th Ward. One topic that never fails to get the table rocking is the traffic camera program.
GOP lawmaker proposes statewide ban on red light cameras
A complaint we've heard often is that those $100 tickets are an unreasonable and disproportionate burden on low-income residents. They can't afford the fine. They can't afford to take a day off to fight the ticket in court. They drive around in fear that their car will be "booted" over an unpaid ticket, all because they misjudged a traffic light by a fraction of a second.
Many drivers — and candidates — suspect the cameras have been placed at intersections where they'll bring in the most money, not where there's a demonstrated danger.
A 2013 review by city Inspector General Joe Ferguson backs them up: It found no evidence to support the city's claim that the red light cameras were installed at the most dangerous intersections.
"I voted against the mayor's speed camera legislation, which was designed to generate revenue and not to protect children as it was promoted," Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd, wrote in our candidate survey. "Too many examples of where the speed cameras are located happen to be places where there are no children."
Not everyone dislikes the cameras. Among their supporters is Tom Caravette, a 38th Ward candidate who admits he's been ticketed "several" times by both the red light and speed cameras. "The traffic light camera revenues are totally voluntary," he says. "If you feel the need to run a red light, then you contribute to the fund."
Drive safely and you won't get a ticket — that was our argument for a long time, too. It's been shredded by the work of Tribune reporters David Kidwell and Alex Richards. (You can see it at chicagotribune.com/redlight.)
Kidwell and Richards have written about the mysterious spikes in tickets generated by some red light cameras, the shortened yellow light intervals that resulted in 77,000 extra violations and the city's reliance on numbers it knew were bogus to support its claim that the cameras were reducing accidents.
The Tribune paid for a scientific study that showed the red light cameras have done little to make drivers safer and may have caused an increase in injury-related crashes.
Experts consulted by the Tribune questioned the city's practice of setting the yellow light cycle on almost all of its cameras at 3 seconds, the minimum under federal guidelines, creating a hazard at intersections where drivers need more space to stop safely.
"Yellow has become the new red," mayoral hopeful William "Dock" Walls III wrote in his candidate survey, noting that drivers slam on their brakes to avoid getting tickets.
The Tribune's stories build a strong case, in the words of Holman Jenkins Jr. in The Wall Street Journal, that Chicago has been "running its camera system for profits rather than safety."
That article was headlined: Can the red light camera be saved? It's a good question.
Only a handful of incumbent aldermen have pledged to take down the cameras. Maybe it's because they voted to put them up, after being sold on the safety benefits — first by Mayor Richard Daley, then by Emanuel. Maybe it's because they recognized that the city has made a sizable investment in the cameras and can't afford to dismantle them to score political points. Maybe it's because they can't imagine how they'd replace the lost revenue: Since 2002, the cameras have generated more than $500 million.
Ald. Tom Tunney, 44th, and Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, proposed an ordinance this week designed to repair the program's credibility.
Under their plan, the city would have to hold community meetings before installing a camera, and it would have to produce traffic studies to demonstrate the safety benefit at that particular intersection. Yellow light cycles would be set at a minimum of 3.2 seconds.
The City Council would have to approve all new cameras — a provision that gives us pause. Do we really want to interject aldermanic privilege in traffic enforcement? We'd prefer a clear and transparent standard, applied uniformly. The city should spell out its criteria publicly and prioritize the placement of cameras accordingly.
The ordinance also would require all intersections equipped with cameras to have "countdown" pedestrian signals so drivers can tell how much time is left before the light changes. We like that idea a lot. Many intersections already have them, and drivers already rely on them for guidance on whether to prepare to stop. It could cost at least $15,000 per intersection to install them and would likely lead to fewer tickets, aka less revenue. But that would mean the cameras are working, right?
Ald. Mike Zalewski, 23rd, told us he got an earful from constituents after a camera went up at Archer and Narragansett avenues, a problem intersection near Midway Airport. He paid for a countdown signal with his aldermanic menu money, and now he hears few complaints. The camera is still there, doing its job. Win-win.
"Take the cameras down" is a pithy campaign slogan. Tunney and Beale deserve credit for trying to salvage the program instead. The mayor ought to work with them to make it happen.
January 23, 2015 What a week it has been in Chicago for Red Light Cameras. The Councils Transportation Committee Chairman, probably under orders from Rahm, proposes new rules for the failed program while at the same time CDOT quietly installs more Speed Cameras. Then yesterday. a Republican State Representative introduced legislation to ABOLISH TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT CAMERAS in the entire state of Illinois and Ricky Hendon dropped a hilarious commercial for Willie Wilson that shows just how bad it's gotten. Listen to it below.
I know it's getting confusing but there is one thing that is clear, the people see through this scam and it cannot continue. As we sort through whether new rules or they go away all together the City Council should issue immediate instructions to CDOT to stop installing Cameras both Red Light & Speed.
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GOP files to end Red Light Cameras
January 23, 2015 A Republican state lawmaker filed legislation to outlaw traffic enforcement cameras statewide in the wake of a Tribune investigation into Chicago's controversial red light program, but it faces an uncertain future in a legislature controlled by Mayor Rahm Emanuel's Democratic allies. Rep. David McSweeney, a Barrington Hills Republican and longtime camera opponent, cited the Tribune's recent investigation showing the Chicago program failed to deliver on longtime safety claims. "It's very clear that these cameras are a way for local governments to raise money," said McSweeney, who filed the bill last week. "And obviously Rahm Emanuel has taken it to its extreme." The Emanuel administration, while acknowledging oversight failures, has defended the red light camera program as an effective deterrent to bad drivers and dangerous accidents. The bill would repeal state law that allowed Chicago to grow its red light program into the largest in the nation and also targets the mayor's new speed camera program that began rolling out last year. Any decision on whether the proposed ban gets a hearing in Springfield is firmly in the control of the Democrat majority and longtime House Speaker Michael Madigan of Chicago, who has long supported automated camera enforcement. The proposed legislation follows a series of Tribune reports that questioned City Hall's safety claims, illustrated how failed oversight led to the unfair ticketing of tens of thousands of motorists, and exposed an alleged bribery scheme involving a Madigan patronage worker and precinct captain who long oversaw the Chicago red light camera program. McSweeney said he had not yet discussed the proposed legislation with Madigan or the Democratic leadership in the House. "At the end of the day, it's important that we have debate on this issue, that we get a vote on the floor and hopefully ban these cameras," said McSweeney, who added that Sen. Dan Duffy, R-Lake Barrington, is ready to sponsor the legislation in the Senate. "I am sure I will have a discussion with Speaker Madigan about it very soon." Since its inception in 2002, Chicago's red light camera program has grown to more than 350 cameras that have generated more than $500 million in revenue for the cash-starved city. Last year, a federal grand jury indicted the former CEO of the city's longtime vendor Redflex Traffic Systems, the longtime city manager who oversaw the program, John Bills, and a longtime Bills friend who has pleaded guilty to charges he acted as the bagman for up to $2 million in bribes. In December, the Tribune published the results of a scientific study of the safety effects of the camera system. The study, the first of its kind ever done on Chicago's program, debunked Emanuel's claims of a 47 percent drop in dangerous T-bone crashes at red light cameras. It found a 15 percent reduction in such crashes but revealed that the cameras likely caused more injury crashes overall than they prevented. Two key City Council members on Wednesday filed a proposed ordinance to curtail the use of red light cameras. It would require safety studies at each new intersection and longer yellow light times throughout the city. The Tribune reported last month that Chicago's yellow light intervals are dangerously short and out of step with national standards. [email protected] |
Key to Marital Happiness?
'Dump Rahm,' Says Wilson Radio Spot By Ted Cox on January 22, 2015 5:43pm | Updated on January 22, 2015 6:39pm @tedcoxchicago Mayoral candidate Willie Wilson is less than committed to his own humorous radio ads. NEW EAST SIDE — A couple fights over red-light tickets until they agree to "dump Rahm and stay together," in a radio ad promoting the mayoral candidacy of Willie Wilson. In the comical radio spot airing on city stations, a man admits, "I just got a red-light ticket." "What!?" says a woman, until she admits, "I got one yesterday. I just didn't want to tell you." "I want a divorce," says the man. "I want a new mayor," responds the woman, and they go back and forth until she suggests, "Let's just dump Rahm and stay together," to which the man agrees. When asked about the ad Thursday, Wilson was less than committed to it and credited his campaign backer, former state senator Rickey Hendon, instead. Hendon has already drawn media attention this week for another ad in which he says, "It's time for an enema in the black community" and urges voters to "go ahead and flush the toilet" and "get rid of these sorry aldermen" who are Mayor Rahm Emanuel's City Council allies. "He's independent to do what he wants to do," Wilson said after a news conference Thursday at his Wacker Drive penthouse apartment. "He has that right. I don't try to control anybody else, what they do or say. Rickey is his own person. "It's not about me," Wilson added. "It's about his own thing." Still, the ad on red-light cameras with the couple does say it's paid for by Friends of Willie Wilson, his campaign fundraising organization, and Wilson does say he approved it. In December, according to state campaign finance records, Wilson's campaign paid Ricky Hendon Promotion more than $54,000 for services, including campaign and field work and consulting. The red-light cameras already have proved to be a campaign issue for fellow mayoral opponents Ald. Bob Fioretti (2nd) and Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia (D-Chicago). The mayor's campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment. |
1/22/15 Chairman of the Transportation Committee calls for new Red Light Camera Rules as CDOT quietly rolls out new Speed Cameras in Chicago.
After years of being told there was nothing wrong and the program was fair, Chairman Beale is proposing that the City Council impose new rules to protect the citizens from the out of control mismanaged Red Light Camera program.
It's a good start but the first thing that needs to be done is a moratorium on the roll out of any new cameras because while offering to stop Red Light Camera sounds good it means nothing. There are no new Red Light Cameras planned but there are over 200 more Speed Cameras planned and that program is as flawed.
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City officials would have to hold community meetings and provide evidence that red light ticket cameras would make specific intersections safer before they could install the devices going forward under a plan that also would establish standard lengths for yellow lights across Chicago.
Ald. Tom Tunney, 44th, and Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, want to require that all intersections in the city equipped with the cameras have so-called "countdown" pedestrian-control signals so people driving toward a green light could see how many seconds are left before it changes. The proposal would set yellow light lengths of at least 3.2 seconds. And it would require City Council approval of each camera location, giving aldermen who don't want the cameras in their neighborhoods a measure of say-so. In addition, city officials would need to produce traffic studies estimating the safety impact of the cameras at intersections where they want to put them. "We want to make sure red light camera installations are for public safety, and not the perceived revenue issues they have been," Tunney said. Mayor Rahm Emanuel said he had not seen the ordinance, and he declined comment Wednesday on whether he thinks the proposed changes to the red light camera program are a good idea. If Emanuel doesn't back the plan, it has little chance of success. The move comes after the Chicago Tribune reported last fall that the Emanuel administration quietly issued a new, shorter yellow light standard when the city began the transition from red light camera vendor Redflex Traffic Systems to Xerox State & Local Solutions in February 2014. The switch to a 2.9-second yellow came after the city had long set the standard length for yellow lights at three seconds. Around $7.7 million in tickets were issued to motorists caught driving through signals with yellow lights that were at least 2.9 seconds long. The city later returned to a three-second yellow light standard. Last month, the Tribune published a story in which researchers it hired to analyze the effects of the city's red light cameras found that at nearly half the intersections in the study, the cameras did nothing to make drivers safer and may have caused an increase in injury-related crashes. "In order to put these in, we want to make sure we've done the right due diligence as far as the community's concerned and the intersections are concerned," Tunney said. "Because the data seems to be conflicting at times, based on some of the Tribune analysis. So we want to make sure there's a thorough study, make sure it's before they're put in, and not done afterward. And then we also want to make sure the alderman has control over their intersections, because it's our constituents that we have to respond to." |
Automated Speed Enforcement Cameras to Issue Warnings in Children's Safety Zone near St. Gall Elementary School Warnings for speeding will begin to be issued this week from newly installed Automated Speed Enforcement (ASE) cameras in the Children’s Safety Zones around St. Gall Elementary School in the Gage Park neighborhood.
On Wednesday, January 7th, the newly installed ASE cameras around the school at 5532 S. Kedzie Ave., 3212 and 3217 W. 55th St. will begin to issue warnings for a 30-day period. Only warnings are issued for the first 30 days after cameras are activated in a safety zone. The first time a vehicle owner is eligible to receive an enforceable violation, they will instead receive a warning. Per city ordinance, fines for violations are $35 for vehicles traveling 6-10 miles per hour over the posted speed limit while in a safety zone, and $100 for vehicles traveling 11 or more miles over the posted speed limit. The City is currently only issuing tickets for speeders going 10 or more miles per hour over the posted speed limit. The City ordinance establishing the program narrows the hours and locations of enforcement that are allowed under state law, and provides for the following: • The enforcement hours will be limited from 7 am to 7 pm in safety zones around schools on school days (Monday through Friday) o 7 am to 4 pm: 20 mph speed limit when children are present; the posted speed limit when no children are present o 4 pm to 7 pm: to the posted speed limit |
Chicago Aldermen and Candidates who have signed the pledge agreeing to work to Abolish Red Light and Speed Cameras.
Candidates who attended the rally at the Billy Goat
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Current Aldermen
Bob Fioretti 2nd Pat Dowell 3rd Leslie Hairston 5th Roderick Sawyer 6th Anthony Beale 9th Toni Fowlkes 16th 
Mayoral Candidates Denounce Red Light Camera Program At West Side Forum
January 10, 2015 1:35 PM CHICAGO (CBS) — The nation’s largest red light camera program, which has been discredited as being more about revenue than safety, came under heavy fire Saturday at a candidates’ forum on the West Side. WBBM’s Mike Krauser reports at the Billy Goat Tavern on West Madison Street the group Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras held a forum drawing those who would be mayor and aldermen who pledge to work to abolish the cameras. “You have people in government , the mayor, you have people from the City Department of Transportation who have lied to you,” said Mark Wallace, the leader of the group. Mayoral candidates Alderman Bob Fioretti, William “Dock” Walls and Jesus “Chuy” Garcia are all on board. “If it was here for safety, it would be one thing, but it is here for revenue,” said Fioretti. “I support giving back that $7.7 million to those persons who were wrongfully ticketed by short-yellow cameras,” Walls said. Garcia said he will, “advocate legislation to repeal” the program. There are more than 350 red light cameras in the city that have generated a half billion dollars since 2002. Studies commissioned by the Tribune have found rear-end collisions have increased, sometimes as people try to beat shortened yellow lights. Lawsuit demands millions in refunds for speed cam tickets illegally issued on non-school days Posted: 01/09/2015, 12:26pm | Fran Spielman
Speed camera on Foster near Gompers Park. | Stefano Esposito/Sun-Times Chicago could be forced to refund millions of dollars in speed camera tickets issued during “non-school days,” under a class-action lawsuit that accuses City Hall of violating state law. The previously undisclosed lawsuit, quietly filed on Halloween night in Cook County Circuit Court, accuses Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration of thumbing its nose at a state law that paved the way for Chicago to install speed cameras around schools and parks. The statute clearly states, “Violations shall be recorded, only on school days.” In spite of that language, plaintiffs’ attorney Jacie Zolna said the city issued more than 34,000 tickets at 58 locations during July and August alone. Additional tickets were issued during Thanksgiving break, when school was not in session. The pattern was probably repeated during Christmas break, although those violations have not been posted on the city’s website. Zolna represents the only named plaintiff in the case. Ken Maschek was slapped with and paid a $100 ticket on June, 26, 2014 on a day when school was not in session. He was allegedly driving 41 m.p.h. in a 30-m.p.h. zone near Lane Tech High School. But the lawsuit demands that the cash-strapped city refund all fines similarly-paid by motorists ticketed during non-school days. Since motorists get off with a warning after the first violation, motorists subsequently ticketed could also be due refunds. “The city had no power under the state constitution to be enforcing those speed cameras during the times they were. We’re asking the city to void all of those illegal tickets and warnings and refund the money,” Zolna said Friday. “They’re trying to run these things as often as they can to collect as much money as they can.” Law Department spokesman John Holden had no immediate comment about the lawsuit. In its motion to dismiss, the city has argued that, since there were some classes held during the summer, those days count as school days and that, therefore, speed camera violations were permitted. Zolna scoffed at the city’s argument. “Everyone knows what a school day is. Go to bed early. It’s a school day tomorrow. It’s a day when classes are held and all students are there,” he said. Chicago’s first speed camera went live at a school on Nov.25, 2013. As of July 3, 2014, the city had issued 230,000 tickets at 51 safety zones around schools and parks and 1.25 million warnings. Chicago now has 132 speed cameras at 60 safety zones, some of them with more than one camera. Emanuel has insisted that the controversial program is about children’s safety — not about raising money. |
Aldermanic Candidates
Bita Buenrostro 2nd Stacey Pfingsten 2nd Norman Bolden 4th Tracey Bey 4th Robin Boyd Clark 5th Brian Garner 6th Keiana Barrett 7th Flora Digby 7th Tara Baldridge 8th Faheem Shabazz 8th Michael LaFargue 9th Richard Martinez 10th Olga Bautista 10th Samantha Webb 10th Frank Corona 10th Maureen Sullivan 11th Pete DeMay 12th Rafael Yanez 15th Toni Fowlkes 16th Cynthia Lomax 16th David H. Moore 17th Derrick Curtis 18th Consandra Harris 18th Doris Lewis Brooks 21st Marvin McNeil 21st Neftalie Gonzalez 22nd Raul Montes 22nd Martin Arteaga 23rd Charles M. Hughes 23rd Roger Washington 24th Byron Sigcho 25th Adam Corona 26th Bob Galhotra 29th Oddis "OJ" Johnson 29th Sean Starr 31st Irma Cornier 31st Tim Meegan 33rd Shirley White 34th Charles Thomas 34th Maretta Brown-Miller 37th Otis Percy 37th Joseph Laiacona 39th Jerry Quandt 43rd Scott Davis 44th Mark Thomas 44th Rory Fiedler 47th Connie Gates-Brown 49th Donald Gordon 49th Peter Sifnotis 50th Mayoral Candidates Frederick Collins Mayor Bob Fioretti Mayor Bill "Dock" Walls Mayor Jesus "Chuy" Garcia Mayor Watch this video for a good explanation from "The Young Turks" on how Rahm "stole" $7,700,000 from the citizens of Chicago and even after getting caught kept the money. |
TRIBUNE WATCHDOG
CITY COLLECTS $140 MILLION AT QUESTIONABLE CAMERAS
Study: No safety benefit for many red light devices that pop up at low-injury crash sites
By David Kidwell and Alex Richards Tribune reporters
Nearly half of the Chicago red light cameras included in a new Tribune study did nothing to make drivers safer and may have caused an increase in injury-related crashes.
Researchers hired by the Tribune to analyze the effects of the city’s cameras said the finding involved 43 of the 90 camera intersections in the study — the ones that averaged fewer than four injury crashes a year before red light cameras were installed.
The small number of total crashes makes it difficult to know for certain whether the cameras were to blame for the increases, but the scientists from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute said they are confident in their conclusion that the cameras offered no safety benefit at those intersections.
“Over four (injury crashes per year) you see a benefit, but less than four you don’t see that benefit,” said researcher Srinivas Geedipally, who co-wrote the study with professor Dominique Lord. “So is it worth putting the cameras at those locations?
“That’s a question you may want to ask the mayor.”
A Tribune review of state accident data showed there are 73 such intersections that averaged fewer than four injury crashes a year before getting red light cameras, suggesting the cameras may have provided no benefit or even increased injury crashes.
Cameras at those intersections have generated more than $140 million in ticket revenue for the city, the Tribune found.
The findings raise new questions about whether the cameras deployed by the city are making the streets safer, as city officials have contended, and whether they are being installed in the right locations.
As the Tribune reported Sunday, the new study also concluded that red light cameras in general have not reduced injury-related crashes at the Chicago intersections where they were installed. The cameras reduced right-angle “T-bone” crashes by 15 percent but increased rear-end collisions by 22 percent, the study found.
City officials have said red light cameras were placed at intersections with high crash rates. But Chicago’s inspector general, who has tried to document how the red light program grew from a tiny trial project in 2002 to a 350-camera network, reported last year that no records exist to prove that contention.
Federal prosecutors have offered up another explanation in the form of a recent plea agreement from the bagman in a $2 million cameras-for-cash scandal that has rocked City Hall. The convicted bagman admitted in court papers Dec. 10 that he passed along a fortune in bribes to a key city traffic manager, including a $1,500-per-camera commission. The more cameras installed, the wealthier the men became, prosecutors allege.
The $2 million bribery conspiracy is staggering even by Chicago’s corruption standards, as are the financial stakes for the city and for Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., which was fired by Mayor Rahm Emanuel amid the scandal.
The company earned more than $124 million from its Chicago contracts; the city has collected more than $500 million in camera-generated revenue for its cash-strapped budgets.
Since exposing the first inklings of scandal in the program more than two years ago, the Tribune has sought to explain the implications of a traffic program unlike any other in the nation — its origins, its operations and its effects on Chicago drivers. The Tribune has uncovered a program that runs counter to prevailing transportation wisdom, that has tagged thousands of drivers unfairly and that has fallen dramatically short of providing the safety benefits that two mayors have long stood behind.
The Tribune-commissioned study determined that cameras are responsible for just a 15 percent reduction in right-angle crashes that caused injuries, the often dangerous collisions known as “T-bones.” At the same time, the study documented a corresponding 22 percent increase in rear-end crashes that caused injuries.
Those findings undercut claims by the Emanuel administration of a 47 percent reduction in T-bone crashes and a smaller reduction in rear-end crashes.
Diving deeper into the data, the researchers then looked specifically at the dozens of intersections in the study where crash numbers were low before cameras were installed. They found no decrease in injury-causing crashes of any type at those locations. In fact, they found such accidents increased after the cameras were installed, though the small number of crashes makes it difficult to know whether the cameras were to blame.
The research was conducted on 90 Chicago camera intersections and a control group of 59 similar intersections that have never had cameras.
A Tribune examination of the entire camera system found 73 of 190 camera intersections during the study period — nearly 40 percent — averaged fewer than four injury crashes a year before the cameras went up.
Joseph Schofer, an associate dean at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and traffic expert used by the city of Chicago, said the study supports “the notion that good results come where you put the (cameras) in places where there is a large crash experience related to running red lights — where there is a problem.
“If you put them where there isn’t a problem, the results are inverted,” he said. “Life is like that: Deliver the medicine where the hurt is; if you put it where the hurt is not, expect to make things worse.”
Chicago Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld promised to take the Tribune’s findings under consideration but said the Emanuel administration has already begun to overhaul the problem-laden red light camera program it inherited. She said the office now conducts annual reviews of the program’s effectiveness that have already led to the removal of 32 cameras at 16 intersections throughout the city. That includes a handful of cameras among the 73 with the low annual injury crashes.
“This is an interesting subset,” she said during a recent interview at City Hall. “What is happening at those locations where we are not seeing a marked change? Are there other changes in the statistics?
“We will be considering the performance of the entire program, of all the locations in the program as part of our annual review and part of the potential decommissioning of cameras.”
Neither Scheinfeld nor any of the top management of CDOT was around when the red light camera program blossomed and offered little insight into how intersections were chosen.
But Deputy Director David Zavattero said in a recent interview that he helped build a list of top crash intersections in 2006 that was designed to aid the selection of red light camera locations. He said he had no role in actually choosing the intersections or in how the list he developed was used.
“That was more a budgetary question of what was available resources to install these cameras,” Zavattero said. “These were expensive cameras to install.”
In a 2013 examination of the camera program, the inspector general found that only 42 percent of the cameras installed were on the list of top crash intersections and questioned whether it was used as the basis of site selection.
“It’s troubling that CDOT cannot produce documentation or an analysis demonstrating how each camera location was chosen, including all of those currently in operation,” the inspector general wrote. “The majority of these camera location decisions were made five or more years ago, when virtually none of CDOT’s current leadership was involved with the program. However, cameras installed years ago are still in operation today and have been throughout the two-year tenure of CDOT’s current leadership.”
Scheinfeld told the Tribune the city is improving its oversight.
“The past management of this program was unacceptable, and we have instituted a lot of reforms in less than 12 months to make sure that we have stricter management and stronger performance,” she said.
Experts familiar with Chicago’s camera program said the city needs to do more.
Joseph Hummer, chairman of the civil and environmental engineering department at Wayne State University, said the Tribune findings suggest a serious lack of professional analysis and oversight in Chicago’s program.
“They need to reimagine the entire program and do it well,” he said. “Do it right this time.”
Improvements to the program won’t necessarily make it more popular with drivers, whether it’s those who get $100 tickets or people like Jeanette Chat-man, who blames her rear-end accident on a camera.
Chatman, 57, was on her way to her job as a pharmacy technician in July 2010 when her car was hit from behind by a pickup truck at the corner of Halsted and 95th streets.
“I’ve had back and neck pain ever since,” said Chat-man, who was taken by ambulance to the hospital with minor injuries. “I know for a fact it was the camera because I was stopping to make sure I didn’t get a ticket.”
According to the Chicago police report, Chatman “stopped abruptly” and was hit from the rear by Michael Shannon, 42, of Merrillville, Ind. The report indicates he was ticketed for the accident.
“Of course it was the red light camera, but I am from Indiana, so I had no idea when it was happening,” Shannon said. “The light was turning yellow, and all the sudden she speeds up, so I decide to go with her, and then she slams on her brakes.
“I had no idea why she would do that, until later all the people at the bus stop who saw were telling me about the cameras. They were all laughing about it. And I look up and sure enough there’s these big black boxes up there.”
Shannon noted that Chicago stoplights have built-in delays when traffic signals are red in all directions to lessen the chances of drivers making bad choices that lead to accidents.
“And then they put those cameras up, and it changes everything,” he said.[email protected] [email protected]
BRIAN CASSELLA/CHICAGO TRIBUNE A sign informs drivers of a red light camera at Halsted and 63rd streets. Researchers question the safety benefits of the cameras.
BRIAN CASSELLA/CHICAGO TRIBUNE Vehicles pass through a red light camera intersection at Pulaski Road and North Avenue. The city says it’s reviewing the problem-laden camera program.
CITY COLLECTS $140 MILLION AT QUESTIONABLE CAMERAS
Study: No safety benefit for many red light devices that pop up at low-injury crash sites
By David Kidwell and Alex Richards Tribune reporters
Nearly half of the Chicago red light cameras included in a new Tribune study did nothing to make drivers safer and may have caused an increase in injury-related crashes.
Researchers hired by the Tribune to analyze the effects of the city’s cameras said the finding involved 43 of the 90 camera intersections in the study — the ones that averaged fewer than four injury crashes a year before red light cameras were installed.
The small number of total crashes makes it difficult to know for certain whether the cameras were to blame for the increases, but the scientists from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute said they are confident in their conclusion that the cameras offered no safety benefit at those intersections.
“Over four (injury crashes per year) you see a benefit, but less than four you don’t see that benefit,” said researcher Srinivas Geedipally, who co-wrote the study with professor Dominique Lord. “So is it worth putting the cameras at those locations?
“That’s a question you may want to ask the mayor.”
A Tribune review of state accident data showed there are 73 such intersections that averaged fewer than four injury crashes a year before getting red light cameras, suggesting the cameras may have provided no benefit or even increased injury crashes.
Cameras at those intersections have generated more than $140 million in ticket revenue for the city, the Tribune found.
The findings raise new questions about whether the cameras deployed by the city are making the streets safer, as city officials have contended, and whether they are being installed in the right locations.
As the Tribune reported Sunday, the new study also concluded that red light cameras in general have not reduced injury-related crashes at the Chicago intersections where they were installed. The cameras reduced right-angle “T-bone” crashes by 15 percent but increased rear-end collisions by 22 percent, the study found.
City officials have said red light cameras were placed at intersections with high crash rates. But Chicago’s inspector general, who has tried to document how the red light program grew from a tiny trial project in 2002 to a 350-camera network, reported last year that no records exist to prove that contention.
Federal prosecutors have offered up another explanation in the form of a recent plea agreement from the bagman in a $2 million cameras-for-cash scandal that has rocked City Hall. The convicted bagman admitted in court papers Dec. 10 that he passed along a fortune in bribes to a key city traffic manager, including a $1,500-per-camera commission. The more cameras installed, the wealthier the men became, prosecutors allege.
The $2 million bribery conspiracy is staggering even by Chicago’s corruption standards, as are the financial stakes for the city and for Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., which was fired by Mayor Rahm Emanuel amid the scandal.
The company earned more than $124 million from its Chicago contracts; the city has collected more than $500 million in camera-generated revenue for its cash-strapped budgets.
Since exposing the first inklings of scandal in the program more than two years ago, the Tribune has sought to explain the implications of a traffic program unlike any other in the nation — its origins, its operations and its effects on Chicago drivers. The Tribune has uncovered a program that runs counter to prevailing transportation wisdom, that has tagged thousands of drivers unfairly and that has fallen dramatically short of providing the safety benefits that two mayors have long stood behind.
The Tribune-commissioned study determined that cameras are responsible for just a 15 percent reduction in right-angle crashes that caused injuries, the often dangerous collisions known as “T-bones.” At the same time, the study documented a corresponding 22 percent increase in rear-end crashes that caused injuries.
Those findings undercut claims by the Emanuel administration of a 47 percent reduction in T-bone crashes and a smaller reduction in rear-end crashes.
Diving deeper into the data, the researchers then looked specifically at the dozens of intersections in the study where crash numbers were low before cameras were installed. They found no decrease in injury-causing crashes of any type at those locations. In fact, they found such accidents increased after the cameras were installed, though the small number of crashes makes it difficult to know whether the cameras were to blame.
The research was conducted on 90 Chicago camera intersections and a control group of 59 similar intersections that have never had cameras.
A Tribune examination of the entire camera system found 73 of 190 camera intersections during the study period — nearly 40 percent — averaged fewer than four injury crashes a year before the cameras went up.
Joseph Schofer, an associate dean at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and traffic expert used by the city of Chicago, said the study supports “the notion that good results come where you put the (cameras) in places where there is a large crash experience related to running red lights — where there is a problem.
“If you put them where there isn’t a problem, the results are inverted,” he said. “Life is like that: Deliver the medicine where the hurt is; if you put it where the hurt is not, expect to make things worse.”
Chicago Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld promised to take the Tribune’s findings under consideration but said the Emanuel administration has already begun to overhaul the problem-laden red light camera program it inherited. She said the office now conducts annual reviews of the program’s effectiveness that have already led to the removal of 32 cameras at 16 intersections throughout the city. That includes a handful of cameras among the 73 with the low annual injury crashes.
“This is an interesting subset,” she said during a recent interview at City Hall. “What is happening at those locations where we are not seeing a marked change? Are there other changes in the statistics?
“We will be considering the performance of the entire program, of all the locations in the program as part of our annual review and part of the potential decommissioning of cameras.”
Neither Scheinfeld nor any of the top management of CDOT was around when the red light camera program blossomed and offered little insight into how intersections were chosen.
But Deputy Director David Zavattero said in a recent interview that he helped build a list of top crash intersections in 2006 that was designed to aid the selection of red light camera locations. He said he had no role in actually choosing the intersections or in how the list he developed was used.
“That was more a budgetary question of what was available resources to install these cameras,” Zavattero said. “These were expensive cameras to install.”
In a 2013 examination of the camera program, the inspector general found that only 42 percent of the cameras installed were on the list of top crash intersections and questioned whether it was used as the basis of site selection.
“It’s troubling that CDOT cannot produce documentation or an analysis demonstrating how each camera location was chosen, including all of those currently in operation,” the inspector general wrote. “The majority of these camera location decisions were made five or more years ago, when virtually none of CDOT’s current leadership was involved with the program. However, cameras installed years ago are still in operation today and have been throughout the two-year tenure of CDOT’s current leadership.”
Scheinfeld told the Tribune the city is improving its oversight.
“The past management of this program was unacceptable, and we have instituted a lot of reforms in less than 12 months to make sure that we have stricter management and stronger performance,” she said.
Experts familiar with Chicago’s camera program said the city needs to do more.
Joseph Hummer, chairman of the civil and environmental engineering department at Wayne State University, said the Tribune findings suggest a serious lack of professional analysis and oversight in Chicago’s program.
“They need to reimagine the entire program and do it well,” he said. “Do it right this time.”
Improvements to the program won’t necessarily make it more popular with drivers, whether it’s those who get $100 tickets or people like Jeanette Chat-man, who blames her rear-end accident on a camera.
Chatman, 57, was on her way to her job as a pharmacy technician in July 2010 when her car was hit from behind by a pickup truck at the corner of Halsted and 95th streets.
“I’ve had back and neck pain ever since,” said Chat-man, who was taken by ambulance to the hospital with minor injuries. “I know for a fact it was the camera because I was stopping to make sure I didn’t get a ticket.”
According to the Chicago police report, Chatman “stopped abruptly” and was hit from the rear by Michael Shannon, 42, of Merrillville, Ind. The report indicates he was ticketed for the accident.
“Of course it was the red light camera, but I am from Indiana, so I had no idea when it was happening,” Shannon said. “The light was turning yellow, and all the sudden she speeds up, so I decide to go with her, and then she slams on her brakes.
“I had no idea why she would do that, until later all the people at the bus stop who saw were telling me about the cameras. They were all laughing about it. And I look up and sure enough there’s these big black boxes up there.”
Shannon noted that Chicago stoplights have built-in delays when traffic signals are red in all directions to lessen the chances of drivers making bad choices that lead to accidents.
“And then they put those cameras up, and it changes everything,” he said.[email protected] [email protected]
BRIAN CASSELLA/CHICAGO TRIBUNE A sign informs drivers of a red light camera at Halsted and 63rd streets. Researchers question the safety benefits of the cameras.
BRIAN CASSELLA/CHICAGO TRIBUNE Vehicles pass through a red light camera intersection at Pulaski Road and North Avenue. The city says it’s reviewing the problem-laden camera program.
Tribune study: Chicago red light cameras provide few safety benefits
By David Kidwell and Alex Richards
Chicago Tribune
DECEMBER 19, 2014, 8:17 AM
Chicago's red light cameras fail to deliver the dramatic safety benefits long claimed by City Hall, according to
a firstever scientific study that found the nation's largest camera program is responsible for increasing
some types of injury crashes while decreasing others.
The stateoftheart study commissioned by the Tribune concluded the cameras do not reduce injuryrelated
crashes overall — undercutting Mayor Rahm Emanuel's primary defense of a program beset by mismanagement,
malfunction and a $2 million bribery scandal.
Emanuel has credited the cameras for a 47 percent reduction in dangerous rightangle, or "Tbone," crashes. But
the Tribune study, which accounted for declining accident rates in recent years as well as other confounding
factors, found cameras reduced rightangle crashes that caused injuries by just 15 percent.
At the same time, the study calculated a corresponding 22 percent increase in rearend crashes that caused
injuries, illustrating a tradeoff between the cameras' costs and benefits.
A new Chicago Tribune study finds Chicago's red light cameras fail to deliver the major safety benefits claimed by City
Hall. Here's what traffic researchers and the city's transportation commissioner say about the study.The researchers also determined there is no safety benefit from cameras installed at intersections where there have
been few crashes with injuries. Such accidents actually increased at those intersections after cameras went in, the
study found, though the small number of crashes makes it difficult to determine whether the cameras were to
blame.
The finding raises questions about why the city installed cameras in so many places where injurycausing crashes
were rare — nearly 40 percent of the 190 intersections that had cameras through 2012, the Tribune found.
"The biggest takeaway is that overall (the program) seems to have had little effect," said Dominique Lord, an
associate professor at Texas A&M University's Zachry Department of Civil Engineering who led the Tribune's
study.
"So the question now is: If we eliminate a certain type of collision and increase the other and overall it stays the
same, is there an argument that it is fair to go with the program?" Lord said. "That is a question thatI cannot
answer.
"Just the elected officials can answer for that."
Emanuel declined interview requests. His top transportation experts acknowledged flaws in the city's statistics but
said the Tribune study reinforces their own conclusion that cameras are helping.
Chicago Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld said the city has never attempted a deep examination
of the effectiveness of the largest automated enforcement program in the country, which has grown to more than
350 red light cameras and raised more than $500 million in $100 tickets since 2002. She said the Emanuel
administration, now in its fourth year, is attempting to fix a longstanding lack of oversight.
"So certainly, the study presents an interesting argument, something that we will be considering moving forward,"
Scheinfeld said. "But the fact is, the important thing I want to make sure that we get across here is that there are
less deaths out there, there are less injuries out there and we are very encouraged by that."
Several national traffic experts consulted by the Tribune called the study a valid examination that largely mirrors
the results of similar scientific efforts conducted around the country that found moderate decreases in Tbone
crashes coupled with increases in rearenders as drivers hit the brakes to avoid cameragenerated tickets.
The study findings also dovetail with the Tribune's examination of how short yellow light times at Chicago's traffic
signals raise the stakes for drivers.
Prompted by Tribune reporting, Emanuel officials recently admitted to the city inspector general that they had
quietly dropped the threshold for what constitutes a red light camera ticket, allowing the tickets even when
cameras showed a yellow light time just under the threesecond federal minimum standard. That shift earlier this
year snared 77,000 more drivers and $7.7 million in ticket revenue before the city agreed to change the threshold
back.
Now the Tribune has learned that Chicago's longstanding reliance on using the lowest possible yellow light time
under federal guidelines is out of step with other major cities in the country and a growing body of research that
suggests short yellows and red light cameras are a dangerous combination.
"Of course that is going to lead to more accidents, especially rearend accidents," said Timothy Gates, a Wayne
State University associate engineering professor whose research is being used to set new nationwide guidelines
calling for longer yellow lights.As recently as October, transportation chief Scheinfeld appeared before a City Council hearing to defend the red
light camera program armed with poster boards boasting a 47 percent reduction in rightangle crashes at cameraequipped
intersections and a 22 percent drop in all types of injury crashes.
Those numbers are from a report on the city's website with a list of crash statistics at each of the red light camera
intersections from 2005 and from 2012.
"Since being launched more than a decade ago, the red light camera program has been a critical part of our efforts
to improve the safety of our streets," Scheinfeld told the assembled aldermen. "The most recent crash statistics
available from the state show that at intersections with red light cameras, the number of dangerous Tbone, angle
crashes decreased by 47 percent between 2005 and 2012."
Given those numbers, the effectiveness of red light cameras would be difficult to dispute. But a halfdozen traffic
engineering experts interviewed by the Tribune all agree that simple beforeandafter comparison is not an
effective measure. It doesn't account for changes in traffic flow because of the economic recession, or the improved
safety of automobiles or any number of factors that have brought down crash numbers throughout the nation.
And most important, experts say, it doesn't account for any significant changes in the way accidents are reported
to state transportation officials.
For instance, in 2009 the Illinois Department of Transportation changed the threshold for reporting property
damage accidents to $1,500 in damage from $500, a rule change that prompted accident reports statewide to
plummet by nearly 30 percent. That change alone renders the city's safety claims invalid, experts say.
"The city's study is worthless, making no adjustments for any potential bias," said Joseph Hummer, professor and
chairman of civil and environmental engineering at Wayne State in Detroit. He also noted that, for some sites, the
city used 2005 data in the "before" section of its analysis even though the cameras had been installed there in 2003
and 2004.
Scheinfeld said in an interview last week that the city's safety claims are based on "more basic," nonscientific
comparisons of crash statistics. She said the state transportation department statistics are "still the best
information that we have, and we acknowledge they have made that change in their reporting methodology, and it
would have some impact on those numbers, but we don't know exactly what impact."
Scheinfeld said she was aware of the flaw in the data when she presented the city's safety claims to aldermen. The
47 percent figure was still posted on the city's red light camera Web page at publication time for this report, but
after talking to the Tribune, officials added a disclaimer about the change in IDOT accident reporting.
But she disputed the notion the city has used inflated statistics to mislead the public about the unpopular program.
"We weren't saying that those reductions are all attributable directly to, or only to, the installation of red light
cameras," Scheinfeld said. "What we are saying is that we are seeing these trends which are very encouraging at
those locations where we have red light cameras."
Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, chairman of the council Transportation Committee, said the city's numbers come as no
surprise: "Those numbers the city uses have never made any sense. Of course they are skewing the numbers."
"That program needs to be stopped. It needs to be frozen to give us time to reevaluate everything," Beale said. "This
is just more proof that this entire program is strictly to generate revenue and always has been."The Tribune study
In an effort to assess the program's effects more realistically, the Tribune collaborated with Lord and another wellknown
researcher from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, Srinivas Geedipally, to conduct an analysis using
the latest scientific tools.
The $14,000 study used data gathered by the Tribune under the guidance of traffic safety experts around the
country. The Tribune's work was also approved by Lord and Geedipally, who have published dozens of analytical
papers on traffic safety, including red light camera systems, and worked as consultants to state and federal
government.
The Chicago study by Lord and Geedipally acknowledges that the number of injurycausing accidents decreased at
intersections after red light cameras were added, but it also notes that this simple comparison fails to account for
other factors that affect a region's crash rates, such as changing economic conditions.
To determine the impact of red light cameras specifically, the researchers used a statistical technique called the
empirical Bayes method that is commonly employed to evaluate traffic safety interventions. By analyzing data from
intersections without red light cameras, they could predict how many crashes would have occurred at camera
intersections if the equipment had not been installed.
The study included 90 of the 190 intersections in Chicago where cameras were operating during the study period.
All 90 used in the study were fourleg intersections where cameras came online between 2008 and 2009. The
Tribune also collected detailed Illinois crash data at each intersection for three years before and three years after
the cameras were installed, as well as similar information for a control group of 59 intersections never equipped
with cameras.
Lord and Geedipally used that data to conduct their analysis, the largest such study conducted on a single red light
camera program in the United States.
The study results showed red light cameras are responsible for "a nonsignificant increase of 5 percent in the total
number of injury crashes, a statistically significant reduction of 15 percent in angle and turning injury crashes,
and a statistically significant increase of 22 percent in rearend injury collisions," the authors wrote.
In raw numbers at the 90 intersections included in the study, the researchers concluded the cameras prevented as
many as 76 rightangle crashes and caused about 54 more rearend injury crashes. The study said that without the
red light cameras about 501 angle crashes would have occurred and only 425 were reported. It also said that there
were 296 rearend injury crashes, and there would have been only 242 had the cameras never been installed.
There were 1,064 crashes reported in the three years after the 90 intersections were "treated" with red light
cameras, the study noted.
"The analysis results show that if the treatment had not been used, the expected number of the crashes would have
been 1,016 crashes," the study said. "In other words, it is estimated that RLCs (red light cameras) increased the
crashes by 5 percent."
Because that 5 percent increase was considered within the study's margin of error, Lord and Geedipally said the
increase might have happened just by chance.
The Tribune study did not address the cameras' impact on fender benders where no injuries were reported.The researchers said similar crash patterns were also found at the control intersections that had no cameras,
suggesting drivers fearing a $100 fine may be changing their behavior at intersections throughout the city. They
said more research would be needed to say definitively whether such a "spillover effect" exists.
"It may be possible that drivers changed the manner they approach and travel through all the signalized
intersections located within the City of Chicago," the study says, adding that science on the theory of spillover
effects is inconclusive.
The results of the Tribune study closely track those of a 2005 analysis of red light cameras commissioned by the
Federal Highway Administration that used identical scientific methods to analyze 132 intersections in seven cities
throughout the country. That study found a 16 percent decrease in rightangle injury crashes and a corresponding
24 percent increase in rearend injury crashes.
The federal study went even further and assigned dollar damage estimates to the various kinds of crashes to
conduct a costbenefit analysis between rearenders and the typically more dangerous Tbone crashes.
"The economic analysis examined the extent to which the increase in rearend crashes negates the benefits for
decreased rightangle crashes," the 2005 study concluded. "There was indeed a modest aggregate crash cost
benefit of RLC systems."
The Tribune researchers also suggested that Chicago could reap much better results if it shut down about 40
percent of its cameras, located in about 75 intersections throughout the city where crash rates were lower to begin
with. Of those 75 intersections, cameras were removed from eight before the completion of the Tribune study.
"When intersections experiencing fewer than 4 injury crashes per year are considered, there is a significant
increase in all crashes by 19 percent after the installation of RLCs," the study found.
"They are not doing what you would expect," Geedipally said. "You can make an argument based on those two
numbers, over four (injury crashes) you see a benefit but less than four you don't see that benefit. So is it worth
putting the cameras at those locations? That's a question you may want to ask the mayor."
Other experts said the Tribune findings make it clear that nothing less than a complete reexamination of the city's
program can solve the problems.
"My feeling is that they should conduct a reevaluation of every intersection where a camera is installed and look at
the crash numbers for each of them," said Raghavan Srinivasan, a senior transportation research engineer at the
University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center. "All the research shows that the higher the rate of
rightangle crashes to begin with, the more benefit the cameras provide."
Scheinfeld and her deputies said the city will use the study in its annual assessment of the camera program.
"You have offered a different perspective, a different method, a different data set looking at slightly different
crashes," said David Zavattero, the city's deputy transportation director. "I think we are going to take that very
seriously and look at some of those same questions."
The findings are the latest in a series of Tribune investigations beginning in 2012 that have exposed corruption,
failed oversight and unfair enforcement in Chicago's program, once held out as a model for automated traffic
enforcement.
In the wake of Tribune revelations, the city's contractor was fired, that company's top executives were ousted andCopyright © 2014, Chicago Tribune
federal prosecutors charged a former City Hall manager with taking up to $2 million in bribes from the former CEO
of the company, Redflex Traffic Systems, to build its Chicago business into the largest automated traffic
enforcement program in the country.
Last week, a former Redflex consultant pleaded guilty to funneling bribes to that manager, John Bills, as part of an
alleged scheme that earned the men at least $1,500 for every new red light camera installed in the city.
While the alleged corruption largely dates to the administration of former Mayor Richard M. Daley, Emanuel has
defended the red light program as a muchneeded safety measure and used it to justify his launch of speed cameras.
Following a series of Tribune stories this past summer that documented how thousands of drivers were tagged
during unexplained ticket surges at malfunctioning red light cameras, the city inspector general reported that both
the Daley and Emanuel administrations could not document how and where they chose to place cameras,
abdicated their responsibility to ensure the camera system was working properly and instead focused on keeping
the cameras rolling.
In response, Emanuel promised to improve oversight, played down the significance of the findings and sought to
refocus public attention on safety benefits.
"The red light camera operates here like it operates in other cities," Emanuel said in July. "And it has reduced
accidents, and dangerous accidents, which are the sideswipes that happen. So it has worked on the safety side, but
to be an operative system, it must have the public trust."
[email protected]
[email protected]
By David Kidwell and Alex Richards
Chicago Tribune
DECEMBER 19, 2014, 8:17 AM
Chicago's red light cameras fail to deliver the dramatic safety benefits long claimed by City Hall, according to
a firstever scientific study that found the nation's largest camera program is responsible for increasing
some types of injury crashes while decreasing others.
The stateoftheart study commissioned by the Tribune concluded the cameras do not reduce injuryrelated
crashes overall — undercutting Mayor Rahm Emanuel's primary defense of a program beset by mismanagement,
malfunction and a $2 million bribery scandal.
Emanuel has credited the cameras for a 47 percent reduction in dangerous rightangle, or "Tbone," crashes. But
the Tribune study, which accounted for declining accident rates in recent years as well as other confounding
factors, found cameras reduced rightangle crashes that caused injuries by just 15 percent.
At the same time, the study calculated a corresponding 22 percent increase in rearend crashes that caused
injuries, illustrating a tradeoff between the cameras' costs and benefits.
A new Chicago Tribune study finds Chicago's red light cameras fail to deliver the major safety benefits claimed by City
Hall. Here's what traffic researchers and the city's transportation commissioner say about the study.The researchers also determined there is no safety benefit from cameras installed at intersections where there have
been few crashes with injuries. Such accidents actually increased at those intersections after cameras went in, the
study found, though the small number of crashes makes it difficult to determine whether the cameras were to
blame.
The finding raises questions about why the city installed cameras in so many places where injurycausing crashes
were rare — nearly 40 percent of the 190 intersections that had cameras through 2012, the Tribune found.
"The biggest takeaway is that overall (the program) seems to have had little effect," said Dominique Lord, an
associate professor at Texas A&M University's Zachry Department of Civil Engineering who led the Tribune's
study.
"So the question now is: If we eliminate a certain type of collision and increase the other and overall it stays the
same, is there an argument that it is fair to go with the program?" Lord said. "That is a question thatI cannot
answer.
"Just the elected officials can answer for that."
Emanuel declined interview requests. His top transportation experts acknowledged flaws in the city's statistics but
said the Tribune study reinforces their own conclusion that cameras are helping.
Chicago Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld said the city has never attempted a deep examination
of the effectiveness of the largest automated enforcement program in the country, which has grown to more than
350 red light cameras and raised more than $500 million in $100 tickets since 2002. She said the Emanuel
administration, now in its fourth year, is attempting to fix a longstanding lack of oversight.
"So certainly, the study presents an interesting argument, something that we will be considering moving forward,"
Scheinfeld said. "But the fact is, the important thing I want to make sure that we get across here is that there are
less deaths out there, there are less injuries out there and we are very encouraged by that."
Several national traffic experts consulted by the Tribune called the study a valid examination that largely mirrors
the results of similar scientific efforts conducted around the country that found moderate decreases in Tbone
crashes coupled with increases in rearenders as drivers hit the brakes to avoid cameragenerated tickets.
The study findings also dovetail with the Tribune's examination of how short yellow light times at Chicago's traffic
signals raise the stakes for drivers.
Prompted by Tribune reporting, Emanuel officials recently admitted to the city inspector general that they had
quietly dropped the threshold for what constitutes a red light camera ticket, allowing the tickets even when
cameras showed a yellow light time just under the threesecond federal minimum standard. That shift earlier this
year snared 77,000 more drivers and $7.7 million in ticket revenue before the city agreed to change the threshold
back.
Now the Tribune has learned that Chicago's longstanding reliance on using the lowest possible yellow light time
under federal guidelines is out of step with other major cities in the country and a growing body of research that
suggests short yellows and red light cameras are a dangerous combination.
"Of course that is going to lead to more accidents, especially rearend accidents," said Timothy Gates, a Wayne
State University associate engineering professor whose research is being used to set new nationwide guidelines
calling for longer yellow lights.As recently as October, transportation chief Scheinfeld appeared before a City Council hearing to defend the red
light camera program armed with poster boards boasting a 47 percent reduction in rightangle crashes at cameraequipped
intersections and a 22 percent drop in all types of injury crashes.
Those numbers are from a report on the city's website with a list of crash statistics at each of the red light camera
intersections from 2005 and from 2012.
"Since being launched more than a decade ago, the red light camera program has been a critical part of our efforts
to improve the safety of our streets," Scheinfeld told the assembled aldermen. "The most recent crash statistics
available from the state show that at intersections with red light cameras, the number of dangerous Tbone, angle
crashes decreased by 47 percent between 2005 and 2012."
Given those numbers, the effectiveness of red light cameras would be difficult to dispute. But a halfdozen traffic
engineering experts interviewed by the Tribune all agree that simple beforeandafter comparison is not an
effective measure. It doesn't account for changes in traffic flow because of the economic recession, or the improved
safety of automobiles or any number of factors that have brought down crash numbers throughout the nation.
And most important, experts say, it doesn't account for any significant changes in the way accidents are reported
to state transportation officials.
For instance, in 2009 the Illinois Department of Transportation changed the threshold for reporting property
damage accidents to $1,500 in damage from $500, a rule change that prompted accident reports statewide to
plummet by nearly 30 percent. That change alone renders the city's safety claims invalid, experts say.
"The city's study is worthless, making no adjustments for any potential bias," said Joseph Hummer, professor and
chairman of civil and environmental engineering at Wayne State in Detroit. He also noted that, for some sites, the
city used 2005 data in the "before" section of its analysis even though the cameras had been installed there in 2003
and 2004.
Scheinfeld said in an interview last week that the city's safety claims are based on "more basic," nonscientific
comparisons of crash statistics. She said the state transportation department statistics are "still the best
information that we have, and we acknowledge they have made that change in their reporting methodology, and it
would have some impact on those numbers, but we don't know exactly what impact."
Scheinfeld said she was aware of the flaw in the data when she presented the city's safety claims to aldermen. The
47 percent figure was still posted on the city's red light camera Web page at publication time for this report, but
after talking to the Tribune, officials added a disclaimer about the change in IDOT accident reporting.
But she disputed the notion the city has used inflated statistics to mislead the public about the unpopular program.
"We weren't saying that those reductions are all attributable directly to, or only to, the installation of red light
cameras," Scheinfeld said. "What we are saying is that we are seeing these trends which are very encouraging at
those locations where we have red light cameras."
Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, chairman of the council Transportation Committee, said the city's numbers come as no
surprise: "Those numbers the city uses have never made any sense. Of course they are skewing the numbers."
"That program needs to be stopped. It needs to be frozen to give us time to reevaluate everything," Beale said. "This
is just more proof that this entire program is strictly to generate revenue and always has been."The Tribune study
In an effort to assess the program's effects more realistically, the Tribune collaborated with Lord and another wellknown
researcher from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, Srinivas Geedipally, to conduct an analysis using
the latest scientific tools.
The $14,000 study used data gathered by the Tribune under the guidance of traffic safety experts around the
country. The Tribune's work was also approved by Lord and Geedipally, who have published dozens of analytical
papers on traffic safety, including red light camera systems, and worked as consultants to state and federal
government.
The Chicago study by Lord and Geedipally acknowledges that the number of injurycausing accidents decreased at
intersections after red light cameras were added, but it also notes that this simple comparison fails to account for
other factors that affect a region's crash rates, such as changing economic conditions.
To determine the impact of red light cameras specifically, the researchers used a statistical technique called the
empirical Bayes method that is commonly employed to evaluate traffic safety interventions. By analyzing data from
intersections without red light cameras, they could predict how many crashes would have occurred at camera
intersections if the equipment had not been installed.
The study included 90 of the 190 intersections in Chicago where cameras were operating during the study period.
All 90 used in the study were fourleg intersections where cameras came online between 2008 and 2009. The
Tribune also collected detailed Illinois crash data at each intersection for three years before and three years after
the cameras were installed, as well as similar information for a control group of 59 intersections never equipped
with cameras.
Lord and Geedipally used that data to conduct their analysis, the largest such study conducted on a single red light
camera program in the United States.
The study results showed red light cameras are responsible for "a nonsignificant increase of 5 percent in the total
number of injury crashes, a statistically significant reduction of 15 percent in angle and turning injury crashes,
and a statistically significant increase of 22 percent in rearend injury collisions," the authors wrote.
In raw numbers at the 90 intersections included in the study, the researchers concluded the cameras prevented as
many as 76 rightangle crashes and caused about 54 more rearend injury crashes. The study said that without the
red light cameras about 501 angle crashes would have occurred and only 425 were reported. It also said that there
were 296 rearend injury crashes, and there would have been only 242 had the cameras never been installed.
There were 1,064 crashes reported in the three years after the 90 intersections were "treated" with red light
cameras, the study noted.
"The analysis results show that if the treatment had not been used, the expected number of the crashes would have
been 1,016 crashes," the study said. "In other words, it is estimated that RLCs (red light cameras) increased the
crashes by 5 percent."
Because that 5 percent increase was considered within the study's margin of error, Lord and Geedipally said the
increase might have happened just by chance.
The Tribune study did not address the cameras' impact on fender benders where no injuries were reported.The researchers said similar crash patterns were also found at the control intersections that had no cameras,
suggesting drivers fearing a $100 fine may be changing their behavior at intersections throughout the city. They
said more research would be needed to say definitively whether such a "spillover effect" exists.
"It may be possible that drivers changed the manner they approach and travel through all the signalized
intersections located within the City of Chicago," the study says, adding that science on the theory of spillover
effects is inconclusive.
The results of the Tribune study closely track those of a 2005 analysis of red light cameras commissioned by the
Federal Highway Administration that used identical scientific methods to analyze 132 intersections in seven cities
throughout the country. That study found a 16 percent decrease in rightangle injury crashes and a corresponding
24 percent increase in rearend injury crashes.
The federal study went even further and assigned dollar damage estimates to the various kinds of crashes to
conduct a costbenefit analysis between rearenders and the typically more dangerous Tbone crashes.
"The economic analysis examined the extent to which the increase in rearend crashes negates the benefits for
decreased rightangle crashes," the 2005 study concluded. "There was indeed a modest aggregate crash cost
benefit of RLC systems."
The Tribune researchers also suggested that Chicago could reap much better results if it shut down about 40
percent of its cameras, located in about 75 intersections throughout the city where crash rates were lower to begin
with. Of those 75 intersections, cameras were removed from eight before the completion of the Tribune study.
"When intersections experiencing fewer than 4 injury crashes per year are considered, there is a significant
increase in all crashes by 19 percent after the installation of RLCs," the study found.
"They are not doing what you would expect," Geedipally said. "You can make an argument based on those two
numbers, over four (injury crashes) you see a benefit but less than four you don't see that benefit. So is it worth
putting the cameras at those locations? That's a question you may want to ask the mayor."
Other experts said the Tribune findings make it clear that nothing less than a complete reexamination of the city's
program can solve the problems.
"My feeling is that they should conduct a reevaluation of every intersection where a camera is installed and look at
the crash numbers for each of them," said Raghavan Srinivasan, a senior transportation research engineer at the
University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center. "All the research shows that the higher the rate of
rightangle crashes to begin with, the more benefit the cameras provide."
Scheinfeld and her deputies said the city will use the study in its annual assessment of the camera program.
"You have offered a different perspective, a different method, a different data set looking at slightly different
crashes," said David Zavattero, the city's deputy transportation director. "I think we are going to take that very
seriously and look at some of those same questions."
The findings are the latest in a series of Tribune investigations beginning in 2012 that have exposed corruption,
failed oversight and unfair enforcement in Chicago's program, once held out as a model for automated traffic
enforcement.
In the wake of Tribune revelations, the city's contractor was fired, that company's top executives were ousted andCopyright © 2014, Chicago Tribune
federal prosecutors charged a former City Hall manager with taking up to $2 million in bribes from the former CEO
of the company, Redflex Traffic Systems, to build its Chicago business into the largest automated traffic
enforcement program in the country.
Last week, a former Redflex consultant pleaded guilty to funneling bribes to that manager, John Bills, as part of an
alleged scheme that earned the men at least $1,500 for every new red light camera installed in the city.
While the alleged corruption largely dates to the administration of former Mayor Richard M. Daley, Emanuel has
defended the red light program as a muchneeded safety measure and used it to justify his launch of speed cameras.
Following a series of Tribune stories this past summer that documented how thousands of drivers were tagged
during unexplained ticket surges at malfunctioning red light cameras, the city inspector general reported that both
the Daley and Emanuel administrations could not document how and where they chose to place cameras,
abdicated their responsibility to ensure the camera system was working properly and instead focused on keeping
the cameras rolling.
In response, Emanuel promised to improve oversight, played down the significance of the findings and sought to
refocus public attention on safety benefits.
"The red light camera operates here like it operates in other cities," Emanuel said in July. "And it has reduced
accidents, and dangerous accidents, which are the sideswipes that happen. So it has worked on the safety side, but
to be an operative system, it must have the public trust."
[email protected]
[email protected]
LINDEN, N.J. (WABC) --
New Jersey's experiment with red light cameras is coming to a close.
December 17, 2014
The five-year pilot program that began in 2009 and has operated in about two dozen New Jersey municipalities will end at midnight Wednesday.
Towns big and small have raked in millions of dollars in fines since the program began. Some busy intersections have produced more than 20,000 citations in a single year.
The program also has had its difficulties. A federal lawsuit resulted in refunds to hundreds of thousands of violators, and a computer glitch this year voided about 17,000 tickets.
The state in 2012 had to temporarily suspend dozens of the cameras over concerns that yellow lights weren't properly timed.
Supporters say the cameras have made roads safer, but opponents say the statistics show otherwise.
Legislation would be required to revive the cameras, and that is seen as unlikely since Republican Gov. Chris Christie has indicated he is leaning against renewing the program.
"It's clear that no matter what, it won't be extended in time to go beyond the termination date," said Democratic Assemblyman John Wisniewski, chairman of the transportation committee. "Whether in the next calendar year a bill can be introduced and approved and make its way to the governor's desk seems to be pretty long odds at this point."
New Jersey wouldn't be alone if it decides to scrap the experiment. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a nonprofit research group, of the 540 cities and towns that were using red light cameras in 2012, more than 40 had dropped them as of this month.
About two dozen towns in New Jersey have installed the cameras under the Red Light Running (RLR) Automated Enforcement Program, beginning with Newark in 2009. Lawmakers' early criticisms that the cameras were being used as revenue-enhancers were given grist when the state Department of Transportation temporarily suspended dozens of the cameras in 2012 over concerns that yellow lights weren't timed so that drivers had sufficient time to brake safely.
Since then, a federal lawsuit settlement awarded partial refunds to nearly 500,000 violators, and this year a computer glitch voided more than 10,000 violation notices.
Republican Assemblyman Declan O'Scanlon, the camera program's chief critic, has contended that the cameras penalize people who are a fraction of a second late getting into an intersection - and who rarely cause accidents, he said - but don't address the drivers who cause most accidents at intersections by running red lights because they are distracted or daydreaming.
"The behavior we're changing isn't the behavior that's causing accidents," he said this week at a debate with Linden Mayor Richard Gerbounka, a supporter of the cameras. "The behavior we're changing is maybe that people are completely avoiding that intersection, which means you're transferring the hazard from the intersection to wherever people are going."
Statistics on the cameras abound and aren't conducive to simple conclusions. For instance, the state DOT's 2013 report found that while right-angle crashes decreased at some intersections, rear-end crashes increased. Similarly, the overall number of citations issued at two Newark intersections that were the first to get cameras decreased from 2011 to 2012, but some months in 2012 had higher numbers than corresponding months in 2011.
The report concluded that "it appears reasonable to conclude that RLR is a viable safety tool" at some locations but it was too early to draw conclusions about the whole program without more data.
Wisniewski conceded the program has had difficulties but said its aims are worthwhile.
"Running red lights is dangerous and getting people to change habits isn't easy," he said.
(The Associated Press contributed to this story.)
Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, December 15, 2014
Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras calls on Governor Quinn to Veto Illinois Eavesdropping Bill
Group Demands Public Debate on why it is illegal to Record Police in Illinois.
CHICAGO, IL – Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras is calling on Governor Pat Quinn to veto the new eavesdropping law that passed both houses of the General Assembly last week and includes felony criminal charges for recording police officers and other public officials.
“We are calling on Governor Quinn to veto this bill to give the public time to work with the legislature on including first amendment protections covering protest on the public way,” said Mark Wallace, Director of Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras.
The group experienced an incident this past summer where a CPD Sgt. Brown tried to convince them they were not allowed to protest at 119th and Halsted without a permit due to the nature of their “slanderous signs”. When activists asserted their first amendment rights, the officer threatened arrest. The entire incident was caught on video and the police sergeant seemed to back down once he became aware he was being filmed. (Watch the Video HERE)
“Given our experience at a protest this summer at 119th and Halsted, we feel very strongly that the exceptions to the new eavesdropping law, which criminalizes the recording of police, do not clearly state whether interactions with police at peaceful protests are exempt from being filmed,” Wallace said.
The eavesdropping bill passed both the Illinois House and Senate with an overwhelming majority of votes last week; 106-7 in the House and 46-4-1 in the Senate. Democrats and Republicans seemed to slip the bill through while citizens were unaware the legislation was even planned to come up for a vote during a Springfield veto session.
“A few of our members have taken the time to ask their representatives if this law applies to peaceful protesters on the public way, to which they have been told to ‘educate themselves’ and read the bill,” said Wallace. “We've read it and we still can’t tell if it was a Class 3 felony for members of our group to record Sgt. Brown this past summer. If our elected officials can’t answer that simple question, then this bill should be vetoed and there should be a public debate before drafting any new eavesdropping legislation,” said Wallace.
Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras is a local political action committee whose mission is to eliminate Chicago’s unsafe, unfair and unconstitutional photo enforcement programs by means of education and political activity.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, December 15, 2014
Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras calls on Governor Quinn to Veto Illinois Eavesdropping Bill
Group Demands Public Debate on why it is illegal to Record Police in Illinois.
CHICAGO, IL – Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras is calling on Governor Pat Quinn to veto the new eavesdropping law that passed both houses of the General Assembly last week and includes felony criminal charges for recording police officers and other public officials.
“We are calling on Governor Quinn to veto this bill to give the public time to work with the legislature on including first amendment protections covering protest on the public way,” said Mark Wallace, Director of Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras.
The group experienced an incident this past summer where a CPD Sgt. Brown tried to convince them they were not allowed to protest at 119th and Halsted without a permit due to the nature of their “slanderous signs”. When activists asserted their first amendment rights, the officer threatened arrest. The entire incident was caught on video and the police sergeant seemed to back down once he became aware he was being filmed. (Watch the Video HERE)
“Given our experience at a protest this summer at 119th and Halsted, we feel very strongly that the exceptions to the new eavesdropping law, which criminalizes the recording of police, do not clearly state whether interactions with police at peaceful protests are exempt from being filmed,” Wallace said.
The eavesdropping bill passed both the Illinois House and Senate with an overwhelming majority of votes last week; 106-7 in the House and 46-4-1 in the Senate. Democrats and Republicans seemed to slip the bill through while citizens were unaware the legislation was even planned to come up for a vote during a Springfield veto session.
“A few of our members have taken the time to ask their representatives if this law applies to peaceful protesters on the public way, to which they have been told to ‘educate themselves’ and read the bill,” said Wallace. “We've read it and we still can’t tell if it was a Class 3 felony for members of our group to record Sgt. Brown this past summer. If our elected officials can’t answer that simple question, then this bill should be vetoed and there should be a public debate before drafting any new eavesdropping legislation,” said Wallace.
Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras is a local political action committee whose mission is to eliminate Chicago’s unsafe, unfair and unconstitutional photo enforcement programs by means of education and political activity.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Put Your Best Foot Forward Carefully – Chicago and Pedestrian Safety
Posted By Jennifer Baier On May 20, 2014 @ 10:45 am In Advocacy,Illinois | No Comments
Good Morning Blog Readers! If you’ve ever been walking through downtown Chicago this blog post is for you…
Chicago is among the safest metro areas in the nation for pedestrians, ranking 44th out of the 51 largest metro areas, a new report released by the National Complete Streets Coalition [1], a program of Smart Growth America, said.
While many streets across the country are perilous for people walking, hundreds of communities like Chicago are working to make their streets safe and welcoming for people on foot. In recent years, scores of communities have begun to redesign roads as “complete streets,” adding sidewalks and bicycle lanes, reducing crossing distances and improving crosswalks. Such design features have helped make walking safe and comfortable for everyone.
“Older persons account for one in every five pedestrian fatalities and have the greatest fatality rate of any population group,” said AARP Executive Vice President Nancy LeaMond. “America’s state, federal and community leaders should focus on making our streets safer – which will benefit everyone, including thegrowing number of older Americans.”
Though the report found that Chicago is safer when compared to other metros across the country, a total of 1,165 pedestrians were killed from 2003 to 2012 — an unacceptable number no matter Chicago’s ranking. Continuing to invest resources in making our streets safe for all users is key to ending these preventable deaths.
In addition to ranking America’s major metropolitan areas according to a Pedestrian Danger Index to assess how safe pedestrians are while walking, the report, Dangerous by Design [2]presents data on pedestrian fatalities and injuries in every U.S. metro area, state, and county. The report also includes an interactive map [3] showing the locations where people walking have been fatally struck by the driver of a vehicle.
“We applaud Chicago’s efforts to design safer streets for people of all ages,” said Bob Gallo, AARP Illinois State Director. “However, we must remain vigilant and continue to create new and innovative ways to ensure that Chicago roadways are accessible and safe for pedestrians of all ages.”
The majority of pedestrian deaths occur on roadways that are dangerous by design —engineered and operated for speeding traffic with little to no provision for the safety of people walking, biking or using public transit. Sadly, older adults, children and minorities are the most at risk while walking, dying in disproportionate numbers.
“We are allowing an epidemic of pedestrian fatalities, brought on by streets designed for speed and not safety, to take nearly 5,000 lives a year; a number that increased six percent between 2011 and 2012,” said Roger Millar, Director of the National Complete Streets Coalition. “Not only is that number simply too high, but these deaths are easily prevented through policy, design, and practice. State and local transportation leaders need to prioritize the implementation of Complete Streets policies to improve safety and comfort for people walking.”
The federal government sets the tone for a national approach to safety and Congress can address this critical issue by passing the Safe Streets Act as it renews the transportation law. States are then ultimately responsible for protecting their residents and visitors and reducing the number of people who are killed or seriously injured while walking. State governments and agencies can take a number of actions to improve pedestrian safety, starting with adopting a strong Complete Streets policy and following a comprehensive action plan to ensure the streets are planned and designed for the safety and comfort of people walking.
To view the full report, please click here [4]
Article printed from AARP States: http://states.aarp.org
URL to article: http://states.aarp.org/put-your-best-foot-forward-chicago-ranked-among-safest-metro-areas-for-pedestrians-sc-il-wp-advocacy/
URLs in this post:
[1] National Complete Streets Coalition: http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/complete-streets
[2] Dangerous by Design: http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/dangerous-by-design/state-statistics
[3] interactive map: http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/dangerous-by-design/map
[4] here: http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/documents/dangerous-by-design-2014/dangerous-by-design-2014.pdf
Posted By Jennifer Baier On May 20, 2014 @ 10:45 am In Advocacy,Illinois | No Comments
Good Morning Blog Readers! If you’ve ever been walking through downtown Chicago this blog post is for you…
Chicago is among the safest metro areas in the nation for pedestrians, ranking 44th out of the 51 largest metro areas, a new report released by the National Complete Streets Coalition [1], a program of Smart Growth America, said.
While many streets across the country are perilous for people walking, hundreds of communities like Chicago are working to make their streets safe and welcoming for people on foot. In recent years, scores of communities have begun to redesign roads as “complete streets,” adding sidewalks and bicycle lanes, reducing crossing distances and improving crosswalks. Such design features have helped make walking safe and comfortable for everyone.
“Older persons account for one in every five pedestrian fatalities and have the greatest fatality rate of any population group,” said AARP Executive Vice President Nancy LeaMond. “America’s state, federal and community leaders should focus on making our streets safer – which will benefit everyone, including thegrowing number of older Americans.”
Though the report found that Chicago is safer when compared to other metros across the country, a total of 1,165 pedestrians were killed from 2003 to 2012 — an unacceptable number no matter Chicago’s ranking. Continuing to invest resources in making our streets safe for all users is key to ending these preventable deaths.
In addition to ranking America’s major metropolitan areas according to a Pedestrian Danger Index to assess how safe pedestrians are while walking, the report, Dangerous by Design [2]presents data on pedestrian fatalities and injuries in every U.S. metro area, state, and county. The report also includes an interactive map [3] showing the locations where people walking have been fatally struck by the driver of a vehicle.
“We applaud Chicago’s efforts to design safer streets for people of all ages,” said Bob Gallo, AARP Illinois State Director. “However, we must remain vigilant and continue to create new and innovative ways to ensure that Chicago roadways are accessible and safe for pedestrians of all ages.”
The majority of pedestrian deaths occur on roadways that are dangerous by design —engineered and operated for speeding traffic with little to no provision for the safety of people walking, biking or using public transit. Sadly, older adults, children and minorities are the most at risk while walking, dying in disproportionate numbers.
“We are allowing an epidemic of pedestrian fatalities, brought on by streets designed for speed and not safety, to take nearly 5,000 lives a year; a number that increased six percent between 2011 and 2012,” said Roger Millar, Director of the National Complete Streets Coalition. “Not only is that number simply too high, but these deaths are easily prevented through policy, design, and practice. State and local transportation leaders need to prioritize the implementation of Complete Streets policies to improve safety and comfort for people walking.”
The federal government sets the tone for a national approach to safety and Congress can address this critical issue by passing the Safe Streets Act as it renews the transportation law. States are then ultimately responsible for protecting their residents and visitors and reducing the number of people who are killed or seriously injured while walking. State governments and agencies can take a number of actions to improve pedestrian safety, starting with adopting a strong Complete Streets policy and following a comprehensive action plan to ensure the streets are planned and designed for the safety and comfort of people walking.
To view the full report, please click here [4]
Article printed from AARP States: http://states.aarp.org
URL to article: http://states.aarp.org/put-your-best-foot-forward-chicago-ranked-among-safest-metro-areas-for-pedestrians-sc-il-wp-advocacy/
URLs in this post:
[1] National Complete Streets Coalition: http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/complete-streets
[2] Dangerous by Design: http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/dangerous-by-design/state-statistics
[3] interactive map: http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/dangerous-by-design/map
[4] here: http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/documents/dangerous-by-design-2014/dangerous-by-design-2014.pdf
If the contract was a fraud is there any doubt the program was too?
The bagman has admitted he ferried the bribes from Redflex to John Bills, but Bills had two masters. His other master was CDOT and the city of Chicago and he served both masters well. Redflex got the largest contract ever($100 million) and Chicago got revenue that grew year over year until it reached over $60 million a year and has taken over $600 million from the drivers in Chicago so far.
Unlike camera programs in other cities, Bills kept forecasting more money and more kept coming in. Somehow, in Chicago, the drivers never learned where the cameras were or how they worked OR might this explain the "anomalies" the Inspector General found and CDOT can't explain?
When it's found criminal operations stole from the people they are forced to pay restitution and fines. Should it be any different here?
Redflex bagman pleads guilty in Chicago red light camera case
December 10, 2014
By Jason Meisner,Chicago Tribunecontact the reporter
Ex-Redflex figure Martin O'Malley pleads guilty, faces up to five years in prison in red light camera case.
Redflex bagman's guilty plea the first conviction in the sweeping Chicago red light camera scandal.
The bribe was paid over lunch at Schaller's Pump, a Bridgeport neighborhood institution and political stronghold across the street from the 11th Ward Democratic headquarters.
The amount was disguised in a coded message: "8 page speed overview can be discussed at lunch as your schedule permits," John Bills, then a top transportation official at City Hall, emailed to his friend, Martin O'Malley, the day before their June 2011 meeting.
The $8,000 cash O'Malley brought to Schaller's was one of the last payments in an alleged $2 million kickback scheme to steer the city's lucrative red light camera contracts to Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., federal prosecutors allege.
On Wednesday, O'Malley, Redflex's former Chicago-based consultant, pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to bribe a public official, admitting he acted as the bagman to grease kickbacks to Bills to keep the contracts flowing for Redflex.
The guilty plea marked the first conviction in a sweeping scandal that by size alone ranks among the largest in Chicago's notorious history of corruption. The Tribune first disclosed the questionable relationship between Bills and Redflex in the fall of 2012 after obtaining a 2-year-old internal whistleblower memo written by an ousted Redflex vice president.
O'Malley, 73, faces up to five years in prison, but his sentence could be far less because of his cooperation with law enforcement and his poor health.
In a soft but firm voice, O'Malley told U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall that he's diabetic, has a pacemaker and takes 16 daily medications for various ailments. When the judge asked him if he felt well enough to proceed, O'Malley shrugged, spread his hands and said, "As good as can be."
His sentencing was postponed until after he is finished cooperating against the other defendants in the case. Another former Redflex executive, Aaron Rosenberg, was also cooperating under an immunity agreement, the Tribune reported in August.
O'Malley, of south suburban Worth, was indicted in August along with former Redflex CEO Karen Finley and Bills, the city's former managing deputy commissioner of transportation, who is accused of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, vacation trips and personal gifts to rig the contract. Bills and Finley have pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing.
According to the charges, O'Malley was hired by Redflex after Bills told him to answer an advertisement placed by Finley in 2003 looking for a Chicago consultant. Prosecutors say the arrangement was intended as a conduit to funnel bribe payments to Bills.
O'Malley admitted in a 22-page plea agreement with prosecutors that he knew before he signed his contract with Redflex that large portions of his compensation from the company — a $60,000 salary and hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions and bonuses — would be illegally funneled to Bills.
Bills told O'Malley that sharing the commissions was "the way business is done," according to the plea agreement. At first, the two agreed to split the commissions half and half, but in reality Bills kept almost all of the money. O'Malley even had to pay the taxes on the commissions because they counted as his earnings, the plea agreement said.
In all, O'Malley gave Bills $570,000 in cash from 2004 to 2012, in addition to paying for some of Bills' personal debts and even buying a Gilbert, Ariz., condominium for Bills' use, prosecutors alleged. In addition, Redflex paid for hotel rooms, car rentals, meals, golf games, computers and other personal items for Bills.
O'Malley also wrote checks to cover Bills' retirement party from the city as well as to an undisclosed "political organization," according to his plea agreement. O'Malley then included those costs on his expense reports, which Redflex reimbursed, the plea agreement said.
To conceal the scheme, O'Malley had Redflex send his commission checks to a post office box he had set up at a shipping store in the Morgan Park neighborhood, according to the plea agreement. When he received a check, O'Malley would arrange to meet Bills for lunch at Chicago-area restaurants. Bills often arrived in his city-issued vehicle, prosecutors said.
Under Bills' guidance, Redflex's Chicago program grew into a marquee system for the Australia-based company — its largest in the United States — and generated more than $500 million in $100 tickets for the cash-starved city.
[email protected]
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December 10, 2014
By Jason Meisner,Chicago Tribunecontact the reporter
Ex-Redflex figure Martin O'Malley pleads guilty, faces up to five years in prison in red light camera case.
Redflex bagman's guilty plea the first conviction in the sweeping Chicago red light camera scandal.
The bribe was paid over lunch at Schaller's Pump, a Bridgeport neighborhood institution and political stronghold across the street from the 11th Ward Democratic headquarters.
The amount was disguised in a coded message: "8 page speed overview can be discussed at lunch as your schedule permits," John Bills, then a top transportation official at City Hall, emailed to his friend, Martin O'Malley, the day before their June 2011 meeting.
The $8,000 cash O'Malley brought to Schaller's was one of the last payments in an alleged $2 million kickback scheme to steer the city's lucrative red light camera contracts to Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., federal prosecutors allege.
On Wednesday, O'Malley, Redflex's former Chicago-based consultant, pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to bribe a public official, admitting he acted as the bagman to grease kickbacks to Bills to keep the contracts flowing for Redflex.
The guilty plea marked the first conviction in a sweeping scandal that by size alone ranks among the largest in Chicago's notorious history of corruption. The Tribune first disclosed the questionable relationship between Bills and Redflex in the fall of 2012 after obtaining a 2-year-old internal whistleblower memo written by an ousted Redflex vice president.
O'Malley, 73, faces up to five years in prison, but his sentence could be far less because of his cooperation with law enforcement and his poor health.
In a soft but firm voice, O'Malley told U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall that he's diabetic, has a pacemaker and takes 16 daily medications for various ailments. When the judge asked him if he felt well enough to proceed, O'Malley shrugged, spread his hands and said, "As good as can be."
His sentencing was postponed until after he is finished cooperating against the other defendants in the case. Another former Redflex executive, Aaron Rosenberg, was also cooperating under an immunity agreement, the Tribune reported in August.
O'Malley, of south suburban Worth, was indicted in August along with former Redflex CEO Karen Finley and Bills, the city's former managing deputy commissioner of transportation, who is accused of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, vacation trips and personal gifts to rig the contract. Bills and Finley have pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing.
According to the charges, O'Malley was hired by Redflex after Bills told him to answer an advertisement placed by Finley in 2003 looking for a Chicago consultant. Prosecutors say the arrangement was intended as a conduit to funnel bribe payments to Bills.
O'Malley admitted in a 22-page plea agreement with prosecutors that he knew before he signed his contract with Redflex that large portions of his compensation from the company — a $60,000 salary and hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions and bonuses — would be illegally funneled to Bills.
Bills told O'Malley that sharing the commissions was "the way business is done," according to the plea agreement. At first, the two agreed to split the commissions half and half, but in reality Bills kept almost all of the money. O'Malley even had to pay the taxes on the commissions because they counted as his earnings, the plea agreement said.
In all, O'Malley gave Bills $570,000 in cash from 2004 to 2012, in addition to paying for some of Bills' personal debts and even buying a Gilbert, Ariz., condominium for Bills' use, prosecutors alleged. In addition, Redflex paid for hotel rooms, car rentals, meals, golf games, computers and other personal items for Bills.
O'Malley also wrote checks to cover Bills' retirement party from the city as well as to an undisclosed "political organization," according to his plea agreement. O'Malley then included those costs on his expense reports, which Redflex reimbursed, the plea agreement said.
To conceal the scheme, O'Malley had Redflex send his commission checks to a post office box he had set up at a shipping store in the Morgan Park neighborhood, according to the plea agreement. When he received a check, O'Malley would arrange to meet Bills for lunch at Chicago-area restaurants. Bills often arrived in his city-issued vehicle, prosecutors said.
Under Bills' guidance, Redflex's Chicago program grew into a marquee system for the Australia-based company — its largest in the United States — and generated more than $500 million in $100 tickets for the cash-starved city.
[email protected]
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When Citizens Are Given The Opportunity To Vote on Photo Enforcement They Vote No
List of Public Votes Against Red Light Cameras and Speed Cameras
A comprehensive list of referendum and initiative votes on the use of photo enforcement nationwide.
A total of 1,052,109 voters across eleven states have gone to the polls to cast a ballot in favor or against the use of photo enforcement. The vast majority have said "no" to red light cameras and speed cameras.
Since 1991, there have been a total of 35 election contests in Arizona, California, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas, Washington. With few exceptions, automated ticketing has failed by as much as 86 percent. One city did embrace the use of cameras after uniformed police officers were dispatched to go door-to-door to "encourage" citizens to keep the ticketing system in place.
To see the entire list Click here>>>
List of Public Votes Against Red Light Cameras and Speed Cameras
A comprehensive list of referendum and initiative votes on the use of photo enforcement nationwide.
A total of 1,052,109 voters across eleven states have gone to the polls to cast a ballot in favor or against the use of photo enforcement. The vast majority have said "no" to red light cameras and speed cameras.
Since 1991, there have been a total of 35 election contests in Arizona, California, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas, Washington. With few exceptions, automated ticketing has failed by as much as 86 percent. One city did embrace the use of cameras after uniformed police officers were dispatched to go door-to-door to "encourage" citizens to keep the ticketing system in place.
To see the entire list Click here>>>
Mayoral candidate Jesus "Chuy" Garcia shared with residents in South Shore that he agreed Red Light Cameras were more about the money than safety and many should be removed.
With visions of more money Tinley considers "embedded loop technology" that Chicago just threw out because of how unreliable it has proven to be in Illinois weather.
Tinley may add red light cameras from new provider
BY DENNIS SULLIVAN SPECIAL TO THE TRIBUNE
November 7, 2014
Tinley Park might expand the number of red light camera intersections after a new provider has been hired, according to a village trustee.
But the trustee, Brian Maher, chairman of the Village Board’s Public Safety Committee, stressed that thorough study and discussion would precede any action.
“We’re not going to do it overnight,” he said.
Tinley Park officials are expected to approve a new company, SafeSpeed, on Nov. 18.
Maher said some village officials previously touched on the subject of more cameras with the Chicago-based firm.
If approved, SafeSpeed would succeed Redflex Traffic Systems, which has operated the red light cameras on Harlem Avenue at 159th, 171st and 183rd streets under a four-year contract. The Tribune has extensively detailed the Australian-based company’s bribery scandal involving city of Chicago officials.
Tinley Park’s contract with Redflex expired in July, but the town was dealing with the company on a month-to-month basis, officials said.
Maher said SafeSpeed, one of four companies that bid for the contract, is willing to conduct traffic safety studies at intersections, in addition to the three on Harlem Avenue, if village officials think use of the devices would improve traffic at such cross streets.
He credited the company with taking “a little more holistic view of where to put cameras” than other companies.
Maher said Tinley Park’s three red light camera intersections are much safer today than before the cameras were installed. He cited “significant” declines in serious crashes such as “T-bone” collisions, in which one vehicle slams into the center of another.
The reduction in crashes coincides with the number of violations going down at the three intersections, he said. “As drivers become familiar with the fact the cameras are there, they behave differently.”
But while noting that drivers have become more cautious, he acknowledged that rear-end collisions have occurred, with drivers abruptly stopping as the light changes.
But Maher contends such crashes “have not been significant” and produce relatively minor injuries or damage.
SafeSpeed uses road-based sensor loops to detect vehicle movements at intersections. Movements are ignored until the signal turns red.
Once the light has changed, SafeSpeed’s red light enforcement cameras capture high-resolution, digital-color images of any vehicle proceeding through the intersection faster than 6 mph. The camera equipment records the date, time and location of all images related to the vehicle, including a close-up of the vehicle’s license plate.
Exceptions include vehicles stopped in an intersection for an emergency vehicle or funeral procession.
Red light camera company staff reviews violations and submit the approved ones electronically to Tinley Park Police Department for further review. The fine for a violation approved by the Police Department is $100.
The village averages $150,000 annually from the fines, but Maher said that amount “is not a whole lot of money” in terms of the village’s annual budget.
The real financial significance comes in saving the “astronomical” cost of placing a police officer at a location to monitor traffic 24 hours a day.
Maher said he would have had trouble when he joined the Village Board 10 years ago imagining that cameras would become such a regular security and law enforcement tool.
“Camera use is expanding,” he said, “and it’s going to continue expanding.”
BY DENNIS SULLIVAN SPECIAL TO THE TRIBUNE
November 7, 2014
Tinley Park might expand the number of red light camera intersections after a new provider has been hired, according to a village trustee.
But the trustee, Brian Maher, chairman of the Village Board’s Public Safety Committee, stressed that thorough study and discussion would precede any action.
“We’re not going to do it overnight,” he said.
Tinley Park officials are expected to approve a new company, SafeSpeed, on Nov. 18.
Maher said some village officials previously touched on the subject of more cameras with the Chicago-based firm.
If approved, SafeSpeed would succeed Redflex Traffic Systems, which has operated the red light cameras on Harlem Avenue at 159th, 171st and 183rd streets under a four-year contract. The Tribune has extensively detailed the Australian-based company’s bribery scandal involving city of Chicago officials.
Tinley Park’s contract with Redflex expired in July, but the town was dealing with the company on a month-to-month basis, officials said.
Maher said SafeSpeed, one of four companies that bid for the contract, is willing to conduct traffic safety studies at intersections, in addition to the three on Harlem Avenue, if village officials think use of the devices would improve traffic at such cross streets.
He credited the company with taking “a little more holistic view of where to put cameras” than other companies.
Maher said Tinley Park’s three red light camera intersections are much safer today than before the cameras were installed. He cited “significant” declines in serious crashes such as “T-bone” collisions, in which one vehicle slams into the center of another.
The reduction in crashes coincides with the number of violations going down at the three intersections, he said. “As drivers become familiar with the fact the cameras are there, they behave differently.”
But while noting that drivers have become more cautious, he acknowledged that rear-end collisions have occurred, with drivers abruptly stopping as the light changes.
But Maher contends such crashes “have not been significant” and produce relatively minor injuries or damage.
SafeSpeed uses road-based sensor loops to detect vehicle movements at intersections. Movements are ignored until the signal turns red.
Once the light has changed, SafeSpeed’s red light enforcement cameras capture high-resolution, digital-color images of any vehicle proceeding through the intersection faster than 6 mph. The camera equipment records the date, time and location of all images related to the vehicle, including a close-up of the vehicle’s license plate.
Exceptions include vehicles stopped in an intersection for an emergency vehicle or funeral procession.
Red light camera company staff reviews violations and submit the approved ones electronically to Tinley Park Police Department for further review. The fine for a violation approved by the Police Department is $100.
The village averages $150,000 annually from the fines, but Maher said that amount “is not a whole lot of money” in terms of the village’s annual budget.
The real financial significance comes in saving the “astronomical” cost of placing a police officer at a location to monitor traffic 24 hours a day.
Maher said he would have had trouble when he joined the Village Board 10 years ago imagining that cameras would become such a regular security and law enforcement tool.
“Camera use is expanding,” he said, “and it’s going to continue expanding.”
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Sun Times Editorial
Refund those unfair yellow-light tickets Editorial October 29, 2014 4:16PM Updated: November 5, 2014 10:11AM Chicago is on solid legal ground in hanging onto $7.7 million raked in by ticketing people who drove through shorter-than-advertised yellow lights. We can’t really disagree. And the city is on firm ground with the experts when it says the tenth-of-a-second shorter yellow — 2.9 seconds instead of 3 — is generally sufficient time for motorists going the speed limit to come to a safe stop. But here’s the point City Hall is ignoring completely as it happily pulls in those millions of dollars in fine: Huge numbers of Chicagoans don’t trust the fairness of the city’s entire red-light camera program, even if it helps make our streets safer. They believe City Hall’s real agenda is to raise money. And the city doesn’t do much to dispel such notions when it refuses to refund money from tickets issued this year when a yellow changed to red in less than three seconds, the city’s own announced standard. Even if we’re talking a tenth of a second. Previously, the city’s policy was that tickets issued when yellow lights lasted less than three seconds would be thrown out. We haven’t seen drivers carrying stopwatches, so we doubt they know as they cruise through an intersection whether the yellow light lasted a full three seconds. But you can bet many of the drivers who got one of those 77,000 tickets under the change figured it out when they watched the video of the infraction later. And a lot of them saw this as further proof that City Hall is out to get them. At a recent City Council hearing, Department of Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld said the city plans to hang onto the money because the shorter yellow lights meet national standards. Try telling that to aggrieved Chicago motorists. It won’t take three seconds for them to conclude they’re being cheated. |
Tribune Story
Chicago will keep $7.7M from quiet change in yellow light standard October 29, 2014 By Hal Dardick, Chicago Tribune 'They were legitimate tickets, and we stand behind them," city official says about lower yellow light times Chicago won't refund $7.7 million it got from red light camera tickets after yellow light standard lowered Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration will not refund $7.7 million in red light camera tickets it collected after quietly lowering the yellow light standard, the city's transportation chief said Tuesday. The mayor told the Tribune earlier this month that he would consider refunds, but Chicago Department of Transportation chief Rebekah Scheinfeld made it clear that would not be happening — even though the city made a determination in September to restore the longer yellow light standard. "These were violations of the law, they were legitimate tickets and we stand behind them," Scheinfeld said at a City Council hearing on red light cameras. "But going forward we want to make sure the situation is not distracted with continuing questions about this, and that we have full public confidence." She was responding to a question from Ald. Jason Ervin, 28th, during the Pedestrian and Traffic Safety Committee hearing in the wake of a series of Chicago Tribune investigative reports. Those stories documented alleged bribes, unexplained spikes in tickets and a $7.7 million windfall for the city this year from the 77,000 tickets issued under the yellow light change. The city had previously ordered its longtime camera vendor, Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., to throw out any tickets if the yellow light interval fell below the city's three-second standard, according to city Inspector General Joseph Ferguson. But when new vendor Xerox State & Local Traffic Solutions took over for the fired Redflex in February, the city directed the vendor to accept tickets that showed yellow light times above 2.9 seconds, Ferguson said in a recent review prompted by Tribune stories. Scheinfeld told aldermen Tuesday that the decision was based on the advice of "professional engineers" working for CDOT but did not identify who specifically in the Emanuel administration ordered Xerox to go with the lower standard. She repeated her previous statements that the city relied on national electrical standards that allow for deviations in the hundredths or thousandths of a second. She said the time of yellow interval for most of the tickets fell milliseconds below the 3-second threshold and were "imperceptible to the human eye." Don Bransford, a red light camera critic who testified at the hearing, said the extra $7.7 million "coincidentally" helped the city meet projected red light camera revenue for the year. But Scheinfeld said the decision was made by CDOT based on engineering standards "independent ... of the Department of Finance." Most of the aldermen at the hearing, however, were supportive of the program, saying it has helped make the city safer. Three aldermen, including Ervin, said they were hit in accidents at intersections and were glad the city has been taking steps since 2003 through the system to enhance safety. "I love the red light cameras," said Ald. Deb Mell, 33rd. "I think it's great. I think people drive too fast in the city." Nearly all of the 1,717 tickets generated by a camera at Halsted and 119th over 52 days in 2011 were for right turns on red. Drivers appealed 242 tickets from the spike; 109 were tossed out. [email protected] |
October 28, 2914 Citizens To Abolish Red Light Cameras Hold Press Conference Before Red Light Camera Hearings
Red Light Camera Hearing by Council Committee Scheduled For Tuesday
By Mike Brockway on October 24, 2014 11:15am
CHICAGO — After months of scandal, controversy and questions about Chicago's red light camera program's integrity the City Council will hold a hearing on Chicago’s red light camera program next week.
Alderman Walter Burnett (27th), Chairman of the Committee on Pedestrian and Traffic Safety, says he invited Inspector General Joseph Ferguson to present his office's recent findings and recommendations at a hearing Tuesday, October 28th at 3 p.m. at City Hall.
"We need to make sure everything is fair and decent for everyone," said Burnett. "We definitely don't want people running the red light but at the same time things need to be fair."
Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd) says it’s about time. He and members of the council’s Progressive Caucus have tried to get hearings several times over the past two years of controversy.
“It’s years overdue,” says Waguespack. “With all the issues surrounding the cameras aldermen knew something has to change with this program. It’s been building up for so many years. We’ve been waiting for this a long time.”
Over the past two years, a series of Tribune stories have exposed an alleged bribery scandal involving the city’s RLC vendor, Redflex Traffic Systems. The reports led to the company being banned from holding a city contract, an Inspector General investigation and eventually resulted in federal indictments of a former city official and ex-company executive.
Another Tribune story involving mysterious spikes in red light tickets andDNAInfo coverage of tickets issued in connection with quick-changing yellow lights spurred even more Inspector General scrutiny.
One person who hopes to testify is Barnet Fagel, an anti-camera activist who helps drivers fight the $100 tickets. Fagel helped bring attention to the over77,000 red light camera tickets issued in 2014 in which yellow lights changed faster that the federal minimum time of three seconds.
“Give me an opportunity to talk and I’ll talk,” Fagel says. “The 2.9 second yellow lights are merely the tip of the iceberg. I’ve been timing these signals for years.”
Burnett says he's open to the idea of giving refunds, nearly $8 million dollars in fines, to the tens of thousands of drivers who were ticketed this year at traffic lights with short yellows.
"All those questions will come up," says Burnett. "You'll have all my colleagues asking pertinent questions."
In advance of next week’s hearings, Scott Davis of Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras says his group is planning a protest in Burnett’s ward on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the intersection of Ashland and Ogden Avenues. The group has been holding protests the past year across the city.
The group has been trying to convince city council members to take a pledge to vote to abolish the city’s red light and speed camera programs. Davis says so far his group has been able to get Ald. Toni Foulkes (15th) and Roderick Sawyer (6th) onboard and now wants Burnett to sign, too.
“When we heard Burnett was going to have hearings we wanted to put pressure on him by driving calls to his office,” said Davis. “We want him to sign the pledge.”
While looking forward to attending Tuesday’s hearings, Fagel is not optimistic the hearings will result in constructive changes to the city's red light camera program.
“No — nothing is going to change,” says Fagel, alleging that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is "pulling all the strings and pushing all the buttons.”
By Mike Brockway on October 24, 2014 11:15am
CHICAGO — After months of scandal, controversy and questions about Chicago's red light camera program's integrity the City Council will hold a hearing on Chicago’s red light camera program next week.
Alderman Walter Burnett (27th), Chairman of the Committee on Pedestrian and Traffic Safety, says he invited Inspector General Joseph Ferguson to present his office's recent findings and recommendations at a hearing Tuesday, October 28th at 3 p.m. at City Hall.
"We need to make sure everything is fair and decent for everyone," said Burnett. "We definitely don't want people running the red light but at the same time things need to be fair."
Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd) says it’s about time. He and members of the council’s Progressive Caucus have tried to get hearings several times over the past two years of controversy.
“It’s years overdue,” says Waguespack. “With all the issues surrounding the cameras aldermen knew something has to change with this program. It’s been building up for so many years. We’ve been waiting for this a long time.”
Over the past two years, a series of Tribune stories have exposed an alleged bribery scandal involving the city’s RLC vendor, Redflex Traffic Systems. The reports led to the company being banned from holding a city contract, an Inspector General investigation and eventually resulted in federal indictments of a former city official and ex-company executive.
Another Tribune story involving mysterious spikes in red light tickets andDNAInfo coverage of tickets issued in connection with quick-changing yellow lights spurred even more Inspector General scrutiny.
One person who hopes to testify is Barnet Fagel, an anti-camera activist who helps drivers fight the $100 tickets. Fagel helped bring attention to the over77,000 red light camera tickets issued in 2014 in which yellow lights changed faster that the federal minimum time of three seconds.
“Give me an opportunity to talk and I’ll talk,” Fagel says. “The 2.9 second yellow lights are merely the tip of the iceberg. I’ve been timing these signals for years.”
Burnett says he's open to the idea of giving refunds, nearly $8 million dollars in fines, to the tens of thousands of drivers who were ticketed this year at traffic lights with short yellows.
"All those questions will come up," says Burnett. "You'll have all my colleagues asking pertinent questions."
In advance of next week’s hearings, Scott Davis of Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras says his group is planning a protest in Burnett’s ward on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the intersection of Ashland and Ogden Avenues. The group has been holding protests the past year across the city.
The group has been trying to convince city council members to take a pledge to vote to abolish the city’s red light and speed camera programs. Davis says so far his group has been able to get Ald. Toni Foulkes (15th) and Roderick Sawyer (6th) onboard and now wants Burnett to sign, too.
“When we heard Burnett was going to have hearings we wanted to put pressure on him by driving calls to his office,” said Davis. “We want him to sign the pledge.”
While looking forward to attending Tuesday’s hearings, Fagel is not optimistic the hearings will result in constructive changes to the city's red light camera program.
“No — nothing is going to change,” says Fagel, alleging that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is "pulling all the strings and pushing all the buttons.”
October 17, 2014
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Rahm may have underestimated the citizens of Chicago
October 16th was a another big day for Rahm and Traffic Photo Enforcement in Chicago.
- He presented his budget to the City Council and in that budget he had to admit the Speed Camera program is not going as planned. Revenues were projected at $70 million this year but without comment he announced the new projection is $40 million for 2014 and $42.5 2015.
- He then commented about the shortened yellow light debacle that questions $7.7 million of the $65 million the Red Light program will take from drivers in 2014.
So, what did Rahm tell the Aldermen and the citizens?
1. The Speed Camera Program is not working as planned but we are not going to give you details on how and why but we plan to expand it.
2. A problem has been found in the CURRENT Red Light Program and while it has been known for months he doesn't know who did it or what to do about it.
How many times are we to be asked to accept the "I Don't Know Excuse" from people we elect and pay to know? It took 10 years for the Tribune and Inspector General to get access to the data that proves the mismanagement of the Half Billion Dollar Red Light Camera scam. Does Rahm really think we are going to wait 10 years to learn whats gone wrong with the Speed Scameras?
It's time to stop the madness starting with:
A moratorium on any new Red light or Speed Cameras.
Give the people wrongly fined their $7.7 million dollars back
Develop a plan to end these flawed programs and put in place a plan to deactivate them.
WATCHDOG UPDATE 10/16/14
Fines on 2.9-second yellows may be refunded
Mayor mulls what to do with $7.7 million netted from discredited red light policy
By John Byrne Tribune reporter
Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday said he’s not ruling out refunds on 77,000 tickets drivers got after his administration quietly lowered the city’s three-second yellow light standard earlier this year.
In his first comments on the latest controversy surrounding the city’s red light camera program, Emanuel told the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board he restored the three-second rule on the yellow lights as a matter of public trust.
Asked whether the money should be refunded because the city has changed back the yellow light rules, Emanuel said he hasn’t “made a judgment” on giving back the $7.7 million from tickets motorists got while driving through signals with yellow lights that were at least 2.9 seconds long.
“I have to go talk to other people that operate this,” the mayor said. “And also do we want to run a process where they get a chance to go back and look at it. I can’t make a decision on $7 million that hasn’t been reviewed. So I don’t know. That’s what it does. I don’t know, and I’ll go talk to people about it.”
The Emanuel administration quietly issued a new, shorter yellow light standard when the city began the transition from red light camera vendor Redflex Traffic Systems to Xerox State & Local Solutions in February. Confronted by complaints from hearing officers and questions from the Tribune about the tickets issued at shorter yellow lights, the administration reversed course in September and told Xerox to reestablish the three-second standard.
On Wednesday, Emanuel said the city switched back “because trust is the most important” thing.
Last week, Inspector General Joseph Ferguson issued a review that found that when the city was handing over the contract to Xerox, the administration directed the company to accept red light camera violations for incidents with yellow light times above 2.9 seconds, one-tenth of a second less than the minimum under Redflex. The city previously had told Redflex not to submit tickets with yellows of less than three seconds.
Despite Ferguson’s report, on Wednesday Emanuel said he didn’t know how the switch to a 2.9-second standard was made.
“I don’t know whether the Department of Transportation negotiated that with Xerox or how that happened. So I’ll find out. I don’t have the answer for you on that,” he said.
Last year, Emanuel fired Red-flex amid allegations that executives at the company gave former city transportation manager John Bills cash, vacation trips and an Arizona condominium in exchange for helping the company win and grow the contract into the nation’s largest automated enforcement program. Bills and former Redflex CEO Karen Finley have pleaded not guilty to federal bribery and conspiracy charges.
In July, a Tribune investigation exposed suspicious spikes in tickets from dozens of red light cameras that national experts said were likely the result of faulty equipment or human tinkering.
The administration offered to review about 16,000 tickets from the most dramatic spikes identified by the Tribune and announced earlier this month that 3,000 drivers caught in spikes had responded to an offer to review their tickets. It said 126 were entitled to refunds.
In his review, Ferguson said City Hall’s management of the red light camera program was “fundamentally deficient.”[email protected] 1tfrcg+654-*e
Fines on 2.9-second yellows may be refunded
Mayor mulls what to do with $7.7 million netted from discredited red light policy
By John Byrne Tribune reporter
Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday said he’s not ruling out refunds on 77,000 tickets drivers got after his administration quietly lowered the city’s three-second yellow light standard earlier this year.
In his first comments on the latest controversy surrounding the city’s red light camera program, Emanuel told the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board he restored the three-second rule on the yellow lights as a matter of public trust.
Asked whether the money should be refunded because the city has changed back the yellow light rules, Emanuel said he hasn’t “made a judgment” on giving back the $7.7 million from tickets motorists got while driving through signals with yellow lights that were at least 2.9 seconds long.
“I have to go talk to other people that operate this,” the mayor said. “And also do we want to run a process where they get a chance to go back and look at it. I can’t make a decision on $7 million that hasn’t been reviewed. So I don’t know. That’s what it does. I don’t know, and I’ll go talk to people about it.”
The Emanuel administration quietly issued a new, shorter yellow light standard when the city began the transition from red light camera vendor Redflex Traffic Systems to Xerox State & Local Solutions in February. Confronted by complaints from hearing officers and questions from the Tribune about the tickets issued at shorter yellow lights, the administration reversed course in September and told Xerox to reestablish the three-second standard.
On Wednesday, Emanuel said the city switched back “because trust is the most important” thing.
Last week, Inspector General Joseph Ferguson issued a review that found that when the city was handing over the contract to Xerox, the administration directed the company to accept red light camera violations for incidents with yellow light times above 2.9 seconds, one-tenth of a second less than the minimum under Redflex. The city previously had told Redflex not to submit tickets with yellows of less than three seconds.
Despite Ferguson’s report, on Wednesday Emanuel said he didn’t know how the switch to a 2.9-second standard was made.
“I don’t know whether the Department of Transportation negotiated that with Xerox or how that happened. So I’ll find out. I don’t have the answer for you on that,” he said.
Last year, Emanuel fired Red-flex amid allegations that executives at the company gave former city transportation manager John Bills cash, vacation trips and an Arizona condominium in exchange for helping the company win and grow the contract into the nation’s largest automated enforcement program. Bills and former Redflex CEO Karen Finley have pleaded not guilty to federal bribery and conspiracy charges.
In July, a Tribune investigation exposed suspicious spikes in tickets from dozens of red light cameras that national experts said were likely the result of faulty equipment or human tinkering.
The administration offered to review about 16,000 tickets from the most dramatic spikes identified by the Tribune and announced earlier this month that 3,000 drivers caught in spikes had responded to an offer to review their tickets. It said 126 were entitled to refunds.
In his review, Ferguson said City Hall’s management of the red light camera program was “fundamentally deficient.”[email protected] 1tfrcg+654-*e
"Especially in Chicago". That's how Time Magazine talks about the Red Light Camera program in Chicago. It's just accepted nationally that Chicago's program is a scam and it's all about the money.
Time Magazine
10/14/14
Cities Have Found a New Way to Take Your Money
Josh Sanburn@joshsanburn
1:42 PM ET
All yellow traffic lights are not created equal, it seems. Especially in Chicago.
With little notice at the time, this spring the city shortened the duration of its yellow lights by a fraction of a second. The change was slight: the yellow lights lasted 2.9 seconds before turning red instead of the previous city-required minimum of three seconds. But the effect for the cash-starved city was real: nearly $8 million from an additional 77,000 tickets, according to the city’s inspector general.
All of those $100 tickets were issued after cameras installed at intersections caught the drivers as they passed through. These systems, known as red light cameras, are an increasingly controversial tactic for policing roadways. Established in the name of public safety, critics contend the cameras have become little more than a way for municipalities to funnel money into their coffers.
“If the machine is set to catch more people and generate more revenue, then it does not really seem to be about safety but about revenue,” says Joseph Schofer, a professor of transportation at Northwestern University.
Chicago isn’t the first municipality to benefit from shaving time off of yellow traffic lights. In 2011, the Florida Department of Transportationsecretly reduced its policy on the length of yellow lights, likely bringing millions of dollars in additional revenue to the state.
There is no federal rule for how long a yellow light should be illuminated, but the U.S. Department of Transportation recommends three to six seconds. Nationwide, a minimum of three seconds is generally considered standard. John Bowman, a spokesperson for the National Motorists Association, which opposes the cameras, says the organization routinely gets calls from people saying they received a red light camera ticket, believing the yellow light was too short.
“I don’t think you’re ever going to get a public official on the record saying, ‘We shortened them to make more money,’” Bowman says. “But I think that clearly goes on.”
Red light cameras gained popularity in the 1990s after New York became the first U.S. city to install a network. The initial motivation was safety, says Hani Mahmassani, the director of the Northwestern University Transportation Center. The hope was that cameras would deter drivers from running red lights if they knew it would lead to a ticket. But in the 200os, as the popularity of the cameras grew, cities and the companies that manufactured, installed and helped operate the cameras adopted a revenue-sharing model. The more violations caught by the cameras, the more money the city and the businesses stood to make.
“That’s when it became a greed thing,” Mahmassani says.
By the end of the decade, red light camera networks were in hundreds of municipalities. Today, 499 towns and cities have adopted them, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
While the potential for profit is clear, the public safety value of red light cameras is fuzzy. Studies on whether red light cameras actually enhance safety are mixed. Several studies conducted by IIHS, which supports the cameras, show that crashes have not only decreased in intersections that utilize the cameras but that vehicle-related deaths have declined in those cities as well. But other research has shown that the cameras actually increase rear-end collisions because they force drivers to stop more quickly over fear that they’ll run the light and get ticketed, causing tailing motorists to smack into them.
And many of the systems have had other problems. In New Jersey,17,000 motorists never received tickets for running a red light, while in Chicago, a former city official and the former CEO of Redflex Traffic Systems have been indicted as part of an alleged bribery scheme. There have also been reports of unexplained spikes in tickets given out by the system.
All of which has led to a growing backlash against the cameras. Red light cameras are currently banned in seven states, and others are considering outlawing them. In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie says it’s unlikely he’ll extend the state’s red light cameras beyond their expiration date at the end of the year. In Ohio, state lawmakers are looking at banning them by requiring speeding or red light tickets to be handed out in person by officers. And in Chicago, the city said it will no longer ticket motorists who breeze through the shorter yellow. But it’s keeping the money from the ones it already issued.
10/14/14
Cities Have Found a New Way to Take Your Money
Josh Sanburn@joshsanburn
1:42 PM ET
All yellow traffic lights are not created equal, it seems. Especially in Chicago.
With little notice at the time, this spring the city shortened the duration of its yellow lights by a fraction of a second. The change was slight: the yellow lights lasted 2.9 seconds before turning red instead of the previous city-required minimum of three seconds. But the effect for the cash-starved city was real: nearly $8 million from an additional 77,000 tickets, according to the city’s inspector general.
All of those $100 tickets were issued after cameras installed at intersections caught the drivers as they passed through. These systems, known as red light cameras, are an increasingly controversial tactic for policing roadways. Established in the name of public safety, critics contend the cameras have become little more than a way for municipalities to funnel money into their coffers.
“If the machine is set to catch more people and generate more revenue, then it does not really seem to be about safety but about revenue,” says Joseph Schofer, a professor of transportation at Northwestern University.
Chicago isn’t the first municipality to benefit from shaving time off of yellow traffic lights. In 2011, the Florida Department of Transportationsecretly reduced its policy on the length of yellow lights, likely bringing millions of dollars in additional revenue to the state.
There is no federal rule for how long a yellow light should be illuminated, but the U.S. Department of Transportation recommends three to six seconds. Nationwide, a minimum of three seconds is generally considered standard. John Bowman, a spokesperson for the National Motorists Association, which opposes the cameras, says the organization routinely gets calls from people saying they received a red light camera ticket, believing the yellow light was too short.
“I don’t think you’re ever going to get a public official on the record saying, ‘We shortened them to make more money,’” Bowman says. “But I think that clearly goes on.”
Red light cameras gained popularity in the 1990s after New York became the first U.S. city to install a network. The initial motivation was safety, says Hani Mahmassani, the director of the Northwestern University Transportation Center. The hope was that cameras would deter drivers from running red lights if they knew it would lead to a ticket. But in the 200os, as the popularity of the cameras grew, cities and the companies that manufactured, installed and helped operate the cameras adopted a revenue-sharing model. The more violations caught by the cameras, the more money the city and the businesses stood to make.
“That’s when it became a greed thing,” Mahmassani says.
By the end of the decade, red light camera networks were in hundreds of municipalities. Today, 499 towns and cities have adopted them, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
While the potential for profit is clear, the public safety value of red light cameras is fuzzy. Studies on whether red light cameras actually enhance safety are mixed. Several studies conducted by IIHS, which supports the cameras, show that crashes have not only decreased in intersections that utilize the cameras but that vehicle-related deaths have declined in those cities as well. But other research has shown that the cameras actually increase rear-end collisions because they force drivers to stop more quickly over fear that they’ll run the light and get ticketed, causing tailing motorists to smack into them.
And many of the systems have had other problems. In New Jersey,17,000 motorists never received tickets for running a red light, while in Chicago, a former city official and the former CEO of Redflex Traffic Systems have been indicted as part of an alleged bribery scheme. There have also been reports of unexplained spikes in tickets given out by the system.
All of which has led to a growing backlash against the cameras. Red light cameras are currently banned in seven states, and others are considering outlawing them. In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie says it’s unlikely he’ll extend the state’s red light cameras beyond their expiration date at the end of the year. In Ohio, state lawmakers are looking at banning them by requiring speeding or red light tickets to be handed out in person by officers. And in Chicago, the city said it will no longer ticket motorists who breeze through the shorter yellow. But it’s keeping the money from the ones it already issued.
Yellow lights — and green cash
City ends policy that altered timing, netted it nearly $8 million
By David Kidwell Tribune reporter
10/12/14
Confronted with questions about a flurry of red light camera tickets stamped with yellow times below the 3-second minimum, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration said the fluctuation of hundredths of a second was normal — imperceptible to anyone behind the wheel of a car.
It turns out that fraction of a second makes a big difference to drivers and to the city’s coffers.
The Emanuel administration on Friday acknowledged that it had changed the rules on what qualifies for a $100 ticket, quietly directing its new red light camera vendor to tag drivers even when the duration of a yellow light slips just below the 3-second standard set by the city.
The policy generated 77,000 more tickets and nearly $8 million in revenue for the city over the last six months.
Three days after facing Tribune questions about the short yellow lights, the administration just as quietly suspended the practice on Sept. 22. Called out weeks later by Inspector General Joseph Ferguson, administration officials said they would end the practice for good but keep the money.
“My guess is that any safety benefit they can show because of those 77,000 tickets is either nonexistent or very minimal, but they sure do have $8 million more in revenue to show for it,” said Joseph Schofer, a Northwestern University engineering professor and one of several traffic experts who have reviewed the Tribune’s analysis of the camera program.
Emanuel’s back-and-forth yellow light policy casts further doubt about the fairness of Chicago’s decade-old camera system, long billed as being about public safety and allegedly built on a bribery scheme at City Hall. It is also the latest example of inconsistent enforcement in a program the inspector general says was plagued by city mismanagement, failed oversight and a focus on keeping the cameras rolling.
In July, a 10-month Tribune investigation exposed suspicious spikes in tickets at dozens of red light cameras around the city that national experts said were likely the result of faulty equipment or human tinkering.
The inspector general issued a “limited-scope” review Friday of questions raised by that report, finding that City Hall’s management of the program was “fundamentally deficient” and its oversight was “insufficient to identify and resolve the types of issues identified in the Tribune report.”
Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld agreed with the broad outlines of Ferguson’s review, saying past management of the program was deficient. She wrote in her response to the report: “The city’s ongoing reviews do not reveal any fundamental concerns about the validity of the program.
“However, a sound public safety program depends on public trust, and we must work harder to maintain the public’s confidence in the program.”
In the 25-page report, Ferguson suggested the city had never looked for the kind of surges in ticketing the Tribune found but instead focused on the opposite problem — intersections where ticket numbers were low or cameras weren’t functioning.
City transportation “staff saw their role at that time as keeping the systems operational rather than ensuring that the equipment functioned accurately,” he wrote.
Ferguson said he could only find some answers for three of the 12 most dramatic spikes highlighted in the Tribune’s investigation, which involved more than 13,000 tickets, most generated by Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. He said missing maintenance records stymied his efforts to discover what happened and why.
The missing material included records that the new vendor — Xerox State & Local Solutions — erased from camera system hard drives in order to reuse them when the firm took over the contract in late February, Ferguson said.
The inspector general said Transportation Department officials helped him solve the mystery of the most dramatic spike in the Tribune’s report, at Halsted and 119th streets, where one camera in 2011 tagged more drivers in a 52-day period than it had in the previous year and a half combined.
The problem, he wrote, was a dramatic drop in the camera system’s trigger speed that caught 1,618 drivers who would not have been ticketed under the camera’s normal settings.
If a car is moving faster than a preset “trigger speed” when it approaches an intersection, sensors activate the camera. According to Ferguson’s report, the trigger speed during the spike from April to June 2011 mysteriously dropped from 15 mph to as low as 5 mph.
“Available maintenance records do not document when, why or how the trigger speed was reset to 15 mph, or who, if anyone, at CDOT or Redflex was aware of the issue,” he wrote, adding that a lack of records means the drivers ticketed during the spike may never find out the motivation behind the change.
On the North Side, a spike at 800 W. Fullerton Ave. was caused by a damaged traffic light that wasn’t visible to drivers at the intersection, Ferguson wrote. That two-day spike tagged 64 drivers at a camera that normally only tagged a few motorists a day.
Ferguson wrote that another light at the intersection was functioning and visible, and CDOT said the spike “may have resulted from inattentive drivers ignoring the still-functioning traffic signal.”
The inspector general blamed a 12-day spike at 6200 N. Lincoln Ave. on a faulty sensor in the right turn lane of the three-lane roadway that only worked intermittently for years.
The 2012 spike happened when the so-called loop detector mysteriously started working again, catching drivers rolling through right turns in a lane that had not been enforced for months. An average of 47 drivers a day were ticketed, but Ferguson said what looked like a spike was actually closer to what would have been normal if the equipment had been working.
He said that had the sensor been working full time, 45,444 more tickets would have been issued.
Scheinfeld agreed with Ferguson’s finding that the city could have been issuing more tickets.
“These issues demonstrate that the past management of the program was insufficient,” Scheinfeld wrote in her response. “Although the program has shown dramatic improvements in safety, due to those technical and management deficiencies the program was actually under-enforcing violations.”
But national traffic experts say that the anomalies found by the Tribune run counter to what they would expect in a well-performing camera program aimed at improving safety by training drivers to improve their behavior over time. If the camera program is operating as it should, tickets should decline as drivers learn to adjust.
Emanuel has sought to blame any problems with the program on Redflex, the vendor he fired amid allegations that top executives showered former city transportation manager John Bills with cash, vacation trips and an Arizona condominium in exchange for helping the company win and grow the contract into the nation’s largest automated enforcement program. Bills and former Red-flex CEO Karen Finley have pleaded not guilty to federal bribery and conspiracy charges.
But Ferguson found the latest controversy stemmed from decisions Emanuel’s administration made when it was handing the program over to Xerox in February. He said the city had previously ordered Redflex not to issue a ticket if it captured a driver in a red light violation where the yellow light lasted less than 3 seconds.
“However, after Xerox took over the operations of the RLC program, the City directed Xerox to accept RLC violations with yellow light times above 2.9 seconds,” Ferguson wrote.
The city said it relied on a national electrical industry standard that allows for deviations in the hundredths or thousandths of a second. Ferguson recommended the city should change the standard back “in order to improve public confidence” in the camera program.
The Tribune reported Thursday that its review of 1,500 overturned tickets since April revealed evidence that the city had changed the rules on yellow light times when Xerox took over. In more than 200 of those cases, city hearing officers blamed yellow light times under the 3-second minimum required by the city.
Scheinfeld declined to answer Tribune questions last week about whether the city had changed the rules. But she said the yellow light times being rejected by judges as too short are valid because they fall within an allowable variance of hundredths or thousandths of a second caused by fluctuations in electrical power.
Scheinfeld maintained in her letter to Ferguson that the sub-3-second tickets were valid but acknowledged the city had quietly suspended the lower threshold in September, after questions were raised by hearing officers and the media. She said the city had now ordered Xerox “to stop processing any violation with an amber measurement under 3.0 seconds.”
Asked why hearing officers hired by Emanuel’s administration to enforce the traffic laws are routinely throwing out the tickets if the time is allowable, Scheinfeld told the Tribune in a Sept. 19 interview that the hearing officers are independent and the matter was being looked at by the inspector general.
“I can’t speak for their reasoning. They are doing that independently, that is the whole point of the administrative hearing so people have an appeal,” Scheinfeld said in the interview. “Those are independent actors that are going to be using their independent judgment.”
But Ferguson said in his Friday report that the city’s Law Department had contacted the Administrative Hearings department to set up training for the hearing officers regarding yellow light times. Ferguson said the training had not yet been scheduled when the city decided to suspend the new yellow light standard on Sept. 22. [email protected] Red light camera stories
• To read the Tribune’s past coverage of red light cameras in Chicago, go to chicagotribune.com / redlight. The site includes two years of stories that prompted federal bribery indictments and an ongoing investigation of unexplained spikes in tickets at some Chicago intersections. The site includes a searchable database of tickets included in spikes.
• Join members of the Tribune’s reporting team at Tribune Tower on Oct. 27 for a discussion of the ongoing red light camera story. Tickets for the Tribune Press Pass event cost $10 in advance and are available at tribnation.com .
CHRIS SWEDA/TRIBUNE For six months, the city let its red light camera vendor ticket drivers when the yellow light lasted just below 3 seconds, leading to 77,000 more tickets.
City ends policy that altered timing, netted it nearly $8 million
By David Kidwell Tribune reporter
10/12/14
Confronted with questions about a flurry of red light camera tickets stamped with yellow times below the 3-second minimum, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration said the fluctuation of hundredths of a second was normal — imperceptible to anyone behind the wheel of a car.
It turns out that fraction of a second makes a big difference to drivers and to the city’s coffers.
The Emanuel administration on Friday acknowledged that it had changed the rules on what qualifies for a $100 ticket, quietly directing its new red light camera vendor to tag drivers even when the duration of a yellow light slips just below the 3-second standard set by the city.
The policy generated 77,000 more tickets and nearly $8 million in revenue for the city over the last six months.
Three days after facing Tribune questions about the short yellow lights, the administration just as quietly suspended the practice on Sept. 22. Called out weeks later by Inspector General Joseph Ferguson, administration officials said they would end the practice for good but keep the money.
“My guess is that any safety benefit they can show because of those 77,000 tickets is either nonexistent or very minimal, but they sure do have $8 million more in revenue to show for it,” said Joseph Schofer, a Northwestern University engineering professor and one of several traffic experts who have reviewed the Tribune’s analysis of the camera program.
Emanuel’s back-and-forth yellow light policy casts further doubt about the fairness of Chicago’s decade-old camera system, long billed as being about public safety and allegedly built on a bribery scheme at City Hall. It is also the latest example of inconsistent enforcement in a program the inspector general says was plagued by city mismanagement, failed oversight and a focus on keeping the cameras rolling.
In July, a 10-month Tribune investigation exposed suspicious spikes in tickets at dozens of red light cameras around the city that national experts said were likely the result of faulty equipment or human tinkering.
The inspector general issued a “limited-scope” review Friday of questions raised by that report, finding that City Hall’s management of the program was “fundamentally deficient” and its oversight was “insufficient to identify and resolve the types of issues identified in the Tribune report.”
Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld agreed with the broad outlines of Ferguson’s review, saying past management of the program was deficient. She wrote in her response to the report: “The city’s ongoing reviews do not reveal any fundamental concerns about the validity of the program.
“However, a sound public safety program depends on public trust, and we must work harder to maintain the public’s confidence in the program.”
In the 25-page report, Ferguson suggested the city had never looked for the kind of surges in ticketing the Tribune found but instead focused on the opposite problem — intersections where ticket numbers were low or cameras weren’t functioning.
City transportation “staff saw their role at that time as keeping the systems operational rather than ensuring that the equipment functioned accurately,” he wrote.
Ferguson said he could only find some answers for three of the 12 most dramatic spikes highlighted in the Tribune’s investigation, which involved more than 13,000 tickets, most generated by Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. He said missing maintenance records stymied his efforts to discover what happened and why.
The missing material included records that the new vendor — Xerox State & Local Solutions — erased from camera system hard drives in order to reuse them when the firm took over the contract in late February, Ferguson said.
The inspector general said Transportation Department officials helped him solve the mystery of the most dramatic spike in the Tribune’s report, at Halsted and 119th streets, where one camera in 2011 tagged more drivers in a 52-day period than it had in the previous year and a half combined.
The problem, he wrote, was a dramatic drop in the camera system’s trigger speed that caught 1,618 drivers who would not have been ticketed under the camera’s normal settings.
If a car is moving faster than a preset “trigger speed” when it approaches an intersection, sensors activate the camera. According to Ferguson’s report, the trigger speed during the spike from April to June 2011 mysteriously dropped from 15 mph to as low as 5 mph.
“Available maintenance records do not document when, why or how the trigger speed was reset to 15 mph, or who, if anyone, at CDOT or Redflex was aware of the issue,” he wrote, adding that a lack of records means the drivers ticketed during the spike may never find out the motivation behind the change.
On the North Side, a spike at 800 W. Fullerton Ave. was caused by a damaged traffic light that wasn’t visible to drivers at the intersection, Ferguson wrote. That two-day spike tagged 64 drivers at a camera that normally only tagged a few motorists a day.
Ferguson wrote that another light at the intersection was functioning and visible, and CDOT said the spike “may have resulted from inattentive drivers ignoring the still-functioning traffic signal.”
The inspector general blamed a 12-day spike at 6200 N. Lincoln Ave. on a faulty sensor in the right turn lane of the three-lane roadway that only worked intermittently for years.
The 2012 spike happened when the so-called loop detector mysteriously started working again, catching drivers rolling through right turns in a lane that had not been enforced for months. An average of 47 drivers a day were ticketed, but Ferguson said what looked like a spike was actually closer to what would have been normal if the equipment had been working.
He said that had the sensor been working full time, 45,444 more tickets would have been issued.
Scheinfeld agreed with Ferguson’s finding that the city could have been issuing more tickets.
“These issues demonstrate that the past management of the program was insufficient,” Scheinfeld wrote in her response. “Although the program has shown dramatic improvements in safety, due to those technical and management deficiencies the program was actually under-enforcing violations.”
But national traffic experts say that the anomalies found by the Tribune run counter to what they would expect in a well-performing camera program aimed at improving safety by training drivers to improve their behavior over time. If the camera program is operating as it should, tickets should decline as drivers learn to adjust.
Emanuel has sought to blame any problems with the program on Redflex, the vendor he fired amid allegations that top executives showered former city transportation manager John Bills with cash, vacation trips and an Arizona condominium in exchange for helping the company win and grow the contract into the nation’s largest automated enforcement program. Bills and former Red-flex CEO Karen Finley have pleaded not guilty to federal bribery and conspiracy charges.
But Ferguson found the latest controversy stemmed from decisions Emanuel’s administration made when it was handing the program over to Xerox in February. He said the city had previously ordered Redflex not to issue a ticket if it captured a driver in a red light violation where the yellow light lasted less than 3 seconds.
“However, after Xerox took over the operations of the RLC program, the City directed Xerox to accept RLC violations with yellow light times above 2.9 seconds,” Ferguson wrote.
The city said it relied on a national electrical industry standard that allows for deviations in the hundredths or thousandths of a second. Ferguson recommended the city should change the standard back “in order to improve public confidence” in the camera program.
The Tribune reported Thursday that its review of 1,500 overturned tickets since April revealed evidence that the city had changed the rules on yellow light times when Xerox took over. In more than 200 of those cases, city hearing officers blamed yellow light times under the 3-second minimum required by the city.
Scheinfeld declined to answer Tribune questions last week about whether the city had changed the rules. But she said the yellow light times being rejected by judges as too short are valid because they fall within an allowable variance of hundredths or thousandths of a second caused by fluctuations in electrical power.
Scheinfeld maintained in her letter to Ferguson that the sub-3-second tickets were valid but acknowledged the city had quietly suspended the lower threshold in September, after questions were raised by hearing officers and the media. She said the city had now ordered Xerox “to stop processing any violation with an amber measurement under 3.0 seconds.”
Asked why hearing officers hired by Emanuel’s administration to enforce the traffic laws are routinely throwing out the tickets if the time is allowable, Scheinfeld told the Tribune in a Sept. 19 interview that the hearing officers are independent and the matter was being looked at by the inspector general.
“I can’t speak for their reasoning. They are doing that independently, that is the whole point of the administrative hearing so people have an appeal,” Scheinfeld said in the interview. “Those are independent actors that are going to be using their independent judgment.”
But Ferguson said in his Friday report that the city’s Law Department had contacted the Administrative Hearings department to set up training for the hearing officers regarding yellow light times. Ferguson said the training had not yet been scheduled when the city decided to suspend the new yellow light standard on Sept. 22. [email protected] Red light camera stories
• To read the Tribune’s past coverage of red light cameras in Chicago, go to chicagotribune.com / redlight. The site includes two years of stories that prompted federal bribery indictments and an ongoing investigation of unexplained spikes in tickets at some Chicago intersections. The site includes a searchable database of tickets included in spikes.
• Join members of the Tribune’s reporting team at Tribune Tower on Oct. 27 for a discussion of the ongoing red light camera story. Tickets for the Tribune Press Pass event cost $10 in advance and are available at tribnation.com .
CHRIS SWEDA/TRIBUNE For six months, the city let its red light camera vendor ticket drivers when the yellow light lasted just below 3 seconds, leading to 77,000 more tickets.
Chicago Inspector General review of Chicago's Red Light Camera program finds cities management fundamentally deficient.
OCTOBER 10, 2014
This review of the City of Chicago Red-Light Camera (RLC) program was conducted at the request of the Mayor and the City Council. The primary objectives of the review were to,
- develop an understanding of and evaluate historical management of the RLC program,
- examine whether historical and current vendors and camera systems operate in accordance with applicable contract provisions, and
- examine and make recommendations respecting current CDOT and vendor policies, procedures, and standards for timely identification and redressment of violation anomalies and other problems in the future.
- At the intersection of 119th and Halsted the trigger speed for approaching vehicles dropped from 15 mph to as low as 5 mph for a period of approximately 7 weeks in 2011. This drop resulted in 1,618 additional citations that would not have been issued had the trigger speed remained at 15 mph.
- At the Kimball-Lincoln-McCormick intersection the detector in the right turn lane was largely non-functional for several years. Using the RLC enforcement data for the intersection under the new vendor as a baseline, the “spike” periods identified by the Tribune may reasonably be understood as the brief periods – usually only a few days or a week – when the detector in the right lane was working properly. OIG estimates that the broken system may have failed to identify as many as 45,444 violations over a four-and-a-half year period.
- At the Halsted-Fullerton-Lincoln intersection one of the traffic signal poles was damaged late on August 1 or early on August 2, 2012, and, as a result, the traffic signals mounted on that pole were reported as not being visible to drivers the next day. The end of the two-day enforcement anomaly appears to coincide with CDOT’s August 3rd repair of the damaged pole.
- Press Contact: Rachel Leven,
(773) 478-0534 - Read the Report: Red Light Camera Program Review
- Read the Response: CDOT Response to OIG Red Light Camera Program Review 10-8-14
- Read the Release:Release_Red Light Cameras Program Review
- Explore the data:RLC_Citations_ Issued_Pmts_ Recvd_2003-Sep2014
N.J. Red-Light Cameras Lose Support as Drivers Complain
By Terrence Dopp Oct 1, 2014 11:00 PM
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is leaning toward eliminating red-light cameras after a five-year test was fraught with glitches and gripes, even as data showed fewer crashes at intersections with the equipment.
A pilot program begun in 2009 that snaps photos of vehicles running stop signals expires in December, and no lawmaker has sponsored a bill to extend it. Christie, a second-term Republican, has said he’s inclined not to continue the state’s experiment with the cameras, which operate at 76 intersections in 25 municipalities, from Newark to Cherry Hill.
After New York became the first U.S. city to use red-light cameras in the 1990s, more than 500 municipalities in 24 states followed. Some local and state officials are now reconsidering the programs after outcry and lawsuits from drivers who say the equipment is unfair, error-prone and can cause accidents. Last year, the total number of camera programs fell for the first time, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
“If a simple human interaction took place between a driver and a police officer, the chances are they would just say don’t let it happen again and give you a warning,” said Scot DeCristofaro, who was mailed an $85 ticket for driving through a red light in Stratford, New Jersey. “There’s no discretion, it becomes a matter of this really being a money grab as opposed to being about safety.”
Seven StatesNew Jersey would become the seventh U.S. state, and the most populous, to nullify existing red-light camera programs. Mississippi, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, South Carolina and West Virginia have all backed out, according to Anne Teigen, a spokeswoman for the National Conference of State Legislatures.
DeCristofaro, a 45-year-old title specialist from Haddon Township, said he was confused by a detour when he drove his minivan through the intersection while out shopping with his kids. No other motorists were around, he said. To fight the summons, he must appear in court today.
“I’m seeing some really disturbing things,” Christie, 52, said Sept. 18 on his monthly Ask the Governor call-in radio show. “I have real concerns about it and my inclination is against continuing that program.”
Though Christie and others have their doubts about the experiment, data show that it has worked. For the 23 New Jersey intersections where cameras operated for a full year, right-angle crashes were down 15 percent, rear-enders dropped 3 percent and total wrecks fell 5 percent, according to data analyzed by the state Transportation Department for its 2013 annual report.
‘Profit Mill’In Cherry Hill, a Philadelphia suburb of 70,000 people, more than 75,000 violations of $85 each have been issued since the camera program began in June 2011. Bridget Palmer, a spokeswoman for Mayor Chuck Cahn, called the numbers “scary.”
“It is a valuable law-enforcement and traffic control tool that helps to keep Cherry Hill’s roads safe while freeing up police officers to patrol in other areas across our 26 square miles,” Palmer said in an e-mail.
One of the Cherry Hill program’s most outspoken critics is Rick Short, 47, a self-employed contractor who said several friends and family members have received summonses for running the red light at Route 70 and Springdale Road. He said he’s become a compulsive reader of the reports that towns must file on the program and has found evidence that they are faulty.
“All they use these things for is a profit mill,” Short said. “The whole industry came in like snake-oil salesmen, and no one ever challenges it. No one questions the numbers.”
26 CopsLt. William Henkelman, a 14-year veteran of the Englewood Cliffs police department, said Short’s argument is “the easy way out.”
The force there has just 26 officers, making it impossible to have 24-hour policing on one intersection, even if 46,000 cars a day use it, he said. From May 2011 to April 2012 -- pre-camera -- he said there were 30 accidents at the intersection of Sylvan and Palisades Avenues. Post-camera, that number dropped to 12 between June 2013 and May 2014.
Violations dropped from 17,688 in the program to 9,172 the following year, Henkelman said.
“Almost 18,000 people committing a traffic offense at one intersection is substantial,” Henkelman, 39, said in an interview. “It’s a safer intersection now.”
Private OperatorsAssemblyman Declan O’Scanlon, a Republican from Little Silver who has been one of the most vocal critics of the cameras, said that local politicians became addicted to the money raised. He said research has shown they actually make intersections less safe as drivers slam on brakes to avoid entering an intersection when the light turns yellow.
“Much of the criticism against this program has been hyperbole,” said Charles Territo, a spokesman for Tempe-based American Traffic Solutions, one of the two companies that operates red-light cameras in New Jersey.
“The fact of the matter is this program has done everything it’s designed to do,” Territo said. “Drivers’ behaviors changed in the cities with cameras as a result of this program and that’s a good thing.”
The other camera operator is Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. of Phoenix. In August, its former chief executive officer, Karen Finley, and two other people were indicted on federal corruption charges related toChicago’s red-light camera contract. Finley, who has been fired by the company, and her co-defendants have pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Speed BumpsJim Saunders, Finley’s successor, said Redflex moved swiftly after the firing to adopt industry-leading transparency measures.
“We have the only business model where if it worked we’d put ourselves out of business,” Saunders said in an interview. “It’s about changing behavior -- not about violations.”
New Jersey’s program, signed by former Democratic Governor Jon Corzine, has had bumps along the road. In 2012, the state suspended red-light cameras in 21 of the 25 towns for a month to make sure yellow lights met minimum timing requirements.
In August, American Traffic Solutions was forced to void 17,000 New Jersey violations when notices were never sent to offenders because of a computer malfunction.
New Jersey residents are divided on the issue, a Sept. 29 poll by Monmouth University shows. Overall, 44 percent approve of the cameras while 38 disapprove. Drivers who have received a red-light ticket are more opposed. When asked what should happen once the pilot program expires, 39 percent say it should be shut down, 32 percent want it expanded and 26 percent said continue it as a limited test.
Sharing PlatesO’Scanlon has taken his opposition a step further, with a bill that would forbid New Jersey’s Motor Vehicles Commission from sharing license plate numbers on a national database in an attempt to protect drivers from out-of-state photo ticketing.
“God willing, it does look like we have the momentum on our side,” to end the program in New Jersey, he said.
Because the program was created through legislation, it needs action from lawmakers in order to continue. Assemblyman John Wisniewski, a Democrat from Sayreville who is chairman of the transportation committee, said so far no bill has been introduced to keep the program alive, though there has been internal discussions.
Christie’s vocal opposition has a “chilling effect” on the prospects of a program that has proven useful, Wisniewski said.
“It’s good public policy to not go through red lights,” he said. “I believe that stopping at red lights is good. Declan O’Scanlon thinks it should be optional.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Terrence Dopp in Trenton at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Stephen Merelman at [email protected]Stacie Sherman, Jeffrey Taylor
By Terrence Dopp Oct 1, 2014 11:00 PM
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is leaning toward eliminating red-light cameras after a five-year test was fraught with glitches and gripes, even as data showed fewer crashes at intersections with the equipment.
A pilot program begun in 2009 that snaps photos of vehicles running stop signals expires in December, and no lawmaker has sponsored a bill to extend it. Christie, a second-term Republican, has said he’s inclined not to continue the state’s experiment with the cameras, which operate at 76 intersections in 25 municipalities, from Newark to Cherry Hill.
After New York became the first U.S. city to use red-light cameras in the 1990s, more than 500 municipalities in 24 states followed. Some local and state officials are now reconsidering the programs after outcry and lawsuits from drivers who say the equipment is unfair, error-prone and can cause accidents. Last year, the total number of camera programs fell for the first time, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
“If a simple human interaction took place between a driver and a police officer, the chances are they would just say don’t let it happen again and give you a warning,” said Scot DeCristofaro, who was mailed an $85 ticket for driving through a red light in Stratford, New Jersey. “There’s no discretion, it becomes a matter of this really being a money grab as opposed to being about safety.”
Seven StatesNew Jersey would become the seventh U.S. state, and the most populous, to nullify existing red-light camera programs. Mississippi, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, South Carolina and West Virginia have all backed out, according to Anne Teigen, a spokeswoman for the National Conference of State Legislatures.
DeCristofaro, a 45-year-old title specialist from Haddon Township, said he was confused by a detour when he drove his minivan through the intersection while out shopping with his kids. No other motorists were around, he said. To fight the summons, he must appear in court today.
“I’m seeing some really disturbing things,” Christie, 52, said Sept. 18 on his monthly Ask the Governor call-in radio show. “I have real concerns about it and my inclination is against continuing that program.”
Though Christie and others have their doubts about the experiment, data show that it has worked. For the 23 New Jersey intersections where cameras operated for a full year, right-angle crashes were down 15 percent, rear-enders dropped 3 percent and total wrecks fell 5 percent, according to data analyzed by the state Transportation Department for its 2013 annual report.
‘Profit Mill’In Cherry Hill, a Philadelphia suburb of 70,000 people, more than 75,000 violations of $85 each have been issued since the camera program began in June 2011. Bridget Palmer, a spokeswoman for Mayor Chuck Cahn, called the numbers “scary.”
“It is a valuable law-enforcement and traffic control tool that helps to keep Cherry Hill’s roads safe while freeing up police officers to patrol in other areas across our 26 square miles,” Palmer said in an e-mail.
One of the Cherry Hill program’s most outspoken critics is Rick Short, 47, a self-employed contractor who said several friends and family members have received summonses for running the red light at Route 70 and Springdale Road. He said he’s become a compulsive reader of the reports that towns must file on the program and has found evidence that they are faulty.
“All they use these things for is a profit mill,” Short said. “The whole industry came in like snake-oil salesmen, and no one ever challenges it. No one questions the numbers.”
26 CopsLt. William Henkelman, a 14-year veteran of the Englewood Cliffs police department, said Short’s argument is “the easy way out.”
The force there has just 26 officers, making it impossible to have 24-hour policing on one intersection, even if 46,000 cars a day use it, he said. From May 2011 to April 2012 -- pre-camera -- he said there were 30 accidents at the intersection of Sylvan and Palisades Avenues. Post-camera, that number dropped to 12 between June 2013 and May 2014.
Violations dropped from 17,688 in the program to 9,172 the following year, Henkelman said.
“Almost 18,000 people committing a traffic offense at one intersection is substantial,” Henkelman, 39, said in an interview. “It’s a safer intersection now.”
Private OperatorsAssemblyman Declan O’Scanlon, a Republican from Little Silver who has been one of the most vocal critics of the cameras, said that local politicians became addicted to the money raised. He said research has shown they actually make intersections less safe as drivers slam on brakes to avoid entering an intersection when the light turns yellow.
“Much of the criticism against this program has been hyperbole,” said Charles Territo, a spokesman for Tempe-based American Traffic Solutions, one of the two companies that operates red-light cameras in New Jersey.
“The fact of the matter is this program has done everything it’s designed to do,” Territo said. “Drivers’ behaviors changed in the cities with cameras as a result of this program and that’s a good thing.”
The other camera operator is Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. of Phoenix. In August, its former chief executive officer, Karen Finley, and two other people were indicted on federal corruption charges related toChicago’s red-light camera contract. Finley, who has been fired by the company, and her co-defendants have pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Speed BumpsJim Saunders, Finley’s successor, said Redflex moved swiftly after the firing to adopt industry-leading transparency measures.
“We have the only business model where if it worked we’d put ourselves out of business,” Saunders said in an interview. “It’s about changing behavior -- not about violations.”
New Jersey’s program, signed by former Democratic Governor Jon Corzine, has had bumps along the road. In 2012, the state suspended red-light cameras in 21 of the 25 towns for a month to make sure yellow lights met minimum timing requirements.
In August, American Traffic Solutions was forced to void 17,000 New Jersey violations when notices were never sent to offenders because of a computer malfunction.
New Jersey residents are divided on the issue, a Sept. 29 poll by Monmouth University shows. Overall, 44 percent approve of the cameras while 38 disapprove. Drivers who have received a red-light ticket are more opposed. When asked what should happen once the pilot program expires, 39 percent say it should be shut down, 32 percent want it expanded and 26 percent said continue it as a limited test.
Sharing PlatesO’Scanlon has taken his opposition a step further, with a bill that would forbid New Jersey’s Motor Vehicles Commission from sharing license plate numbers on a national database in an attempt to protect drivers from out-of-state photo ticketing.
“God willing, it does look like we have the momentum on our side,” to end the program in New Jersey, he said.
Because the program was created through legislation, it needs action from lawmakers in order to continue. Assemblyman John Wisniewski, a Democrat from Sayreville who is chairman of the transportation committee, said so far no bill has been introduced to keep the program alive, though there has been internal discussions.
Christie’s vocal opposition has a “chilling effect” on the prospects of a program that has proven useful, Wisniewski said.
“It’s good public policy to not go through red lights,” he said. “I believe that stopping at red lights is good. Declan O’Scanlon thinks it should be optional.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Terrence Dopp in Trenton at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Stephen Merelman at [email protected]Stacie Sherman, Jeffrey Taylor
TRIBUNE WATCHDOG UPDATE 10/9/14
Short yellows snag more drivers
New traffic camera vendor often records less than 3-second interval
By David Kidwell Tribune reporter
A Tribune examination of overturned red light tickets revealed evidence that the city of Chicago has quietly cast a wider net tosnare drivers since switching camera vendors earlier this year amid a bribery scandal.
A before-and-after analysis of photographic evidence and interviews with experts suggests the transition to a new vendor last spring was accompanied by a subtle but significant lowering of the threshold for yellow light times.
City hearing officers have noticed the trend and are increasingly tossing tickets because the yellow light time stamped on the citation is less than the 3-second minimum required by the city, the Tribune analysis showed.
Xerox State & Local Solutions took over the program in March. Since April, hearing officers have cited short yellow lights as the reason for throwing out more than 200 of roughly 1,500 rejected red light tickets, according to their written notations.
In the four years before that, under the old vendor, judges blamed short yellows only 37 times out of more than 12,000 successful appeals, according to their written notes.
It’s a rate 50 times higher than when the old vendor, Redflex Traffic Systems, ran the program.
“Right now we are having a big problem with these red lights, and the city needs to get this straightened out,” administrative law judge Robert Sussman said during one hearing in August where he tossed two successive red light camera tickets because of short yellow times. “I am getting 60 to 70 percent of my Xerox photos that come up, they are under 3 (seconds),” Sussman said. “When the city starts getting this stuff right, I will start finding liability again like I was doing before. But right now, I just can’t do it until the city becomes more reliable. … Something is going on here. I mean this has to be taken care of.”
City officials said the yellow light times being rejected by judges as too short are in fact valid because they fall within an allowable variance that is caused by fluctuations in electrical power.
“It’s showing 2.9, it records 2.9 on the data bar as you see on the violation,” Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld said in a recent interview. “But that actual performance is probably 2.998 — or something like that — where the variation is in the hundredths or thousandths of a second, which is imperceptible.”
Scheinfeld said Xerox made a business decision “to truncate” the measurement as it appears on the ticket to a tenth of a second, “and that is all well within the national standard for any type of allowable variance.”
Asked why Xerox had so many tickets with yellow times below 3 seconds when Redflex tickets — which showed measurements to the hundredths of a second — almost never showed a time below 3 seconds, Scheinfeld declined to answer, citing an ongoing investigation by the city’s inspector general.
Slight deviations in the duration of the so-called amber interval can have a powerful effect on how many drivers are caught by red light cameras.
In the course of uncovering troubling and unexplained spikes involving tens of thousands of tickets during Redflex’s tenure, the Tribune reported in July that it found hundreds of cases where yellow light times fluctuated between 4 and 3 seconds. But the Redflex tickets rarely went below 3 seconds, the newspaper found.
Officials at Xerox and Redflex declined to be interviewed for this report, referring all questions to the city.
Asked why hearing officers hired by Emanuel’s administration to enforce the traffic laws are routinely throwing out the tickets if the time is allowable, Scheinfeld said the hearing officers are independent.
Gail Baikie was among the drivers who won because of short yellow times. The security guard was ticketed twice within 20 minutes on May 18 on her way home from work.
“I am really disappointed with the city, and upset that they would try to take advantage of people like that,” said Baikie, 38, of Skokie.
Both tickets were overturned by an administrative law judge because the yellow lights were too short, records show.
“I didn’t even know about the 3-second rule,” said Baikie, who appealed both tickets by mail arguing that she made two legal right turns. “I really think they need to fix this because so many people just pay these things without even thinking about it. That’s just horrible.”
Administrative law judges have thrown out 1,511 tickets from April 1 through Aug. 20, according to city records. In 222 cases,they noted in their written explanation that a yellow interval under 3 seconds was to blame. All but three of those tickets were from Xerox.
The Tribune found an additional 299 cases in which tossed tickets had yellow lights under 3 seconds but hearing officers did not specify their reasons. They often don’t provide written explanations for rejecting a ticket when drivers appeal in person at a tape-recorded hearing.
Taken together, that means 521 tickets — more than a third of all those rejected since April — had short yellow times.
More than two dozen judges cited short yellow lights for rejecting citations, the Tribune found.
Records show that Sussman cited short yellow times 18 times on Xerox tickets from April through August. Sussman also tossed an additional 32 tickets with short yellow times at hearings in which he cited no specific reason on public records.
In Baikie’s cases, the hearing officer who tossed both tickets was William Kelley, who records show has thrown out 29 tickets since April because of short yellow lights.
“2.9 second Yellow. No Prima Facie case. Citizen prevails,” Kelley wrote in the notes field on his computer for both the Baikie tickets in his Aug. 7 ruling.
In throwing out another driver’s ticket July 29, Kelley wrote, “inconsistent evidence. City photograph shows 2.9-second yellow light. 3 seconds required by law. No prima facie case. Citizen prevails.”
Similar language was used by other judges in tossing tickets with 2.9-second yellows.
“Illinois and federal standards for amber signal length is 3.0 secs. And city’s website states its length for amber signal is 3.0 secs,” wrote hearing officer Paul Gridelli in a July 31 ruling. “Since evidence shows city noncompliance w/ 3.0 sec. standard for amber signal, grtr wt. (greater weight) to R (respondent).”
Hearing officer Daniel Ruiz threw out a red light ticket June 12 with the following reasoning: “Amber light not on for the required 3.0 seconds. Only 2.9 seconds.”
Hearing officers contacted by the Tribune either declined to comment or did not return calls.
City officials have not yet complied with a Sept. 5 Tribune request for a database of recent red light camera tickets. Those records would help identify how many drivers were ticketed under short yellow lights.
Because fewer than 10 percent of all ticketed drivers ever bother to appeal red light tickets, it is possible that thousands of drivers have been dinged for fines they wouldn’t have received before Xerox took over in April.
The city of Chicago sets all its traffic lights based on the shortest allowable time under federal safety guidelines, which suggest yellow intervals ranging from 3 to 6 seconds depending on the speed of traffic.
For traffic moving at 30 mph or less, the guidelines say the shortest allowable yellow light in order to give drivers enough time to stop is 3 seconds. Scheinfeld said all traffic lights with approach speeds of 30 mph are set for 3 seconds. At 35 mph, she said, the yellow light times move to 4 seconds.
“That’s what the signal is set for, the actual performance of the signal itself is subject to what I would call imperceptible variations from 3.0 based on the power supply,” Scheinfeld said. “Very minor inconsistencies in the power supply can actually cause the lights to be off by hundredths or thousandths of a second. Imperceptible differences from the setting.”
Before any violation is finalized, a technician and a reviewer are required to sign off on the evidence, including the yellow light interval. City officials have refused to answer questions about whether the city or Xerox made any changes to the yellow light criteria.
Chicago’s red light camera program has come under intense scrutiny following Tribune reports about an alleged corruption scheme in which the former top city official who oversaw the contract is accused of taking up to $2 million in bribes since the program began in 2003.
Those reports prompted Mayor Rahm Emanuel to fire Redflex and hand the contract over to Xerox.
In July, after a 10-month review that included an analysis of more than 4 million tickets, the Tribune reported about a series of suspicious spikes in red light camera tickets at intersections throughout the city that led to tens of thousands of questionable tickets.
The Tribune’s probe found evidence the spikes were caused by equipment malfunctions, human tinkering or both.
Inspector General Joseph Ferguson, who is working with federal agents investigating the corruption allegations, is also probing the potential causes of the ticket spikes.
That investigation is looking at the possibilities that equipment malfunctions, changing enforcement criteria and short yellow times contributed to the wild swings in ticketing.
Tribune reporter Alex Richards contributed.[email protected]
• To read the Tribune’s past coverage of red light cameras in Chicago, go to chicagotribune.com/redlight . The site includes two years of stories that prompted federal bribery indictments and an ongoing investigation of unexplained spikes in tickets at some Chicago intersections. The site includes a searchable database of tickets included in spikes.
• Join members of the Tribune’s reporting team at Tribune Tower on Oct. 27 for a discussion of the ongoing red light camera story. Tickets for the Tribune Press Pass event cost $10 in advance and are available at tribnation.com .
ARMANDO L. SANCHEZ/TRIBUNE
Gail Baikie, of Skokie, saw two Chicago tickets tossed because of short yellow lights. She said she is “really disappointed with the city” over the traffic camera irregularities.
Short yellows snag more drivers
New traffic camera vendor often records less than 3-second interval
By David Kidwell Tribune reporter
A Tribune examination of overturned red light tickets revealed evidence that the city of Chicago has quietly cast a wider net tosnare drivers since switching camera vendors earlier this year amid a bribery scandal.
A before-and-after analysis of photographic evidence and interviews with experts suggests the transition to a new vendor last spring was accompanied by a subtle but significant lowering of the threshold for yellow light times.
City hearing officers have noticed the trend and are increasingly tossing tickets because the yellow light time stamped on the citation is less than the 3-second minimum required by the city, the Tribune analysis showed.
Xerox State & Local Solutions took over the program in March. Since April, hearing officers have cited short yellow lights as the reason for throwing out more than 200 of roughly 1,500 rejected red light tickets, according to their written notations.
In the four years before that, under the old vendor, judges blamed short yellows only 37 times out of more than 12,000 successful appeals, according to their written notes.
It’s a rate 50 times higher than when the old vendor, Redflex Traffic Systems, ran the program.
“Right now we are having a big problem with these red lights, and the city needs to get this straightened out,” administrative law judge Robert Sussman said during one hearing in August where he tossed two successive red light camera tickets because of short yellow times. “I am getting 60 to 70 percent of my Xerox photos that come up, they are under 3 (seconds),” Sussman said. “When the city starts getting this stuff right, I will start finding liability again like I was doing before. But right now, I just can’t do it until the city becomes more reliable. … Something is going on here. I mean this has to be taken care of.”
City officials said the yellow light times being rejected by judges as too short are in fact valid because they fall within an allowable variance that is caused by fluctuations in electrical power.
“It’s showing 2.9, it records 2.9 on the data bar as you see on the violation,” Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld said in a recent interview. “But that actual performance is probably 2.998 — or something like that — where the variation is in the hundredths or thousandths of a second, which is imperceptible.”
Scheinfeld said Xerox made a business decision “to truncate” the measurement as it appears on the ticket to a tenth of a second, “and that is all well within the national standard for any type of allowable variance.”
Asked why Xerox had so many tickets with yellow times below 3 seconds when Redflex tickets — which showed measurements to the hundredths of a second — almost never showed a time below 3 seconds, Scheinfeld declined to answer, citing an ongoing investigation by the city’s inspector general.
Slight deviations in the duration of the so-called amber interval can have a powerful effect on how many drivers are caught by red light cameras.
In the course of uncovering troubling and unexplained spikes involving tens of thousands of tickets during Redflex’s tenure, the Tribune reported in July that it found hundreds of cases where yellow light times fluctuated between 4 and 3 seconds. But the Redflex tickets rarely went below 3 seconds, the newspaper found.
Officials at Xerox and Redflex declined to be interviewed for this report, referring all questions to the city.
Asked why hearing officers hired by Emanuel’s administration to enforce the traffic laws are routinely throwing out the tickets if the time is allowable, Scheinfeld said the hearing officers are independent.
Gail Baikie was among the drivers who won because of short yellow times. The security guard was ticketed twice within 20 minutes on May 18 on her way home from work.
“I am really disappointed with the city, and upset that they would try to take advantage of people like that,” said Baikie, 38, of Skokie.
Both tickets were overturned by an administrative law judge because the yellow lights were too short, records show.
“I didn’t even know about the 3-second rule,” said Baikie, who appealed both tickets by mail arguing that she made two legal right turns. “I really think they need to fix this because so many people just pay these things without even thinking about it. That’s just horrible.”
Administrative law judges have thrown out 1,511 tickets from April 1 through Aug. 20, according to city records. In 222 cases,they noted in their written explanation that a yellow interval under 3 seconds was to blame. All but three of those tickets were from Xerox.
The Tribune found an additional 299 cases in which tossed tickets had yellow lights under 3 seconds but hearing officers did not specify their reasons. They often don’t provide written explanations for rejecting a ticket when drivers appeal in person at a tape-recorded hearing.
Taken together, that means 521 tickets — more than a third of all those rejected since April — had short yellow times.
More than two dozen judges cited short yellow lights for rejecting citations, the Tribune found.
Records show that Sussman cited short yellow times 18 times on Xerox tickets from April through August. Sussman also tossed an additional 32 tickets with short yellow times at hearings in which he cited no specific reason on public records.
In Baikie’s cases, the hearing officer who tossed both tickets was William Kelley, who records show has thrown out 29 tickets since April because of short yellow lights.
“2.9 second Yellow. No Prima Facie case. Citizen prevails,” Kelley wrote in the notes field on his computer for both the Baikie tickets in his Aug. 7 ruling.
In throwing out another driver’s ticket July 29, Kelley wrote, “inconsistent evidence. City photograph shows 2.9-second yellow light. 3 seconds required by law. No prima facie case. Citizen prevails.”
Similar language was used by other judges in tossing tickets with 2.9-second yellows.
“Illinois and federal standards for amber signal length is 3.0 secs. And city’s website states its length for amber signal is 3.0 secs,” wrote hearing officer Paul Gridelli in a July 31 ruling. “Since evidence shows city noncompliance w/ 3.0 sec. standard for amber signal, grtr wt. (greater weight) to R (respondent).”
Hearing officer Daniel Ruiz threw out a red light ticket June 12 with the following reasoning: “Amber light not on for the required 3.0 seconds. Only 2.9 seconds.”
Hearing officers contacted by the Tribune either declined to comment or did not return calls.
City officials have not yet complied with a Sept. 5 Tribune request for a database of recent red light camera tickets. Those records would help identify how many drivers were ticketed under short yellow lights.
Because fewer than 10 percent of all ticketed drivers ever bother to appeal red light tickets, it is possible that thousands of drivers have been dinged for fines they wouldn’t have received before Xerox took over in April.
The city of Chicago sets all its traffic lights based on the shortest allowable time under federal safety guidelines, which suggest yellow intervals ranging from 3 to 6 seconds depending on the speed of traffic.
For traffic moving at 30 mph or less, the guidelines say the shortest allowable yellow light in order to give drivers enough time to stop is 3 seconds. Scheinfeld said all traffic lights with approach speeds of 30 mph are set for 3 seconds. At 35 mph, she said, the yellow light times move to 4 seconds.
“That’s what the signal is set for, the actual performance of the signal itself is subject to what I would call imperceptible variations from 3.0 based on the power supply,” Scheinfeld said. “Very minor inconsistencies in the power supply can actually cause the lights to be off by hundredths or thousandths of a second. Imperceptible differences from the setting.”
Before any violation is finalized, a technician and a reviewer are required to sign off on the evidence, including the yellow light interval. City officials have refused to answer questions about whether the city or Xerox made any changes to the yellow light criteria.
Chicago’s red light camera program has come under intense scrutiny following Tribune reports about an alleged corruption scheme in which the former top city official who oversaw the contract is accused of taking up to $2 million in bribes since the program began in 2003.
Those reports prompted Mayor Rahm Emanuel to fire Redflex and hand the contract over to Xerox.
In July, after a 10-month review that included an analysis of more than 4 million tickets, the Tribune reported about a series of suspicious spikes in red light camera tickets at intersections throughout the city that led to tens of thousands of questionable tickets.
The Tribune’s probe found evidence the spikes were caused by equipment malfunctions, human tinkering or both.
Inspector General Joseph Ferguson, who is working with federal agents investigating the corruption allegations, is also probing the potential causes of the ticket spikes.
That investigation is looking at the possibilities that equipment malfunctions, changing enforcement criteria and short yellow times contributed to the wild swings in ticketing.
Tribune reporter Alex Richards contributed.[email protected]
• To read the Tribune’s past coverage of red light cameras in Chicago, go to chicagotribune.com/redlight . The site includes two years of stories that prompted federal bribery indictments and an ongoing investigation of unexplained spikes in tickets at some Chicago intersections. The site includes a searchable database of tickets included in spikes.
• Join members of the Tribune’s reporting team at Tribune Tower on Oct. 27 for a discussion of the ongoing red light camera story. Tickets for the Tribune Press Pass event cost $10 in advance and are available at tribnation.com .
ARMANDO L. SANCHEZ/TRIBUNE
Gail Baikie, of Skokie, saw two Chicago tickets tossed because of short yellow lights. She said she is “really disappointed with the city” over the traffic camera irregularities.
The city has finally completed its review of the spikes the Tribune found but still can't explain the irregularities.
Few ticket refunds, no explanation
City ignores thousands of red light camera fines in its review, offers no insight into suspicious surges
By David Kidwell and Alex Richards Tribune reporters
City Hall has promised 126 refunds to drivers tagged for $100 fines during suspicious spikes in red light camera tickets discovered by a Tribune investigation but upheld thousands of other tickets issued at the same times — all without explaining what caused the sudden surges.
The refund letters dated last week are the first public acknowledgment by the city that some drivers were targeted in error by a camera system prone to ticket spikes — some lasting weeks
— that the city says it never noticed.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration offered to review nearly 16,000 tickets issued during spikes exposed by the Tribune in July, and about 3,300 responses came back. A Tribune review of who got those letters and the way the appeals are being conducted raises new questions about the city’s effort to restore confidence in Chicago’s beleaguered camera program.
The city ignored tens of thousands of tickets by limiting its review to the 12 intersections with the most dramatic spikes highlighted by the Tribune. Even then, the city left thousands of drivers out of its review because of how it defined the duration of the surges. In other cases, the city included tickets when cameras were performing as expected — potentially increasing the likelihood those tickets would be upheld on review.
The examinations themselves, conducted by an outside auditing firm, were done in private and focused on whether the videotape of the violations showed drivers broke the traffic law. The examiners did not consider whether the camera system was working properly, as an administrative law judge might do in a regular appeal.
More broadly, the city’s limited focus on potential refunds for a subset of drivers never addressed the fundamental questions about the oversight, reliability and fairness of a program already mired in a federal corruption investigation into allegations the city’s ex-vendor paid $2 million in bribes to get the business.
“If they have sent 15,000 letters and only a few hundred tickets are being thrown out, then that still begs the question about what is going on out there that caused these anomalies,” said Joseph Schofer, a Northwestern University engineering professor and one of four national traffic experts who reviewed the Tribune’s original findings. “I don’t know how you can address any of these issues without first addressing that one.”
“This seems like a halfhearted effort,” Schofer said. “The first error was that people who shouldn’t be getting a review are getting one, and that just seems like wasted effort. But the more serious mistake is that people who should have gotten a review are not getting one.”
Chicagoans who were notified they are getting refunds told the Tribune that while they are happy, they share the concerns of drivers who never got a review notice.
“That’s my question, what about all those thousands who got tickets who aren’t getting this chance? Will they go that far?” said Thomas Garrity, a retired Chicago police sergeant whose case was detailed by the Tribune. “That would cost the city a lot of money in the long run.”
Garrity was one of three drivers ticketed during spikes who were prominently featured in the Tribune’s July story, and all were notified they will receive refunds. But the Tribune found other drivers ticketed under the same circumstances at some of the same intersections who were not given an option for a review.
“Wow, it looks like I stopped, and some of these people didn’t. Where is my refund?” said Marisol Santiago, 46, a postal worker from the North Side who was ticketed during the same Lincoln Avenue spike as Garrity. “Of course it bothers me, it’s not fair at all. Why didn’t I get a letter like these people all did?”
The Emanuel administration launched the effort to re-examine red light tickets in the wake of a Tribune examination of more than 4 million citations issued since 2007 that identified the wild swings in ticketing. In some cases, the Tribune found, cameras that typically had tagged only a few drivers per day suddenly were capturing more than 50 each day. Also, cameras were suddenly enforcing behavior that was previously overlooked — such as rolling right turns on red.
National experts said the unusual behavior of the nation’s largest automated traffic camera system is unlike anything they’ve ever seen and the sudden changes in enforcement — whether because of human intervention or malfunction
— should have been caught by the city and its then vendor, Redflex Traffic Systems Inc.
“That’s what automated cameras are for, consistency,” Schofer said. “They ought to be enforcing the law the same way 24/7, and if the criteria for a violation changes from hour to hour or day to day, then that is completely unfair. Obviously they have a fairness problem.”
Emanuel administration officials have repeatedly insisted they believe most of the tickets are deserved, while declining to address the broader questions. They note the administration is cooperating with the criminal probe as well as an investigation of the spikes being handled by city Inspector General Joseph Ferguson.
During a recent interview, Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld stood behind the city’s review process, calling it “a good first step.” She offered no specific explanations for how the city chose to offer a review or a refund. Instead, she referred to a two-page city document that outlines the city’s criteria for selecting those who would receive review notices.
“On some of these it’s a question of judgment where there’s a question of the beginning or an end date for a spike,” Scheinfeld said. “We cast a pretty wide net to make sure that we could gather as much information as possible.
“We have looked at this in a very rigorous way and been very expansive in offering that review.”
Since first being presented with the initial Tribune findings in January, city transportation officials have said they cannot explain the reasons for the anomalies.
Emanuel responded to the Tribune’s July report by asking the inspector general to investigate and by offering the new review only to those drivers caught in the spikes that were the focus of the Tribune investigation .
The Tribune featured a dozen of the most striking spikes — involving more than 13,000 questionable tickets — to illustrate a broader problem involving tens of thousands of questionable tickets at dozens of intersection throughout the city.
Within days after the report, the administration announced it would review 9,000 tickets issued at the 12 intersections featured by the Tribune. After requesting and receiving a detailed list of how the Tribune defined the more than 13,000 tickets it highlighted, the city expanded its letter-writing campaign to about 16,000 in an effort to be more inclusive, Scheinfeld said at the time.
City officials said Wednesday that they sent out 15,885 letters notifying drivers they were eligible to request a review of their tickets and the deadline to request a review expired Tuesday. The city got no response to three-quarters of the letters. Of the 3,285 requests for a review, 3,097 have been completed, the city said.
Of those, 2,953 tickets were upheld, and only 144 tickets were thrown out. In 126 of those cases, the tickets were paid; the city said refund checks will be mailed out.
Now that the city has released the list of tickets that were eligible for review, the Tribune has found the city did not offer reviews for some 4,000 tickets issued during spikes. In addition, the city sent nearly 500 letters to ticket holders tagged by cameras the Tribune did not find to be experiencing spikes.
Review letters also went out for more than 1,400 tickets from one intersection during the first 14 months of the cameras operating there. Experts interviewed say surges are normal when cameras are first installed because drivers are not yet accustomed to the enforcement there; for that reason, the Tribune ignored first-year results in its findings.
The city’s analysis of the dozen intersections that were the focus of the Tribune investigation differs greatly from the newspaper’s analysis. One main reason is because the Tribune identified spikes by analyzing the citywide system camera by camera, while the city focused on ticket output by intersection, many of which are equipped with two cameras.
Blending ticket totals from a normally operating camera and one experiencing an anomaly sometimes resulted in the city sending letters to drivers ticketed at cameras that were not experiencing spikes, while some drivers in spikes identified by the Tribune did not receive letters at all.
Several drivers said they thought the city’s selective effort to send letters was as unfair as the tickets they received during the spikes.
“Of course it’s not fair,” said Patrice Jones, who didn’t get a letter for either of the tickets she got during a 47-day spike at 8900 S. Stony Island Ave. last summer. “But I’ve come to expect it not to be. That’s sad, but I’ve come to expect it not to be.
“Everyone who was there should have an opportunity to fight,” said Jones, 46, a special education teacher who refused to pay either ticket after insisting that she entered the intersection on yellow lights. “At least we should be heard.
“I don’t matter, and that is what bothers me the most,” she said. “Someone higher above me decided my voice didn’t count.”
The city sent letters only to ticket recipients tagged during 12 days of the Stony Island spike that lasted more than a month. Jones’ tickets were among nearly 2,000 that did not get review letters. Both of Jones’ tickets show her entering the intersection within a fraction of a second after the yellow light changed to red. Short yellow lights are among the potential causes for erroneous tickets.
City officials said the outside auditing firm conducting the review looks only at the video and photographic evidence to determine whether a violation has occurred.
Pressed on how the city could establish the legitimacy of tickets without explaining what happened during the spikes, Scheinfeld repeatedly declined to answer, citing the confidential inspector general investigation.
“Obviously this is an ongoing investigation and I want to respect that process, but I want answers to this too,” Scheinfeld said. “It’s important that we understand what was going on, because we want to make sure that we have a system that is operating effectively and consistently as much as possible.
“We want to make sure we maintain the public confidence in the system,” she said.
According to a recent Chicago Tribune poll, there is little confidence to maintain. The poll found that 92 percent of Chicagoans think the program either needs to be scrapped or reformed.
Neither Emanuel nor his administration has addressed the broader and more central issue of unfair or inconsistent enforcement, where camera systems appear to change from one day to the next the type of behavior that is being ticketed. Experts interviewed agree such changes are unfair, and defeat the central purpose of camera systems, which is to train drivers to change their behavior over time.
But Scheinfeld suggested those factors may not matter as much as whether traffic laws were violated.
“The law is the law every day,” she said. “If there is a problem with the camera, a camera might be turned off for maintenance purposes, so it’s not enforcing, or just for preventive maintenance checks. If it’s not enforcing for that hour that doesn’t mean that the law has changed. If there is a cop on the corner one day and not the next day, that doesn’t mean the law has changed.
“I think it is really important to understand the law is consistent,” Scheinfeld said. “It is every driver’s responsibility every day to obey the law.
Oscar Paesky, a surgical assistant from Evanston, said no police officer would have ever issued him a ticket and the city’s camera system is nothing like a cop capable of making logical judgments on the spot about fairness.
Paesky, 57, crept almost to a stop on a right turn during the first day of a 12-day spike that began Dec. 30, 2011 at 6200 N. Lincoln Ave. on the city’s Far Northwest Side.
“It’s an abuse, if you want my opinion,” he said. “No, I didn’t deserve a ticket, and, no, I didn’t get a letter. They should at least be fair and square about it, don’t you think?”
Paesky was among 20 drivers in the first day of the spike who didn’t get a letter offering a review. Because the cross street is at an angle, many drivers interviewed argue their tickets for rolling turns are unfair.
“You have to pull the nose of your car into the intersection to see anything,” he said. “I guess that’s how they get you. I’m a busy man so I just pay the fine and forget about it.”
Joy Renk, 54, a registered nurse from Skokie, who also crept through the right turn that same day, agreed.
“That’s true, you do have to creep out to see what’s coming at you so you can see what’s safe,” she said.
The camera at Lincoln Avenue and McCormick Road is one of the best examples of unusual enforcement . During the spike, 563 tickets were issued, more than all the tickets from that camera in the previous two years. More important, 560 of those tickets were issued for right turns on red; in the six months prior to the spike, no red light camera tickets were issued out of the right turn-only lane.
“That doesn’t look very fair at all,” Renk said, offering words for the mayor: “I think that you screwed up, and that you should do the right thing and you should send everybody an appeal letter and not just certain people.
“Everybody needs every dollar they make,” said Renk, who didn’t pay her ticket. “I believe in paying something if it’s accurate, but if it’s not I don’t think people should have mymoney.”
Garrity, the retired cop, was caught making a rolling right turn at that intersection during the same spike in early January. He thought about appealing when he first got the ticket but said he didn’t see any hope in fighting the city.
“But as it appeared in the Tribune and your excellent digging in the background, they were sort of forced,” he said. “I don’t think they had any other option.”
Oumou Wague, a South Side hairdresser highlighted in the Tribune’s July story, was notified she will get back more than $500 in tickets and related costs for three of the four tickets she received at Halsted and 119th streets.
“It’s like a gift. I never thought I would receive this money back, you know?” Wague said.
“To me it was just a way they were trying to respond of course to the story,” she said. “But I never knew that they would really go ahead and do the right thing in this matter.
“I hope that everybody who had these tickets and who were subject to these defective equipment got the same refund.”[email protected] [email protected]
ARMANDO L. SANCHEZ/TRIBUNE
A red light camera at 6200 N. Lincoln Ave. generated 563 tickets during a 12-day spike that began Dec. 30, 2011.
ARMANDO L. SANCHEZ/TRIBUNE PHOTOS
Thomas Garrity was informed he will receive a refund after being ticketed by a red light camera during a suspicious spike in fines at 6200 N. Lincoln Ave. He was one of three drivers who were prominently featured in the Tribune’s July expose.
The city didn’t offer to review the tickets Patrice Jones got during a suspicious spike. “Of course it’s not fair,” she said.
NUCCIO DINUZZO/TRIBUNE
Oumou Wague, highlighted in the Tribune’s July story, is set to get a refund of more than $500. “I hope that everybody who had these tickets ... got the same refund,” she said.
ARMANDO L. SANCHEZ/TRIBUNE
Marisol Santiago, fined during a 12-day spike, didn’t get a city review letter.
City ignores thousands of red light camera fines in its review, offers no insight into suspicious surges
By David Kidwell and Alex Richards Tribune reporters
City Hall has promised 126 refunds to drivers tagged for $100 fines during suspicious spikes in red light camera tickets discovered by a Tribune investigation but upheld thousands of other tickets issued at the same times — all without explaining what caused the sudden surges.
The refund letters dated last week are the first public acknowledgment by the city that some drivers were targeted in error by a camera system prone to ticket spikes — some lasting weeks
— that the city says it never noticed.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration offered to review nearly 16,000 tickets issued during spikes exposed by the Tribune in July, and about 3,300 responses came back. A Tribune review of who got those letters and the way the appeals are being conducted raises new questions about the city’s effort to restore confidence in Chicago’s beleaguered camera program.
The city ignored tens of thousands of tickets by limiting its review to the 12 intersections with the most dramatic spikes highlighted by the Tribune. Even then, the city left thousands of drivers out of its review because of how it defined the duration of the surges. In other cases, the city included tickets when cameras were performing as expected — potentially increasing the likelihood those tickets would be upheld on review.
The examinations themselves, conducted by an outside auditing firm, were done in private and focused on whether the videotape of the violations showed drivers broke the traffic law. The examiners did not consider whether the camera system was working properly, as an administrative law judge might do in a regular appeal.
More broadly, the city’s limited focus on potential refunds for a subset of drivers never addressed the fundamental questions about the oversight, reliability and fairness of a program already mired in a federal corruption investigation into allegations the city’s ex-vendor paid $2 million in bribes to get the business.
“If they have sent 15,000 letters and only a few hundred tickets are being thrown out, then that still begs the question about what is going on out there that caused these anomalies,” said Joseph Schofer, a Northwestern University engineering professor and one of four national traffic experts who reviewed the Tribune’s original findings. “I don’t know how you can address any of these issues without first addressing that one.”
“This seems like a halfhearted effort,” Schofer said. “The first error was that people who shouldn’t be getting a review are getting one, and that just seems like wasted effort. But the more serious mistake is that people who should have gotten a review are not getting one.”
Chicagoans who were notified they are getting refunds told the Tribune that while they are happy, they share the concerns of drivers who never got a review notice.
“That’s my question, what about all those thousands who got tickets who aren’t getting this chance? Will they go that far?” said Thomas Garrity, a retired Chicago police sergeant whose case was detailed by the Tribune. “That would cost the city a lot of money in the long run.”
Garrity was one of three drivers ticketed during spikes who were prominently featured in the Tribune’s July story, and all were notified they will receive refunds. But the Tribune found other drivers ticketed under the same circumstances at some of the same intersections who were not given an option for a review.
“Wow, it looks like I stopped, and some of these people didn’t. Where is my refund?” said Marisol Santiago, 46, a postal worker from the North Side who was ticketed during the same Lincoln Avenue spike as Garrity. “Of course it bothers me, it’s not fair at all. Why didn’t I get a letter like these people all did?”
The Emanuel administration launched the effort to re-examine red light tickets in the wake of a Tribune examination of more than 4 million citations issued since 2007 that identified the wild swings in ticketing. In some cases, the Tribune found, cameras that typically had tagged only a few drivers per day suddenly were capturing more than 50 each day. Also, cameras were suddenly enforcing behavior that was previously overlooked — such as rolling right turns on red.
National experts said the unusual behavior of the nation’s largest automated traffic camera system is unlike anything they’ve ever seen and the sudden changes in enforcement — whether because of human intervention or malfunction
— should have been caught by the city and its then vendor, Redflex Traffic Systems Inc.
“That’s what automated cameras are for, consistency,” Schofer said. “They ought to be enforcing the law the same way 24/7, and if the criteria for a violation changes from hour to hour or day to day, then that is completely unfair. Obviously they have a fairness problem.”
Emanuel administration officials have repeatedly insisted they believe most of the tickets are deserved, while declining to address the broader questions. They note the administration is cooperating with the criminal probe as well as an investigation of the spikes being handled by city Inspector General Joseph Ferguson.
During a recent interview, Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld stood behind the city’s review process, calling it “a good first step.” She offered no specific explanations for how the city chose to offer a review or a refund. Instead, she referred to a two-page city document that outlines the city’s criteria for selecting those who would receive review notices.
“On some of these it’s a question of judgment where there’s a question of the beginning or an end date for a spike,” Scheinfeld said. “We cast a pretty wide net to make sure that we could gather as much information as possible.
“We have looked at this in a very rigorous way and been very expansive in offering that review.”
Since first being presented with the initial Tribune findings in January, city transportation officials have said they cannot explain the reasons for the anomalies.
Emanuel responded to the Tribune’s July report by asking the inspector general to investigate and by offering the new review only to those drivers caught in the spikes that were the focus of the Tribune investigation .
The Tribune featured a dozen of the most striking spikes — involving more than 13,000 questionable tickets — to illustrate a broader problem involving tens of thousands of questionable tickets at dozens of intersection throughout the city.
Within days after the report, the administration announced it would review 9,000 tickets issued at the 12 intersections featured by the Tribune. After requesting and receiving a detailed list of how the Tribune defined the more than 13,000 tickets it highlighted, the city expanded its letter-writing campaign to about 16,000 in an effort to be more inclusive, Scheinfeld said at the time.
City officials said Wednesday that they sent out 15,885 letters notifying drivers they were eligible to request a review of their tickets and the deadline to request a review expired Tuesday. The city got no response to three-quarters of the letters. Of the 3,285 requests for a review, 3,097 have been completed, the city said.
Of those, 2,953 tickets were upheld, and only 144 tickets were thrown out. In 126 of those cases, the tickets were paid; the city said refund checks will be mailed out.
Now that the city has released the list of tickets that were eligible for review, the Tribune has found the city did not offer reviews for some 4,000 tickets issued during spikes. In addition, the city sent nearly 500 letters to ticket holders tagged by cameras the Tribune did not find to be experiencing spikes.
Review letters also went out for more than 1,400 tickets from one intersection during the first 14 months of the cameras operating there. Experts interviewed say surges are normal when cameras are first installed because drivers are not yet accustomed to the enforcement there; for that reason, the Tribune ignored first-year results in its findings.
The city’s analysis of the dozen intersections that were the focus of the Tribune investigation differs greatly from the newspaper’s analysis. One main reason is because the Tribune identified spikes by analyzing the citywide system camera by camera, while the city focused on ticket output by intersection, many of which are equipped with two cameras.
Blending ticket totals from a normally operating camera and one experiencing an anomaly sometimes resulted in the city sending letters to drivers ticketed at cameras that were not experiencing spikes, while some drivers in spikes identified by the Tribune did not receive letters at all.
Several drivers said they thought the city’s selective effort to send letters was as unfair as the tickets they received during the spikes.
“Of course it’s not fair,” said Patrice Jones, who didn’t get a letter for either of the tickets she got during a 47-day spike at 8900 S. Stony Island Ave. last summer. “But I’ve come to expect it not to be. That’s sad, but I’ve come to expect it not to be.
“Everyone who was there should have an opportunity to fight,” said Jones, 46, a special education teacher who refused to pay either ticket after insisting that she entered the intersection on yellow lights. “At least we should be heard.
“I don’t matter, and that is what bothers me the most,” she said. “Someone higher above me decided my voice didn’t count.”
The city sent letters only to ticket recipients tagged during 12 days of the Stony Island spike that lasted more than a month. Jones’ tickets were among nearly 2,000 that did not get review letters. Both of Jones’ tickets show her entering the intersection within a fraction of a second after the yellow light changed to red. Short yellow lights are among the potential causes for erroneous tickets.
City officials said the outside auditing firm conducting the review looks only at the video and photographic evidence to determine whether a violation has occurred.
Pressed on how the city could establish the legitimacy of tickets without explaining what happened during the spikes, Scheinfeld repeatedly declined to answer, citing the confidential inspector general investigation.
“Obviously this is an ongoing investigation and I want to respect that process, but I want answers to this too,” Scheinfeld said. “It’s important that we understand what was going on, because we want to make sure that we have a system that is operating effectively and consistently as much as possible.
“We want to make sure we maintain the public confidence in the system,” she said.
According to a recent Chicago Tribune poll, there is little confidence to maintain. The poll found that 92 percent of Chicagoans think the program either needs to be scrapped or reformed.
Neither Emanuel nor his administration has addressed the broader and more central issue of unfair or inconsistent enforcement, where camera systems appear to change from one day to the next the type of behavior that is being ticketed. Experts interviewed agree such changes are unfair, and defeat the central purpose of camera systems, which is to train drivers to change their behavior over time.
But Scheinfeld suggested those factors may not matter as much as whether traffic laws were violated.
“The law is the law every day,” she said. “If there is a problem with the camera, a camera might be turned off for maintenance purposes, so it’s not enforcing, or just for preventive maintenance checks. If it’s not enforcing for that hour that doesn’t mean that the law has changed. If there is a cop on the corner one day and not the next day, that doesn’t mean the law has changed.
“I think it is really important to understand the law is consistent,” Scheinfeld said. “It is every driver’s responsibility every day to obey the law.
Oscar Paesky, a surgical assistant from Evanston, said no police officer would have ever issued him a ticket and the city’s camera system is nothing like a cop capable of making logical judgments on the spot about fairness.
Paesky, 57, crept almost to a stop on a right turn during the first day of a 12-day spike that began Dec. 30, 2011 at 6200 N. Lincoln Ave. on the city’s Far Northwest Side.
“It’s an abuse, if you want my opinion,” he said. “No, I didn’t deserve a ticket, and, no, I didn’t get a letter. They should at least be fair and square about it, don’t you think?”
Paesky was among 20 drivers in the first day of the spike who didn’t get a letter offering a review. Because the cross street is at an angle, many drivers interviewed argue their tickets for rolling turns are unfair.
“You have to pull the nose of your car into the intersection to see anything,” he said. “I guess that’s how they get you. I’m a busy man so I just pay the fine and forget about it.”
Joy Renk, 54, a registered nurse from Skokie, who also crept through the right turn that same day, agreed.
“That’s true, you do have to creep out to see what’s coming at you so you can see what’s safe,” she said.
The camera at Lincoln Avenue and McCormick Road is one of the best examples of unusual enforcement . During the spike, 563 tickets were issued, more than all the tickets from that camera in the previous two years. More important, 560 of those tickets were issued for right turns on red; in the six months prior to the spike, no red light camera tickets were issued out of the right turn-only lane.
“That doesn’t look very fair at all,” Renk said, offering words for the mayor: “I think that you screwed up, and that you should do the right thing and you should send everybody an appeal letter and not just certain people.
“Everybody needs every dollar they make,” said Renk, who didn’t pay her ticket. “I believe in paying something if it’s accurate, but if it’s not I don’t think people should have mymoney.”
Garrity, the retired cop, was caught making a rolling right turn at that intersection during the same spike in early January. He thought about appealing when he first got the ticket but said he didn’t see any hope in fighting the city.
“But as it appeared in the Tribune and your excellent digging in the background, they were sort of forced,” he said. “I don’t think they had any other option.”
Oumou Wague, a South Side hairdresser highlighted in the Tribune’s July story, was notified she will get back more than $500 in tickets and related costs for three of the four tickets she received at Halsted and 119th streets.
“It’s like a gift. I never thought I would receive this money back, you know?” Wague said.
“To me it was just a way they were trying to respond of course to the story,” she said. “But I never knew that they would really go ahead and do the right thing in this matter.
“I hope that everybody who had these tickets and who were subject to these defective equipment got the same refund.”[email protected] [email protected]
ARMANDO L. SANCHEZ/TRIBUNE
A red light camera at 6200 N. Lincoln Ave. generated 563 tickets during a 12-day spike that began Dec. 30, 2011.
ARMANDO L. SANCHEZ/TRIBUNE PHOTOS
Thomas Garrity was informed he will receive a refund after being ticketed by a red light camera during a suspicious spike in fines at 6200 N. Lincoln Ave. He was one of three drivers who were prominently featured in the Tribune’s July expose.
The city didn’t offer to review the tickets Patrice Jones got during a suspicious spike. “Of course it’s not fair,” she said.
NUCCIO DINUZZO/TRIBUNE
Oumou Wague, highlighted in the Tribune’s July story, is set to get a refund of more than $500. “I hope that everybody who had these tickets ... got the same refund,” she said.
ARMANDO L. SANCHEZ/TRIBUNE
Marisol Santiago, fined during a 12-day spike, didn’t get a city review letter.
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Alderman Cardenas of 12th Ward said he's "heard an earful"and residents are overwhelmingly opposed to the speed camera but because the city won't listen to him either he is considering taking down the park just to get rid of the camera.
Alderman Opposed to Park's Speed Camera Says Get Rid of Camera AND Park
By Casey Cora on October 2, 2014 5:28am
@bycaseycora
The Southwest Side alderman has a novel idea for eliminating a controversial camera.
CloseDNAinfo/Casey Cora
MCKINLEY PARK — If there were no park, there could be no speed camera.
That's the thinking by Ald. George Cardenas (12th), who is hoping to closeMulberry Playlot Park in an effort to kill the controversial Archer Avenue speed camera.
"I think that make a lot more sense to me than having a playlot nobody uses and nobody can find," he said.
The alderman has been trying to quell howls of protest from Southwest Side motorists who call the camera's placement — blocks away from the tiny park — particularly egregious.
Casey Cora says getting rid of the park is just one of a few priorities of the alderman:
In a letter to ward residents, Cardenas said he wants to delay the start of the camera's ticketing, raise the speed limit on Archer Avenue and "rezone" the small park, which is tucked away on Robinson Street and invisible from Archer and nearby Ashland avenues.
Cardenas said he'd like to move the park equipment elsewhere in the ward. But the eventual demolition of the park would in theory eliminate the need for a speed camera altogether.
The city has controversially installed about 150 cameras at some 70 locations as part of a citywide program to curb speeding outside parks and schools.
Cardenas said he's already petitioned city transportation commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld to bump up the speed limit along a stretch of South Archer Avenue where the camera's located to 30 miles per hour, up from 25 mph.
The transportation department is "in agreement" with the move but it's pending City Council approval, Cardenas said.
If the measure is approved, the cameras would have to be recalibrated to adjust to the new speed limits.
Cardenas said the camera will go into a "blackout period" beginning Sunday and lasting for two weeks. During that time, no tickets will be issued.
Cardenas, who voted for Mayor Rahm Emanuel's speed camera plan in 2012, has called the Archer Avenue camera "nothing more than a money maker"because of its location along the busy thoroughfare.
The city says the area surrounding the park ranked fairly high in its study of speeding and crash rates near school and park zones, 135th out of 1,500 such zones.
Still, the alderman said he's heard an earful from residents ever since the camera started spitting out warning tickets on Sept. 5. Respondents to a ward office survey overwhelmingly opposed the speed camera, with 23 percent thinking it should be moved to Ashland Avenue and 67 percent believing it should be removed altogether.
Meanwhile, some angry motorists are taking it to the streets with a protest that's planned for 5:30-7 p.m. Thursday at Archer Avenue and Paulina Street.
"We're going to find more and more situations where these cameras go up and [Cardenas] is not going to be able to destroy every park. He's not going to be able to weasel his way out of every speed camera," said 12th Ward aldermanic candidate Pete DeMay, who's helping organize Thursday's rally.
"He voted for the cameras. He owns those votes."
By Casey Cora on October 2, 2014 5:28am
@bycaseycora
The Southwest Side alderman has a novel idea for eliminating a controversial camera.
CloseDNAinfo/Casey Cora
MCKINLEY PARK — If there were no park, there could be no speed camera.
That's the thinking by Ald. George Cardenas (12th), who is hoping to closeMulberry Playlot Park in an effort to kill the controversial Archer Avenue speed camera.
"I think that make a lot more sense to me than having a playlot nobody uses and nobody can find," he said.
The alderman has been trying to quell howls of protest from Southwest Side motorists who call the camera's placement — blocks away from the tiny park — particularly egregious.
Casey Cora says getting rid of the park is just one of a few priorities of the alderman:
In a letter to ward residents, Cardenas said he wants to delay the start of the camera's ticketing, raise the speed limit on Archer Avenue and "rezone" the small park, which is tucked away on Robinson Street and invisible from Archer and nearby Ashland avenues.
Cardenas said he'd like to move the park equipment elsewhere in the ward. But the eventual demolition of the park would in theory eliminate the need for a speed camera altogether.
The city has controversially installed about 150 cameras at some 70 locations as part of a citywide program to curb speeding outside parks and schools.
Cardenas said he's already petitioned city transportation commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld to bump up the speed limit along a stretch of South Archer Avenue where the camera's located to 30 miles per hour, up from 25 mph.
The transportation department is "in agreement" with the move but it's pending City Council approval, Cardenas said.
If the measure is approved, the cameras would have to be recalibrated to adjust to the new speed limits.
Cardenas said the camera will go into a "blackout period" beginning Sunday and lasting for two weeks. During that time, no tickets will be issued.
Cardenas, who voted for Mayor Rahm Emanuel's speed camera plan in 2012, has called the Archer Avenue camera "nothing more than a money maker"because of its location along the busy thoroughfare.
The city says the area surrounding the park ranked fairly high in its study of speeding and crash rates near school and park zones, 135th out of 1,500 such zones.
Still, the alderman said he's heard an earful from residents ever since the camera started spitting out warning tickets on Sept. 5. Respondents to a ward office survey overwhelmingly opposed the speed camera, with 23 percent thinking it should be moved to Ashland Avenue and 67 percent believing it should be removed altogether.
Meanwhile, some angry motorists are taking it to the streets with a protest that's planned for 5:30-7 p.m. Thursday at Archer Avenue and Paulina Street.
"We're going to find more and more situations where these cameras go up and [Cardenas] is not going to be able to destroy every park. He's not going to be able to weasel his way out of every speed camera," said 12th Ward aldermanic candidate Pete DeMay, who's helping organize Thursday's rally.
"He voted for the cameras. He owns those votes."
September 30, 2014
Alderman and Candidate sign pledge to work to Abolish Traffic Photo Enforcement in Chicago - Go to the Candidate Pledge to see more photos and a running tally of candidates and incumbents who have signed the pledge
Alderman Roderick Sawyer 6th Ward signs and pledges to work to Abolish Red Light & Speed Cameras in Chicago
Pete DeMay, candidate for 12th Ward signs pledge
September 25, 2014
Rahm and his motorcade are caught by ABC News running red lights and speeding AGAIN!
Tickets Issued To Mayor's Caravan Cars Since ABC7's May 5 Report
• May 7: 42 miles per hour, Douglas Park, 2900 W Ogden (1st car of caravan) - Paid
• May 7: 42 miles per hour at Douglas Park, 2900 W Ogden (2nd car of caravan) - Paid
• June 19: Red light violation. 3600 N. Elston - Dismissed
• June 23: 43 miles per hour at Welles Park, 4436 N Western (Warning)
• June 27: Red light violation. 30 West 87th - Dismissed
• July 6: 47 miles per hour at Park 499, 10318 S. Indianapolis (Warning)
• August 27: Red light violation. 4000 N. Ashland - Dismissed
• May 7: 42 miles per hour, Douglas Park, 2900 W Ogden (1st car of caravan) - Paid
• May 7: 42 miles per hour at Douglas Park, 2900 W Ogden (2nd car of caravan) - Paid
• June 19: Red light violation. 3600 N. Elston - Dismissed
• June 23: 43 miles per hour at Welles Park, 4436 N Western (Warning)
• June 27: Red light violation. 30 West 87th - Dismissed
• July 6: 47 miles per hour at Park 499, 10318 S. Indianapolis (Warning)
• August 27: Red light violation. 4000 N. Ashland - Dismissed
September 18, 2014
Automated Speed Enforcement Cameras to Issue Warnings in Three Children's Safety Zones This Week
New Cameras to Issue Warnings Near Ashmore Park, Dulles Elementary and Chicago Vocational High School
Warnings for speeding will begin to be issued this week from newly installed Automated Speed Enforcement (ASE) cameras in three Children’s Safety Zones around Ashmore Park, Dulles Elementary and Chicago Vocational High School.
On Thursday, September 18th, the newly installed ASE camera at 2109 E. 87th St. near Chicago Vocational High School, and the one near Ashmore Park at 4909 N. Cicero Ave. will begin to issue warnings for a 30-day period.
On Wednesday, September 24th, warnings will begin to be issued from the ASE cameras near Dulles Elementary at 215 E. 63rd St. and 6330 S. Dr. Martin Luther King Dr. Only warnings are issued for the first 30 days after cameras are activated in a safety zone.
The first time a vehicle owner is eligible to receive an enforceable violation, they will instead receive a warning. Per city ordinance, fines for violations are $35 for vehicles traveling 6-10 miles per hour over the posted speed limit while in a safety zone, and $100 for vehicles traveling 11 or more miles over the posted speed limit.
The City is currently only issuing tickets for speeders going 10 or more miles per hour over the posted speed limit. That ticket threshold will gradually be lowered going forward.
The City is installing ASE cameras in Children’s Safety Zones around parks and schools in an effort to increase safety and reduce speeding. Revenue generated by the program is to be invested in critical safety initiatives including after-school, anti-violence and jobs programs; crossing guards and police officers around schools; and infrastructure improvements, such as additional signs, crosswalk markings and other traffic safety improvements.
The Children’s Safety Zones are designated within 1/8th of a mile from Chicago parks or schools. The City ordinance establishing the program narrows the hours and locations of enforcement that are allowed under state law, and provides for the following:
• The enforcement hours will be limited from 7 am to 7 pm in safety zones around schools on school days (Monday through Friday)
o 7 am to 4 pm: 20 mph speed limit when children are present; the posted speed limit when no children are present
o 4 pm to 7 pm: the posted speed limit
• The enforcement hours around parks will be limited to only those hours parks are open (typically 6am to 11pm, 7 days a week) to the posted speed limit.
Automated Speed Enforcement Cameras to Issue Warnings in Three Children's Safety Zones This Week
New Cameras to Issue Warnings Near Ashmore Park, Dulles Elementary and Chicago Vocational High School
Warnings for speeding will begin to be issued this week from newly installed Automated Speed Enforcement (ASE) cameras in three Children’s Safety Zones around Ashmore Park, Dulles Elementary and Chicago Vocational High School.
On Thursday, September 18th, the newly installed ASE camera at 2109 E. 87th St. near Chicago Vocational High School, and the one near Ashmore Park at 4909 N. Cicero Ave. will begin to issue warnings for a 30-day period.
On Wednesday, September 24th, warnings will begin to be issued from the ASE cameras near Dulles Elementary at 215 E. 63rd St. and 6330 S. Dr. Martin Luther King Dr. Only warnings are issued for the first 30 days after cameras are activated in a safety zone.
The first time a vehicle owner is eligible to receive an enforceable violation, they will instead receive a warning. Per city ordinance, fines for violations are $35 for vehicles traveling 6-10 miles per hour over the posted speed limit while in a safety zone, and $100 for vehicles traveling 11 or more miles over the posted speed limit.
The City is currently only issuing tickets for speeders going 10 or more miles per hour over the posted speed limit. That ticket threshold will gradually be lowered going forward.
The City is installing ASE cameras in Children’s Safety Zones around parks and schools in an effort to increase safety and reduce speeding. Revenue generated by the program is to be invested in critical safety initiatives including after-school, anti-violence and jobs programs; crossing guards and police officers around schools; and infrastructure improvements, such as additional signs, crosswalk markings and other traffic safety improvements.
The Children’s Safety Zones are designated within 1/8th of a mile from Chicago parks or schools. The City ordinance establishing the program narrows the hours and locations of enforcement that are allowed under state law, and provides for the following:
• The enforcement hours will be limited from 7 am to 7 pm in safety zones around schools on school days (Monday through Friday)
o 7 am to 4 pm: 20 mph speed limit when children are present; the posted speed limit when no children are present
o 4 pm to 7 pm: the posted speed limit
• The enforcement hours around parks will be limited to only those hours parks are open (typically 6am to 11pm, 7 days a week) to the posted speed limit.
September 12,2014
After feeling the heat, two Chicago Aldermen start to speak about problems with Photo Enforcement in their Wards. Unfortunately, as is so often the case in Chicago, their narrow minded approaches only look at the problems in their Wards and ignore the bigger problem of a totally flawed system that plagues the entire city. Amazingly one of them is Alderman Anthony Beale who is the Chairman of the City Councils Transportation Committee. You might think if he sees problems in his Ward he would call for hearings and demand answers from CDOT and the mayor but as of yet that has not happened.
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Archer Ave. Speed Cameras About Money - Not Safety, Alderman Says
By Casey Cora on September 9, 2014 2:34pm @bycaseycora The new Archer Avenue speed camera is the source of much frustration for Southwest Side drivers.View Full CaptionDNAinfo/Casey Cora MCKINLEY PARK — Drivers and pedestrians can't even see Mulberry Playlot Park from Archer Avenue, but that won't stop one of the city's newest speed cameras from pumping out tickets to motorists on the busy Southwest Side road. Now, after mounting complaints from local drivers — and a widely shared Facebook video calling the cameras a cash-grabbing sham — Ald. George Cardenas (12th) is hoping to get the camera moved or eliminated. Casey Cora tried to interview some pedestrians for their reaction, but couldn't find any: "There's no reason why the camera should be there. It's a stretch to call [Mulberry] a park. You know the reason behind it's nothing more than a money maker ... look, there's a need for cameras, no doubt, where people's safety is in danger, but in this case you couldn't make the argument in any sensible manner," Cardenas told DNAinfo Chicago. The city began installing the speed cameras outside schools and parks last year, ostensibly in an effort to prevent pedestrian accidents in what the city calls "children's safety zones." After a 30-day grace period that begins when the cameras are installed, drivers begin facing fines of $35-$100 for breaking the posted speed limit. There are now about 150 cameras scattered throughout Chicago at roughly 70 locations, where the city said speeding tickets were dramatically decreasing. But the location of the Archer Avenue camera, which residents say unexpectedly started issuing warning tickets Friday, and its proximity to the tiny triangular park, has drivers calling the new camera an outrageous "theft." "You can plainly see people are going to go more than 25 miles per hour over here because there is no park. The city is stealing our money," says Lupe Castillo on her Facebook video, in which she strolls down Archer Avenue in search of the park, a school or anything that would necessitate a "safety zone." Posted on Monday, it's already been shared nearly 2,500 times.Though the city's transportation department lists the park location as the 3200 block of South Archer Avenue, it's actually located about a block south of Archer. In fact, the park is tucked away on Robinson Street, an access road typically used by semi-trucks as a shortcut to a Stevenson Expressway entrance ramp. The camera is located about block away on busy Archer Avenue, snatching speeding motorists. "Of course [my customers] are seeing the camera lights flash when they head into my shop. Most people already avoid the Pershing Avenue cameras and now I'm hearing about this one on Archer," said Joe Trutin, owner of the Video Strip rental store at 3307 S. Archer Ave. "If the city is going to start putting these things everywhere, people are going to change their decisions about where they drive and where they shop," he said. The city's transportation department did not immediately return calls seeking comment. Post by Lupe Castillo. |
Speed-limit increase proposed due to spike in red-light tickets
TUE, 09/09/2014 - 12:09PM FRAN SPIELMAN @FSPIELMAN Five weeks ago, the chairman of the City Council’s Transportation Committee tried and failed to convince Mayor Rahm Emanuel to shut down Chicago’s scandal-scarred red-light camera program until Inspector General Joe Ferguson wraps up his investigation of unexplained spikes in red-light tickets. Now, Ald. Anthony Beale (9th) is taking matters into his own hands — by raising the speed limit on a Far South Side stretch where, he claims, motorists are being unfairly nailed by a game of “Gotcha.” Under the change, advanced by the Traffic Committee Monday and expected to be approved by the full Council on Wednesday, the speed limit on 127th Street between Indiana and Halsted would be raised from 30 mph to 35 mph. The speed limit for motorists coming off the Bishop Ford Freeway already stands at 35 mph. But, a sudden drop to 30 mph has turned the red-light camera at 127th and Eggleston into a gold mine, Beale said. “People were getting hit with a lot of tickets unnecessarily. The community was up in arms about it. This is one remedy to have traffic flow at a decent pace without people getting hit with tickets. This is my way of taking care of the residents on the Far South Side," Beale said. The chairman acknowledged that raising the speed limit is a partial solution and that it'll take a lot more to restore public confidence in the red-light camera program at the center of a $2 million bribery scandal. “Hopefully, we tweak the system to where there is some integrity put back in the system. Hopefully, the Department of Transportation monitors these spikes and figures out something is going wrong when there is a spike and corrects it without issuing all these tickets,” he said. “If it’s truly about public safety, that’s what it should be about. When they see those spikes, all of those tickets should be voided." A top mayoral aide said the road in question is a state route and the City Council does not have the power to change the speed limit. Beale was told that a year ago--long before the spike in red-light tickets--but he pushed the ordinance through committee anyway earlier this week, the mayoral aide said. In late July, Emanuel offered to review 16,000 red-light tickets issued during spikes at a dozen Chicago intersections. Motorists who exercise their right to a second look will be offered refunds if those tickets were issued in error, officials said. To restore public confidence in the red light program severely shaken by a Chicago Tribune investigation, Emanuel also promised to post daily violations for each of the 352 red-light cameras posted at 174 Chicago intersections. Beale was not appeased. He demanded that the city “put the brakes on the whole red-light system” until Ferguson’s investigation is completed. “We’ll be protecting the integrity of the city. If something comes out that there was some type of impropriety that took place, there’s more room for disaster if we keep on down this road,” he said. Noting that red-light cameras have generated upwards of $500 million for the cash-strapped city, Beale said, “If we keep on down this road, we just have room for exposure… If something comes out and this company has some type of exposure and they see a $500 million lawsuit coming their way, they’ll probably close their doors and file bankruptcy. And that will leave us, once again, holding the bag.” Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld countered that the suspicious spikes were confined to less than one-half of one percent of all the violations issued during that period. The following day, Emanuel said he was “angry” about the spikes, adding, “There should be no inequity in the system. There should be no aberration. And a company, even though it’s a small percentage less than one percent, it has to be 100 percent right for there to be trust. |
Schools Open 9/2/2014 in Chicago meaning School Speed Cameras are active. The enforcement hours will be limited from 7 am to 7 pm in safety zones around schools on school days (Monday through Friday)
7 am to 4 pm: 20 mph speed limit when children are present; the posted speed limit when no children are present
4 pm to 7 pm: the posted speed limit
Be aware, at 30 mph in a School Zone, when children are present, you get a $35 ticket in the mail, at 31 mph it's gonna cost you $100.
For a map of Chicago Red Light & Speed Camera locations go to: www.chicagotraffictracker.com
August 29, 2014 - New Speed Cameras go live
Automated Speed Enforcement Cameras to Issue Warnings in Four Children's Safety Zones Next Week New Cameras to Issue Warnings Near Juarez and Taft High Schools, Frazier Elementary and Mulberry Park
Warnings for speeding will begin to be issued next week from newly installed Automated Speed Enforcement (ASE) cameras in four Children’s Safety Zones near Juarez High School, Taft High School, Frazier Elementary and Mulberry Park.
On Tuesday, September 2nd, the newly installed ASE camera near Juarez High School at 1440 W Cermak Rd. will begin to issue warnings for a 30-day period.
On Friday, September 5th, warnings will begin to be issued from the cameras near Taft High School at 5739 N. Northwest Hwy. and 6510 W. Bryn Mawr Ave., near Mulberry Park at 3200 S. Archer Ave., and near Frazier at 4042 W. Roosevelt Rd. and 1110 & 1117 S. Pulaski Rd.
Only warnings are issued for the first 30 days after cameras are activated in a safety zone. The first time a vehicle owner is eligible to receive an enforceable violation, they will instead receive a warning. Per city ordinance, fines for violations are $35 for vehicles traveling 6-10 miles per hour over the posted speed limit while in a safety zone, and $100 for vehicles traveling 11 or more miles over the posted speed limit. The City is currently only issuing tickets for speeders going 10 or more miles per hour over the posted speed limit. That ticket threshold will gradually be lowered going forward.
The City is installing ASE cameras in Children’s Safety Zones around parks and schools in an effort to increase safety and reduce speeding. Revenue generated by the program is to be invested in critical safety initiatives including after-school, anti-violence and jobs programs; crossing guards and police officers around schools; and infrastructure improvements, such as additional signs, crosswalk markings and other traffic safety improvements.
The Children’s Safety Zones are designated within 1/8th of a mile from Chicago parks or schools. The City ordinance establishing the program narrows the hours and locations of enforcement that are allowed under state law, and provides for the following:
• The enforcement hours will be limited from 7 am to 7 pm in safety zones around schools on school days (Monday through Friday)
o 7 am to 4 pm: 20 mph speed limit when children are present; the posted speed limit when no children are present
o 4 pm to 7 pm: the posted speed limit
• The enforcement hours around parks will be limited to only those hours parks are open (typically 6am to 11pm, 7 days a week) to the posted speed limit.
Automated Speed Enforcement Cameras to Issue Warnings in Four Children's Safety Zones Next Week New Cameras to Issue Warnings Near Juarez and Taft High Schools, Frazier Elementary and Mulberry Park
Warnings for speeding will begin to be issued next week from newly installed Automated Speed Enforcement (ASE) cameras in four Children’s Safety Zones near Juarez High School, Taft High School, Frazier Elementary and Mulberry Park.
On Tuesday, September 2nd, the newly installed ASE camera near Juarez High School at 1440 W Cermak Rd. will begin to issue warnings for a 30-day period.
On Friday, September 5th, warnings will begin to be issued from the cameras near Taft High School at 5739 N. Northwest Hwy. and 6510 W. Bryn Mawr Ave., near Mulberry Park at 3200 S. Archer Ave., and near Frazier at 4042 W. Roosevelt Rd. and 1110 & 1117 S. Pulaski Rd.
Only warnings are issued for the first 30 days after cameras are activated in a safety zone. The first time a vehicle owner is eligible to receive an enforceable violation, they will instead receive a warning. Per city ordinance, fines for violations are $35 for vehicles traveling 6-10 miles per hour over the posted speed limit while in a safety zone, and $100 for vehicles traveling 11 or more miles over the posted speed limit. The City is currently only issuing tickets for speeders going 10 or more miles per hour over the posted speed limit. That ticket threshold will gradually be lowered going forward.
The City is installing ASE cameras in Children’s Safety Zones around parks and schools in an effort to increase safety and reduce speeding. Revenue generated by the program is to be invested in critical safety initiatives including after-school, anti-violence and jobs programs; crossing guards and police officers around schools; and infrastructure improvements, such as additional signs, crosswalk markings and other traffic safety improvements.
The Children’s Safety Zones are designated within 1/8th of a mile from Chicago parks or schools. The City ordinance establishing the program narrows the hours and locations of enforcement that are allowed under state law, and provides for the following:
• The enforcement hours will be limited from 7 am to 7 pm in safety zones around schools on school days (Monday through Friday)
o 7 am to 4 pm: 20 mph speed limit when children are present; the posted speed limit when no children are present
o 4 pm to 7 pm: the posted speed limit
• The enforcement hours around parks will be limited to only those hours parks are open (typically 6am to 11pm, 7 days a week) to the posted speed limit.
Mayor Emanuel, Take Down Those Cameras Or Else!
New York's Nassau County was forced to dismiss $2.4 million Speed Camera Tickets because of inconsistencies. Fox News questions their misuse and references Chicago's fraud investigation and Tribune study.
The vendor, American Traffic Solutions is also the vendor for Chicago's Speed Cameras.
How much will Chicago have to give back and will they be forced to take them all down because of their "inconsistencies".
August 29, 2014
FoxNews.com
PERSONAL TECHIs traffic camera technology being misused?
By John R. Quain
Published August 29, 2014
FoxNews.com
Speed and red light cameras offer the promise of reducing accidents and deaths, but government misuse is preventing the devices from reaching their full potential.
This summer, officials in New York’s Nassau County had to dismiss $2.4 million worth of tickets because of inconsistencies in their speed-detector cameras. Some tickets for speeding through a school zone were issued when schools were closed, leading to about a quarter of the citations being invalidated. The Long Island county nonetheless plans to move ahead with the system when schools reopen, and drivers who fail to slow down will receive $80 fines in the mail.
But scheduling problems aren't the only glitches. The potential revenues for municipalities and the companies that supply the devices (Nassau County’s contractor, American Traffic Solutions, receives 38 percent of the fines) have proven tempting in some places, leading to allegations of corruption.
In Chicago, there's a federal probe into an alleged multimillion-dollar bribery scandal involving the camera system’s now-dismissed contractor, Redflex Traffic Systems. Moreover, an investigation by the Chicago Tribune uncovered irregularities in the frequency of tickets being issued at some of the city’s intersections. The newspaper found that there were spikes in the number of tickets issued from some red light camera systems that did not correlate with traffic data. In other words, there was either a technical problem or the systems were being manipulated to issue thousands of tickets to drivers who did not deserve them.
When municipalities began using the technology, their goal was laudable: Install radar-connected cameras to catch speeders, and place cameras at intersections to catch drivers who run red lights.
Every parent agrees that cars should slow down around schools. And running red lights causes some of the most serious car accidents, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, whose research shows that red light cameras can reduce accidents and prevent T-bone collisions at intersections.
So the abuse and misuse of the technology is disappointing, to say the least.
Speed and red light cameras have to be constantly maintained. Radar systems need to be regularly calibrated, and video cameras have to record violations precisely. Many red light offenses, for example, involve rolling right turns, where drivers fail to come to a complete stop. So the cameras need to be able to prove that the car continued to move forward.
But even when it’s working properly, the most sophisticated technology can be stymied when it is mishandled. In order for it to be accepted and effective, technology has to be used in an honest and straightforward manner, or it will be rejected.
New York City, for example, has traditionally hidden the few red light cameras it deploys. (The city has even used dummy cameras to trick drivers.) There are no warning signs that drivers are approaching a dangerous intersection, so they don’t slow down and they continue to run red lights, as I witnessed several times this week.
“New York City does not view cameras as revenue raisers,” Polly Trottenberg, the city's Department of Transportation commissioner, said in testimony on April 30. “We view them as safety devices. As I have said before, if the city collects no more revenue from speed cameras because motorists have stopped speeding, then I will declare victory.”
Unfortunately, the city is demonstrating the opposite goal by hiding the 120 new speed cameras it's installing near schools. In order to slow down drivers, there have to be warning signs that act as a deterrent. That’s why Chicago, Nassau County and other municipalities in the U.S. post signs at intersections warning drivers about photo enforcement. When radar and camera systems are concealed, the public begins to mistrust government and the true aim of using the technology.
The lack of oversight and the unwillingness of some municipalities to be forthright about how and where they are using these systems have hamstrung the technology. In Arizona and Los Angeles, they have led to a complete repeal.
The lesson is, if we aren't careful about how we use technology, we could lose not only its potential benefits, but the right to use it entirely.
PERSONAL TECHIs traffic camera technology being misused?
By John R. Quain
Published August 29, 2014
FoxNews.com
Speed and red light cameras offer the promise of reducing accidents and deaths, but government misuse is preventing the devices from reaching their full potential.
This summer, officials in New York’s Nassau County had to dismiss $2.4 million worth of tickets because of inconsistencies in their speed-detector cameras. Some tickets for speeding through a school zone were issued when schools were closed, leading to about a quarter of the citations being invalidated. The Long Island county nonetheless plans to move ahead with the system when schools reopen, and drivers who fail to slow down will receive $80 fines in the mail.
But scheduling problems aren't the only glitches. The potential revenues for municipalities and the companies that supply the devices (Nassau County’s contractor, American Traffic Solutions, receives 38 percent of the fines) have proven tempting in some places, leading to allegations of corruption.
In Chicago, there's a federal probe into an alleged multimillion-dollar bribery scandal involving the camera system’s now-dismissed contractor, Redflex Traffic Systems. Moreover, an investigation by the Chicago Tribune uncovered irregularities in the frequency of tickets being issued at some of the city’s intersections. The newspaper found that there were spikes in the number of tickets issued from some red light camera systems that did not correlate with traffic data. In other words, there was either a technical problem or the systems were being manipulated to issue thousands of tickets to drivers who did not deserve them.
When municipalities began using the technology, their goal was laudable: Install radar-connected cameras to catch speeders, and place cameras at intersections to catch drivers who run red lights.
Every parent agrees that cars should slow down around schools. And running red lights causes some of the most serious car accidents, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, whose research shows that red light cameras can reduce accidents and prevent T-bone collisions at intersections.
So the abuse and misuse of the technology is disappointing, to say the least.
Speed and red light cameras have to be constantly maintained. Radar systems need to be regularly calibrated, and video cameras have to record violations precisely. Many red light offenses, for example, involve rolling right turns, where drivers fail to come to a complete stop. So the cameras need to be able to prove that the car continued to move forward.
But even when it’s working properly, the most sophisticated technology can be stymied when it is mishandled. In order for it to be accepted and effective, technology has to be used in an honest and straightforward manner, or it will be rejected.
New York City, for example, has traditionally hidden the few red light cameras it deploys. (The city has even used dummy cameras to trick drivers.) There are no warning signs that drivers are approaching a dangerous intersection, so they don’t slow down and they continue to run red lights, as I witnessed several times this week.
“New York City does not view cameras as revenue raisers,” Polly Trottenberg, the city's Department of Transportation commissioner, said in testimony on April 30. “We view them as safety devices. As I have said before, if the city collects no more revenue from speed cameras because motorists have stopped speeding, then I will declare victory.”
Unfortunately, the city is demonstrating the opposite goal by hiding the 120 new speed cameras it's installing near schools. In order to slow down drivers, there have to be warning signs that act as a deterrent. That’s why Chicago, Nassau County and other municipalities in the U.S. post signs at intersections warning drivers about photo enforcement. When radar and camera systems are concealed, the public begins to mistrust government and the true aim of using the technology.
The lack of oversight and the unwillingness of some municipalities to be forthright about how and where they are using these systems have hamstrung the technology. In Arizona and Los Angeles, they have led to a complete repeal.
The lesson is, if we aren't careful about how we use technology, we could lose not only its potential benefits, but the right to use it entirely.
Orland, a small suburb outside Chicago, is trying to decide if they should add to their 3 Red Light Cameras. Interestingly, they have aldermen asking questions beyond how much money will they bring in.
August 27, 2014
Orland police credit red light cameras for reduction in accidents
Orland Park is reviewing proposals from companies interested in managing the village's red light cameras. Though violations and revenues have been falling, village officials say the cameras make streets safer and are here to stay. (Lauren Zumbach, Chicago Tribune)
By Lauren Zumbach,Tribune reportercontact the reporter
Highway and Road DisastersPublic Officials
Up to 50 percent fewer crashes with red light cameras, little change in accidents with injuries: Orland police
Accidents have declined at Orland Park intersections with red light cameras during the six-year period surrounding their installation, according to an Orland Park police analysis of traffic accident statistics.
Orland Park reviewing plans for new red light camera contractLauren Zumbach, Tribune reporter
Police touted 40 to 50 percent reductions in accidents in lanes monitored by red light cameras at each of the three intersections with cameras — Harlem Avenue and 151st Street, Harlem Avenue and 159th Street, and La Grange Road and 151st Street — from the three-year period prior to the cameras' installation in 2009 to the first three years with cameras in place.
Police collected statistics on the number of accidents in monitored lanes between 2007 and 2012, as well as the type of crash, said Orland Park police Lt. Tim McCormick, who oversees traffic compliance. The report did not include accident rates, or how the number of accidents in a year compares to the number of cars on the road.
There were fewer rear-end crashes and crashes resulting in property damage during the three-year post-camera period than before. Accidents causing injuries increased from 2 to 5 at two intersections, remaining unchanged at the other, according to the police analysis.
The number of accidents at La Grange Road and 151st Street dropped from 52 to 26 and both Harlem Avenue intersections saw 26 accidents fall to 15 from the three years prior to the cameras' introduction to the three years after. Comparing the two years post-camera to the two years prior gives reductions of six and two.
New Orland Park red light camera contract approvedLauren Zumbach
It's unclear how much credit the cameras can be given because McCormick said police did not have information on how the accident statistics compared to Orland Park intersections without cameras during the same period, but he believes they're making a difference.
"I know they're not popular, but I think they're a necessary evil," McCormick said.
Until switching red light camera providers in June, Orland Park used the same company, Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., that is now facing questions about its cameras' performance in Chicago after a Tribune analysis of more than 4 million tickets issued in Chicago showed extreme fluctuations in ticketing that city officials said they couldn't explain.
Orland Park police are "100 percent confident" similar issues didn't plague the Redflex cameras in Orland Park, despite the fact that police do not have daily data on the number of tickets those cameras issued, McCormick said.
Chicago city officials are letting some drivers request reviews that could lead to refunds, the Tribune reported earlier this month.
But McCormick said Orland Park drivers shouldn't expect similar treatment. McCormick personally reviews every traffic violation flagged by the cameras two or three times a week and said he would have noticed if there had been sudden changes in activity.
Even if faulty equipment meant enforcement varied, McCormick said refunds wouldn't be warranted because a driver only gets a ticket if McCormick confirms the red light camera made the right call
CBS has been reporting on the Red Light Cameras in Chicago for years.
Go here to see a chronology of stories
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/tag/red-light-cameras/
August 25, 2014
Red-Light Cameras: Lucrative? Yes. Effective? Probably Not.
Posted: 08/19/2014 1:50 pm EDT Updated: 08/19/2014 1:59 pm EDT
Hilary Gowins Writer/editor, Illinois Policy Institute
The community of more than 40,000 people adopted a new approach to traffic flow in the early 2000s under the guidance of traffic engineer Hans Monderman, who believes fewer rules and restrictions result in more responsible, less distracted drivers.
In Drachten, the approach is working. According to the Reform Institute, a Swedish Policy organization, at one of the village's main intersections: "Accidents have decreased from an average of 10.25 per year to just 3.5 ... Further, the number of personal injuries from these accidents decreased from an average of two every year to just 0.33. This is an impressive achievement, especially considering that traffic volume at the intersection has increased 30%."
On the opposite end of the spectrum is the great American city of Chicago. Here, officials have set up the largest red-light camera system in the U.S., aimed at catching and fining drivers who blow through stoplights.
Unlike Drachten, where officials have monitored the success of the village's traffic experiment, no comprehensive research on Chicago's extensive red-light program exists.
What does exist is a record of failure. In August, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announcedthat the city would be reviewing more than 16,000 tickets issued by the cameras.
Not long after that announcement, a Chicago judge revealed that he's beenoverturning a vast majority of red-light camera tickets brought before him. Administrative Law Judge Robert A. Sussman said that many red-light camera tickets were issued because of yellow lights that lasted less than three seconds, which is the legally required minimum.
And on Aug. 13, the Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed that the red-light camera program's former leader and the ex-CEO of Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. (the city's former vendor) were indicted on conspiracy charges related to a $2 million federal bribery investigation.
The only thing Chicago's red-light camera program has done well is making the city plenty of money. Since 2003, red-light tickets have brought in $500 million.
But Chicago is just one of 502 communities in the U.S. using red-light cameras, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. And it isn't the only city where Redflex is coming under fire - the company was also involved in litigation in Louisiana related to a red-light camera program that ended in 2010 in Jefferson Parish.
In Nassau County, New York, a class-action lawsuit has been filed against the county's red-light system. Like Chicago's Sussman, plaintiffs in the lawsuit claim that yellow-light times are less than the three-second minimum.
Just across the Hudson River in Piscataway, N.J., the township's red-light camera program is causing an increase in accidents. Reports show that accidents in neighboring South Plainfield are up 50 percent near red-light cameras on the Piscataway border. American Traffic Solutions, the company that operates the red-light cameras in Nassau County and Piscataway, settled with drivers in 2013 for $4.2 million. The lawsuit, which claimed stoplights did not take into account average road speeds and did not give drivers ample time to hit the brakes, applied to 18 towns throughout New Jersey, including Piscataway.
The experiences in Chicago and the East Coast highlight that red-light camera systems are prone to error and abuse. These cities and many others need to switch gears on their traffic safety policies.
Drachten's example likely won't be embraced by American communities anytime soon. But realistic alternatives to increase traffic safety already exist. Research has shown that increasing yellow-light times leads to a decrease in the number of accidents at busy intersections.
In Tampa, Fla. -- which has a red-light camera program -- lengthening yellow-light times led to fewer accidents and reduced ticket revenue. At one intersection, yellow-light times were adjusted from 3.9 seconds to 4.8 seconds on Dec. 3, according toWTSP 10 News Tampa, and "the result was a 79 percent drop in citations -- 52 violations issued in December, compared with a 259/month average through 2013's first 11 months." Other intersections saw similar results, with one intersection seeing a drop of $30,000 a month in ticket revenue.
Red-light camera systems make it easy to forget about intent in lieu of looking forward to healthy ticket revenues, as cities across the country have already discovered. Traffic safety rules should stick to one simple principle: ensuring driver and pedestrian safety.
Posted: 08/19/2014 1:50 pm EDT Updated: 08/19/2014 1:59 pm EDT
Hilary Gowins Writer/editor, Illinois Policy Institute
- The Dutch village of Drachten has almost no traffic signals. Drivers maneuver the road using a mixture of common sense, respect for their fellow drivers, concern for their personal property and expediency.
The community of more than 40,000 people adopted a new approach to traffic flow in the early 2000s under the guidance of traffic engineer Hans Monderman, who believes fewer rules and restrictions result in more responsible, less distracted drivers.
In Drachten, the approach is working. According to the Reform Institute, a Swedish Policy organization, at one of the village's main intersections: "Accidents have decreased from an average of 10.25 per year to just 3.5 ... Further, the number of personal injuries from these accidents decreased from an average of two every year to just 0.33. This is an impressive achievement, especially considering that traffic volume at the intersection has increased 30%."
On the opposite end of the spectrum is the great American city of Chicago. Here, officials have set up the largest red-light camera system in the U.S., aimed at catching and fining drivers who blow through stoplights.
Unlike Drachten, where officials have monitored the success of the village's traffic experiment, no comprehensive research on Chicago's extensive red-light program exists.
What does exist is a record of failure. In August, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announcedthat the city would be reviewing more than 16,000 tickets issued by the cameras.
Not long after that announcement, a Chicago judge revealed that he's beenoverturning a vast majority of red-light camera tickets brought before him. Administrative Law Judge Robert A. Sussman said that many red-light camera tickets were issued because of yellow lights that lasted less than three seconds, which is the legally required minimum.
And on Aug. 13, the Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed that the red-light camera program's former leader and the ex-CEO of Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. (the city's former vendor) were indicted on conspiracy charges related to a $2 million federal bribery investigation.
The only thing Chicago's red-light camera program has done well is making the city plenty of money. Since 2003, red-light tickets have brought in $500 million.
But Chicago is just one of 502 communities in the U.S. using red-light cameras, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. And it isn't the only city where Redflex is coming under fire - the company was also involved in litigation in Louisiana related to a red-light camera program that ended in 2010 in Jefferson Parish.
In Nassau County, New York, a class-action lawsuit has been filed against the county's red-light system. Like Chicago's Sussman, plaintiffs in the lawsuit claim that yellow-light times are less than the three-second minimum.
Just across the Hudson River in Piscataway, N.J., the township's red-light camera program is causing an increase in accidents. Reports show that accidents in neighboring South Plainfield are up 50 percent near red-light cameras on the Piscataway border. American Traffic Solutions, the company that operates the red-light cameras in Nassau County and Piscataway, settled with drivers in 2013 for $4.2 million. The lawsuit, which claimed stoplights did not take into account average road speeds and did not give drivers ample time to hit the brakes, applied to 18 towns throughout New Jersey, including Piscataway.
The experiences in Chicago and the East Coast highlight that red-light camera systems are prone to error and abuse. These cities and many others need to switch gears on their traffic safety policies.
Drachten's example likely won't be embraced by American communities anytime soon. But realistic alternatives to increase traffic safety already exist. Research has shown that increasing yellow-light times leads to a decrease in the number of accidents at busy intersections.
In Tampa, Fla. -- which has a red-light camera program -- lengthening yellow-light times led to fewer accidents and reduced ticket revenue. At one intersection, yellow-light times were adjusted from 3.9 seconds to 4.8 seconds on Dec. 3, according toWTSP 10 News Tampa, and "the result was a 79 percent drop in citations -- 52 violations issued in December, compared with a 259/month average through 2013's first 11 months." Other intersections saw similar results, with one intersection seeing a drop of $30,000 a month in ticket revenue.
Red-light camera systems make it easy to forget about intent in lieu of looking forward to healthy ticket revenues, as cities across the country have already discovered. Traffic safety rules should stick to one simple principle: ensuring driver and pedestrian safety.
The Sun Times weighs in on the Red Light Scameras
go here to see the full story
http://politics.suntimes.com/article/chicago/6-things-know-about-chicagos-red-light-cameras/thu-08212014-1221pm
6 things to know about Chicago's red light cameras
THU, 08/21/2014 - 12:21PM
SYDNEY LAWSON
@SYDNEYRLAWSON
Depending on who you ask, red light cameras are supposed to make Chicago’s streets safer. Or they're simply a cash cow for the city, with some saying the cameras are excessive and give unfair violations.
On top of that, the company behind the red light cameras is under the microscope from the feds for alleged violations of their own.
Here are six things you should know about the city's cameras:
1. They have a close eye on you. Did you know the cameras have 360-degree panning technology?
2. Smile, you're on camera — Chicago has more red-light cameras than anywhere else in the United States.
3. Some of the tickets issued from being caught on camera are being questioned — 9,000 of them.
4. Even Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s police bodyguards have been nailed by the cameras.
5. Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. brought the cameras to the streets, but the company, along with former city worker John Bills (pictured), has been under federal investigation for a bribery scandal.
6. One of the key players in the scandal is now cooperating with the feds.
RED LIGHT CAMERAS
THU, 08/21/2014 - 12:21PM
SYDNEY LAWSON
@SYDNEYRLAWSON
Depending on who you ask, red light cameras are supposed to make Chicago’s streets safer. Or they're simply a cash cow for the city, with some saying the cameras are excessive and give unfair violations.
On top of that, the company behind the red light cameras is under the microscope from the feds for alleged violations of their own.
Here are six things you should know about the city's cameras:
1. They have a close eye on you. Did you know the cameras have 360-degree panning technology?
2. Smile, you're on camera — Chicago has more red-light cameras than anywhere else in the United States.
3. Some of the tickets issued from being caught on camera are being questioned — 9,000 of them.
4. Even Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s police bodyguards have been nailed by the cameras.
5. Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. brought the cameras to the streets, but the company, along with former city worker John Bills (pictured), has been under federal investigation for a bribery scandal.
6. One of the key players in the scandal is now cooperating with the feds.
RED LIGHT CAMERAS
Tribune Cartoon August 20, 2014
Are the Red Light Cameras going to give Rahm the boot?
David Orr - The red-light camera program should be ended completely...
August 20, 2014
Tribune letters to the editor
End red-light program
The Chicago Tribune’s ongoing investigation into the city of Chicago’s red-light camera program exposes the program for what it is: a regressive revenue-producing tool that dupes law-abiding citizens.
The fine work by Tribune reporters David Kidwell and Alex Richards proves the red-light camera program, much like Chicago’s parking-meter fiasco, was a bad deal from the beginning.
Pitched as a safety measure, red-light cameras are really a way to nickel-and-dime average folks.
From shortened yellow lights to manipulated tickets, residents are sick of these tricks, as they should be.
Government must not treat its citizens this way. The red-light camera program should be ended completely or, at the very least, scaled back drastically with heightened oversight and accountability.
— David Orr, Cook County clerk, Chicago
The Chicago Tribune’s ongoing investigation into the city of Chicago’s red-light camera program exposes the program for what it is: a regressive revenue-producing tool that dupes law-abiding citizens.
The fine work by Tribune reporters David Kidwell and Alex Richards proves the red-light camera program, much like Chicago’s parking-meter fiasco, was a bad deal from the beginning.
Pitched as a safety measure, red-light cameras are really a way to nickel-and-dime average folks.
From shortened yellow lights to manipulated tickets, residents are sick of these tricks, as they should be.
Government must not treat its citizens this way. The red-light camera program should be ended completely or, at the very least, scaled back drastically with heightened oversight and accountability.
— David Orr, Cook County clerk, Chicago
Second Judge confirms, if the Amber Light is less than 3 seconds the ticket is dismissed.
August 19, 2014
For the second time in two weeks an Administrative Law Judge dismissed Red Light Camera tickets because the Amber Light was too short. This morning Barnet Fagel, The Red Light Doctor, appeared before Administrative Law Judge Alfred Quijano with representatives from Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras and the press present on three Red Light Camera cases.
Upon reviewing each citation the Judges ruling was the same. Case dismissed! Because in these cases the city provided the proof. The citations each said the Amber Time was 2.9 seconds. The Judge was clear that he was dismissing the cases because the Amber Light did not meet the minimum three second guidelines.
When asked after ruling, Judge Quijano shared that he had not been given any new guidance from the city and that each Judge would make their own decision on how to rule on the Short Amber Question.
Upon reviewing each citation the Judges ruling was the same. Case dismissed! Because in these cases the city provided the proof. The citations each said the Amber Time was 2.9 seconds. The Judge was clear that he was dismissing the cases because the Amber Light did not meet the minimum three second guidelines.
When asked after ruling, Judge Quijano shared that he had not been given any new guidance from the city and that each Judge would make their own decision on how to rule on the Short Amber Question.
How to Beat That Red Light Ticket
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CHICAGO TRIBUNE POLL
Fine-tune or scrap red light cameras?
Voters favor changes to program, but many are split on what to do
By Bill Ruthhart and Michelle Manchir Tribune reporters
More than nine out of 10 Chicago voters think changes should be made to the city’s red light camera program, but they are split on whether the beleaguered system should be eliminatedor improved with better management and oversight, a Chicago Tribune poll has found.
The survey was taken after the Tribune reported that tens of thousands of drivers had been given $100 tickets during a series of sudden and unexplained spikes in citations, but before federal indictments were issued Wednesday tied to a bribery scandal that has engulfed the red light program.
Overall, 92 percent of voters said they think some kind ofchange should be made, with 47 percent saying the red light cameras need better oversight and management while another 45 percent said they should be eliminated. Only 5 percent of voters thought the program is functioning as it should, and 3 percent said they didn’t know or had no opinion, the poll found.
Poll respondent Diane Kasper said the cameras should bescrapped, calling them “traps” and “just a revenue grab.”
“They’re just grossly unfair,” said Kasper, 60, an inventory worker from Sauganash. “I just think they mislead people. I think people don’t know if they should stop, if they should turn, if they’re going to get stuck in the middle of the intersection.”
Respondent Reid Hyams said the cameras don’t serve their stated purpose of encouraging safe driving.
“They don’t necessarily reflect what’s going on in traffic,” said the 61-year-old Rogers Park resident who works in the music business.
He cited as an example the frequent bumper-to-bumper traffic at Lake Shore Drive and Hollywood Avenue on the Far North Side.
“If you stop you’re going to get into a major accident, if you don’t stop, you get a ticket,” he said.
Not all poll respondents thought the cameras should be turned off, however.
Kathryn Pensack said that while better oversight of the cameras may be necessary, she has witnessed behaviors changing for the better at a red light camera intersection at Kedzie and Belmont avenues.
“Before we started the cameras, I noticed people would just go through red lights,” said Pensack, 67, a retired respiratory therapist.
White voters and African-Americans voters’ views differed on what to do about the problems with the red light camera system.
Among black voters, 50 percent wanted the program eliminated, while 43 percent thought better management and oversight was the answer. But only 37 percent of white voters wanted the cameras eliminated, while 53 percent thought the program needed better management.
Overall, the poll found 2 out of 3 Chicago voters believe the red light cameras are a bad idea, while 28 percent said they are a good idea and 6 percent had no opinion.
APC Research Inc. interviewed 800 registered city voters by cellphone and landline from Aug. 6-12. The poll had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
The survey was taken a couple weeks after a Tribune investigation found that tens of thousands of Chicago drivers had been given tickets during sudden and unexplained spikes in citations at certain intersections.
After the Tribune published the investigation last month, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration said it would review 9,000 tickets issued during the spikes. Two weeks ago, City Hall indicated it would expand the number of tickets it would re-check to 16,000.
The red light camera program also has been beset by scandal.
In 2012, the Tribune first reported about the cozy ties between a former city manager who ran the red light program and the company that previously operated the cameras, Redflex Traffic Systems.
That relationship led to the city’s red light business being rigged for a decade as it grew to the largest ticketing system of its kind in the country.
On Wednesday, former City Hall manager John Bills and former Redflex CEO Karen Finley were indicted on mail fraud, wire fraud and bribery charges. Alleged bagman and former Redflex consultant Martin O’Malley was indicted on one count ofconspiracy to commit bribery.
Emanuel’s overall job approval ratings have dipped since a Tribune poll in May 2013. Only 35 percent of voters approve of the mayor’s job performance while 52 percent disapprove. Perhaps not surprisingly, those unsatisfied with the mayor’s job performance also dislike the red light cameras. Of those who disapproved of Emanuel’s work in office, 74 percent said the red light cameras are a bad idea. Even among those who support the mayor, 56 percent said the red light cameras are a bad idea.
Some who were aware that cameras had issued tickets inappropriately said they still think they’re necessary to teach bad drivers a lesson.
“If there’s a problem with the technology then straighten out the technology,” said Albany Park’s Pensack. “If you have good technology, it’s pretty easy to tell whether someone has gone through a red light and you should get a ticket. That’s a behavior we just need to stop.” [email protected] [email protected]
Twitter @BillRuthhart
Twitter @TribuneMM
Fine-tune or scrap red light cameras?
Voters favor changes to program, but many are split on what to do
By Bill Ruthhart and Michelle Manchir Tribune reporters
More than nine out of 10 Chicago voters think changes should be made to the city’s red light camera program, but they are split on whether the beleaguered system should be eliminatedor improved with better management and oversight, a Chicago Tribune poll has found.
The survey was taken after the Tribune reported that tens of thousands of drivers had been given $100 tickets during a series of sudden and unexplained spikes in citations, but before federal indictments were issued Wednesday tied to a bribery scandal that has engulfed the red light program.
Overall, 92 percent of voters said they think some kind ofchange should be made, with 47 percent saying the red light cameras need better oversight and management while another 45 percent said they should be eliminated. Only 5 percent of voters thought the program is functioning as it should, and 3 percent said they didn’t know or had no opinion, the poll found.
Poll respondent Diane Kasper said the cameras should bescrapped, calling them “traps” and “just a revenue grab.”
“They’re just grossly unfair,” said Kasper, 60, an inventory worker from Sauganash. “I just think they mislead people. I think people don’t know if they should stop, if they should turn, if they’re going to get stuck in the middle of the intersection.”
Respondent Reid Hyams said the cameras don’t serve their stated purpose of encouraging safe driving.
“They don’t necessarily reflect what’s going on in traffic,” said the 61-year-old Rogers Park resident who works in the music business.
He cited as an example the frequent bumper-to-bumper traffic at Lake Shore Drive and Hollywood Avenue on the Far North Side.
“If you stop you’re going to get into a major accident, if you don’t stop, you get a ticket,” he said.
Not all poll respondents thought the cameras should be turned off, however.
Kathryn Pensack said that while better oversight of the cameras may be necessary, she has witnessed behaviors changing for the better at a red light camera intersection at Kedzie and Belmont avenues.
“Before we started the cameras, I noticed people would just go through red lights,” said Pensack, 67, a retired respiratory therapist.
White voters and African-Americans voters’ views differed on what to do about the problems with the red light camera system.
Among black voters, 50 percent wanted the program eliminated, while 43 percent thought better management and oversight was the answer. But only 37 percent of white voters wanted the cameras eliminated, while 53 percent thought the program needed better management.
Overall, the poll found 2 out of 3 Chicago voters believe the red light cameras are a bad idea, while 28 percent said they are a good idea and 6 percent had no opinion.
APC Research Inc. interviewed 800 registered city voters by cellphone and landline from Aug. 6-12. The poll had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
The survey was taken a couple weeks after a Tribune investigation found that tens of thousands of Chicago drivers had been given tickets during sudden and unexplained spikes in citations at certain intersections.
After the Tribune published the investigation last month, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration said it would review 9,000 tickets issued during the spikes. Two weeks ago, City Hall indicated it would expand the number of tickets it would re-check to 16,000.
The red light camera program also has been beset by scandal.
In 2012, the Tribune first reported about the cozy ties between a former city manager who ran the red light program and the company that previously operated the cameras, Redflex Traffic Systems.
That relationship led to the city’s red light business being rigged for a decade as it grew to the largest ticketing system of its kind in the country.
On Wednesday, former City Hall manager John Bills and former Redflex CEO Karen Finley were indicted on mail fraud, wire fraud and bribery charges. Alleged bagman and former Redflex consultant Martin O’Malley was indicted on one count ofconspiracy to commit bribery.
Emanuel’s overall job approval ratings have dipped since a Tribune poll in May 2013. Only 35 percent of voters approve of the mayor’s job performance while 52 percent disapprove. Perhaps not surprisingly, those unsatisfied with the mayor’s job performance also dislike the red light cameras. Of those who disapproved of Emanuel’s work in office, 74 percent said the red light cameras are a bad idea. Even among those who support the mayor, 56 percent said the red light cameras are a bad idea.
Some who were aware that cameras had issued tickets inappropriately said they still think they’re necessary to teach bad drivers a lesson.
“If there’s a problem with the technology then straighten out the technology,” said Albany Park’s Pensack. “If you have good technology, it’s pretty easy to tell whether someone has gone through a red light and you should get a ticket. That’s a behavior we just need to stop.” [email protected] [email protected]
Twitter @BillRuthhart
Twitter @TribuneMM
Rahm finally speaks about Red Camera Light Scandals
Surprise, Surprise, it happened before he got here and he took care of it by firing Redflex. He may have punished some of the criminals but he hasn't stopped the crime. The crime that has taken over $600 Million Dollars from the motorists in Chicago.
Now as the data becomes available that shows the problems weren't just with the contracts his answer is ... stuff happens. Well that ain't good enough.
IT'S TIME TO BRING DOWN THESE CAMERAS
Now as the data becomes available that shows the problems weren't just with the contracts his answer is ... stuff happens. Well that ain't good enough.
IT'S TIME TO BRING DOWN THESE CAMERAS
Emanuel says he 'indicted' red-light camera vendor before feds
THU, 08/14/2014 - 12:48PM
FRAN SPIELMAN
@FSPIELMAN | EMAIL
Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Thursday he “indicted and convicted” the red-light camera vendor at the center of a burgeoning bribery scandal long before there were federal indictments — by cancelling Redflex Traffic Systems’ city contract and barring the company from competing for a speed camera deal.
One day after the scandal got bigger with the indictment of ousted Redflex CEO Karen Finley, Emanuel claimed credit for being a step ahead of federal prosecutors and for providing pivotal information that culminated in the indictments.
“In February of 2013, I issued the first indictment of the red-light camera operator because I fired them. I inherited `em and I fired them. That was the first indictment. And I convicted them because they no longer have the contract,” Emanuel told reporters at an unrelated news conference at the visitors center at Northerly Island.
“And the basis of the case that was just brought by the U.S. Attorney’s office was in good portion . . . based on the information we provided through the inspector general to the U.S. Attorney.”
The mayor maintained that he also has taken steps to address the unexplained spike that generated at least 16,000 questionable red-light camera tickets at a dozen Chicago intersections.
Acknowledging that the system has to be “100 percent right” to be trusted, City Hall has offered to review those violations and refund fines if the tickets were issued in error.
“We not only changed operators. We changed safeguards and policies in place to make sure that it’s being operated fairly, honestly and to give people the confidence that, any mistakes done from the past” will be corrected, Emanuel said.
“The company that was doing it has been fired. And there have been changes put in place to make sure there aren’t mistakes and the onus of proof is on the company.”
But what about the tickets still being thrown for a yellow light that an administrative hearing officer ruled was too short?
“That’s happened before and that’s gonna continue to happen because there’s a process in place to make sure that, if there’s a mistake, people aren’t wrongly ticketed,” Emanuel said.
“And I would add, [red-light cameras have] also reduced accidents by 30 percent.”
Earlier this week, the bribery scandal that cost Redflex its mother lode of a Chicago contract got bigger.
It happened after Finley, the Arizona company’s ousted CEO, was indicted along with longtime city worker John Bills and Bills’ longtime friend Martin O’Malley, a Redflex consultant.
Bills was charged with taking bribes to help Redflex win the city's lucrative camera contract. O’Malley was accused of funneling the kickbacks to Bills.
The indictment alleged that Redflex officials, including Finley, paid Bills $570,000 cash and gave him perks, including an Arizona condo and a Mercedes in exchange for Bills' steering contracts that grew to $124 million to Redflex, helping make Chicago the nation's red light camera capital.
Finley was Redflex's chief executive from 2005 through February last year, and its vice president of operations from 2001.
She was accused of attending a 2003 meeting at the John Hancock Center when Bills gave Redflex the inside dope on how to win contracts.
After Bills told Redflex it was "time to make good," Finley allegedly hired O'Malley as a contractor so that he could pass bribes on to Bills, then deleted emails and lied on disclosure forms to cover up the scheme.
A city employee for 32 years, Bills served as a member of the red light camera contract evaluation committee while moonlighting as a clubhouse assistant with the Chicago White Sox before he retired in 2011.
He allegedly sabotaged the contract bids of a rival firm, arranging seating so that contract evaluation committee members he knew would support Redflex voted first, placing pressure on members voting later to back Redflex.
In return, his Super Bowl tickets, golf outings, a laptop, a boat, children's school fees, a retirement party — even his girlfriend's mortgage and his own divorce attorney — were all likely paid for with Redflex cash, according to a complaint unsealed in May
THU, 08/14/2014 - 12:48PM
FRAN SPIELMAN
@FSPIELMAN | EMAIL
Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Thursday he “indicted and convicted” the red-light camera vendor at the center of a burgeoning bribery scandal long before there were federal indictments — by cancelling Redflex Traffic Systems’ city contract and barring the company from competing for a speed camera deal.
One day after the scandal got bigger with the indictment of ousted Redflex CEO Karen Finley, Emanuel claimed credit for being a step ahead of federal prosecutors and for providing pivotal information that culminated in the indictments.
“In February of 2013, I issued the first indictment of the red-light camera operator because I fired them. I inherited `em and I fired them. That was the first indictment. And I convicted them because they no longer have the contract,” Emanuel told reporters at an unrelated news conference at the visitors center at Northerly Island.
“And the basis of the case that was just brought by the U.S. Attorney’s office was in good portion . . . based on the information we provided through the inspector general to the U.S. Attorney.”
The mayor maintained that he also has taken steps to address the unexplained spike that generated at least 16,000 questionable red-light camera tickets at a dozen Chicago intersections.
Acknowledging that the system has to be “100 percent right” to be trusted, City Hall has offered to review those violations and refund fines if the tickets were issued in error.
“We not only changed operators. We changed safeguards and policies in place to make sure that it’s being operated fairly, honestly and to give people the confidence that, any mistakes done from the past” will be corrected, Emanuel said.
“The company that was doing it has been fired. And there have been changes put in place to make sure there aren’t mistakes and the onus of proof is on the company.”
But what about the tickets still being thrown for a yellow light that an administrative hearing officer ruled was too short?
“That’s happened before and that’s gonna continue to happen because there’s a process in place to make sure that, if there’s a mistake, people aren’t wrongly ticketed,” Emanuel said.
“And I would add, [red-light cameras have] also reduced accidents by 30 percent.”
Earlier this week, the bribery scandal that cost Redflex its mother lode of a Chicago contract got bigger.
It happened after Finley, the Arizona company’s ousted CEO, was indicted along with longtime city worker John Bills and Bills’ longtime friend Martin O’Malley, a Redflex consultant.
Bills was charged with taking bribes to help Redflex win the city's lucrative camera contract. O’Malley was accused of funneling the kickbacks to Bills.
The indictment alleged that Redflex officials, including Finley, paid Bills $570,000 cash and gave him perks, including an Arizona condo and a Mercedes in exchange for Bills' steering contracts that grew to $124 million to Redflex, helping make Chicago the nation's red light camera capital.
Finley was Redflex's chief executive from 2005 through February last year, and its vice president of operations from 2001.
She was accused of attending a 2003 meeting at the John Hancock Center when Bills gave Redflex the inside dope on how to win contracts.
After Bills told Redflex it was "time to make good," Finley allegedly hired O'Malley as a contractor so that he could pass bribes on to Bills, then deleted emails and lied on disclosure forms to cover up the scheme.
A city employee for 32 years, Bills served as a member of the red light camera contract evaluation committee while moonlighting as a clubhouse assistant with the Chicago White Sox before he retired in 2011.
He allegedly sabotaged the contract bids of a rival firm, arranging seating so that contract evaluation committee members he knew would support Redflex voted first, placing pressure on members voting later to back Redflex.
In return, his Super Bowl tickets, golf outings, a laptop, a boat, children's school fees, a retirement party — even his girlfriend's mortgage and his own divorce attorney — were all likely paid for with Redflex cash, according to a complaint unsealed in May
A double-barreled scandal
Chicago’s red light camera system is on trial
Chicago
Tribune Editorial August 14, 2014
The federal indictment announced Wednesday described Martin O’Malley as a “customer liaison” between Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. and its biggest U.S. client, the city of Chicago. A more accurate job title would be “alleged bagman.”
Prosecutors say O’Malley was hired to funnel payments to his longtime friend, John Bills, a Chicago bureaucrat who steered the city’s lucrative red light camera contract to Redflex and oversaw the program for nearly a decade. The men were indicted along with former Redflex CEO Karen Finley, who hired O’Malley and also signed off on hotel stays, golf outings and other personal expenses for Bills, according to prosecutors.
From 2003 to 2011, the feds say, Redflex paid O’Malley nearly $2 million, most of which was passed on to Bills. O’Malley gave Bills hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, wrote checks to cover Bills’ personal debts, bought him a condo in Arizona and wrote $5,500 worth of checks to an unnamed political organization.
Finley is charged with nine counts of mail fraud, three counts of wire fraud, three counts of federal program bribery and one count of conspiracy to commit federal program bribery. Bills is charged with all of the above, plus three counts of filing false tax returns and one count of extortion. O’Malley is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit federal program bribery.
Bills, who was arrested in May, has said he was a midlevel bureaucrat who didn’t have the clout to steer the contract to anybody. Maybe he and his co-defendants can explain why all that money changed hands. As always, the U.S. attorney’s news release cautioned the public that the government must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Meanwhile, the red light camera program itself is on trial.
The program has been unpopular from the beginning — who likes getting a $100 ticket in the mail weeks after being busted by a robotic camera? — but those complaints garnered little sympathy from this page. Running a red light is dangerous. Avoiding those tickets is as simple as braking on yellow. Or is it?
City officials still can’t explain dozens of dramatic spikes in the number of tickets generated by cameras at seemingly random intersections, though they did finally agree to let the drivers who got those citations appeal.
The spikes were documented by Tribune reporters David Kidwell and Alex Richards, using public data the city fought hard to withhold. (It was Kidwell who revealed the cozy relationship between Bills and Redflex. The company at first denied wrongdoing but later admitted its actions likely constituted bribery. Redflex lost its contract with Chicago, and six top executives, including Finley, were fired.)
At least one administrative judge has seen a rash of camera-generated tickets lately in which the yellow light cycle was shorter than the three-second minimum, supporting critics’ claims that the yellow lights are set short to generate more money for the city.
No, you can’t draw a straight line between the Redflex bribery scandal and those suspicious surges in tickets. But the takeaway for the public is that the cameras can’t be trusted.
Prosecutors say the contract, which eventually was worth $120 million, was awarded based not on taxpayers’ interests but on the corrupt collusion of public and private players.
Chicago’s red light camera system, now the biggest in the nation, has generated nearly $500 million the city would be hard pressed to do without. Those mysterious spikes appear to have been caused by someone tinkering with the camera settings to trap more motorists.
At every turn, it seems, the red light cameras are less about safety than about dollar signs. If Mayor Rahm Emanuel can’t find a way to restore credibility to the program, he should take those cameras down.
SCOTT STANTIS
Chicago’s red light camera system is on trial
Chicago
Tribune Editorial August 14, 2014
The federal indictment announced Wednesday described Martin O’Malley as a “customer liaison” between Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. and its biggest U.S. client, the city of Chicago. A more accurate job title would be “alleged bagman.”
Prosecutors say O’Malley was hired to funnel payments to his longtime friend, John Bills, a Chicago bureaucrat who steered the city’s lucrative red light camera contract to Redflex and oversaw the program for nearly a decade. The men were indicted along with former Redflex CEO Karen Finley, who hired O’Malley and also signed off on hotel stays, golf outings and other personal expenses for Bills, according to prosecutors.
From 2003 to 2011, the feds say, Redflex paid O’Malley nearly $2 million, most of which was passed on to Bills. O’Malley gave Bills hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, wrote checks to cover Bills’ personal debts, bought him a condo in Arizona and wrote $5,500 worth of checks to an unnamed political organization.
Finley is charged with nine counts of mail fraud, three counts of wire fraud, three counts of federal program bribery and one count of conspiracy to commit federal program bribery. Bills is charged with all of the above, plus three counts of filing false tax returns and one count of extortion. O’Malley is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit federal program bribery.
Bills, who was arrested in May, has said he was a midlevel bureaucrat who didn’t have the clout to steer the contract to anybody. Maybe he and his co-defendants can explain why all that money changed hands. As always, the U.S. attorney’s news release cautioned the public that the government must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Meanwhile, the red light camera program itself is on trial.
The program has been unpopular from the beginning — who likes getting a $100 ticket in the mail weeks after being busted by a robotic camera? — but those complaints garnered little sympathy from this page. Running a red light is dangerous. Avoiding those tickets is as simple as braking on yellow. Or is it?
City officials still can’t explain dozens of dramatic spikes in the number of tickets generated by cameras at seemingly random intersections, though they did finally agree to let the drivers who got those citations appeal.
The spikes were documented by Tribune reporters David Kidwell and Alex Richards, using public data the city fought hard to withhold. (It was Kidwell who revealed the cozy relationship between Bills and Redflex. The company at first denied wrongdoing but later admitted its actions likely constituted bribery. Redflex lost its contract with Chicago, and six top executives, including Finley, were fired.)
At least one administrative judge has seen a rash of camera-generated tickets lately in which the yellow light cycle was shorter than the three-second minimum, supporting critics’ claims that the yellow lights are set short to generate more money for the city.
No, you can’t draw a straight line between the Redflex bribery scandal and those suspicious surges in tickets. But the takeaway for the public is that the cameras can’t be trusted.
Prosecutors say the contract, which eventually was worth $120 million, was awarded based not on taxpayers’ interests but on the corrupt collusion of public and private players.
Chicago’s red light camera system, now the biggest in the nation, has generated nearly $500 million the city would be hard pressed to do without. Those mysterious spikes appear to have been caused by someone tinkering with the camera settings to trap more motorists.
At every turn, it seems, the red light cameras are less about safety than about dollar signs. If Mayor Rahm Emanuel can’t find a way to restore credibility to the program, he should take those cameras down.
SCOTT STANTIS
Feds Indict Redflex CEO and John Bills
August 13, 2014
10 years and $600,000,000 later the Feds start to unravel the scheme that rigged the contracts. Makes you wonder what else was rigged.
Watch David Kidwell of the Tribune tell the story
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Judge says I'm following the law and City thumbs their nose
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The Red Light Doctor takes on City Hall and wins
August 12, 2014
Barnet Fagel, aka The Red Light Doctor and an active member of Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras faced off with the City of Chicago yesterday and proved again that right sometimes does trumps might.
As many of you know, for years Barnet has helped people defend motorists against Red Light Cameras tickets. If you have ever contested one of these tickets you know the drill. You go before an Administrative Hearing Officer who looks at the video, asks if you have anything to say and then rules. Barnet always had something to say and sometimes the Hearing Officer even listened, until recently when he was told the City wanted a continuance. It happened again, with finally 2 Red Light Camera and 3 Speed Camera hearings rescheduled to yesterday 8/11 11 am at 400 West Superior with the understanding that the City would have representation at the Hearing.
Mark Wallace and I attended the Hearing and I'm not sure if they were more surprised to see us there in our ABOLISH THE CAMERAS shirts or we to see the City show up with 4 attorneys, a Deputy Director from CDOT and someone else from the Corporate Councils Office to a hearing over $500 dollars worth of Traffic Camera Tickets.
Barnet was up to the challange and as he started to show his measurements of the Amber Light the Hearing Officer dropped a bombshell. He advised us and the city that in about 70% of the Red Light Camera appeals he has been seeing recently the Amber is less than 3 seconds and based on that he has been dismissing them. He went on to tell the City Representatives "The City needs to get it's act together. We are seeing too many of these".
As this story spreads we will post links starting with this first one from DNAInfo
As many of you know, for years Barnet has helped people defend motorists against Red Light Cameras tickets. If you have ever contested one of these tickets you know the drill. You go before an Administrative Hearing Officer who looks at the video, asks if you have anything to say and then rules. Barnet always had something to say and sometimes the Hearing Officer even listened, until recently when he was told the City wanted a continuance. It happened again, with finally 2 Red Light Camera and 3 Speed Camera hearings rescheduled to yesterday 8/11 11 am at 400 West Superior with the understanding that the City would have representation at the Hearing.
Mark Wallace and I attended the Hearing and I'm not sure if they were more surprised to see us there in our ABOLISH THE CAMERAS shirts or we to see the City show up with 4 attorneys, a Deputy Director from CDOT and someone else from the Corporate Councils Office to a hearing over $500 dollars worth of Traffic Camera Tickets.
Barnet was up to the challange and as he started to show his measurements of the Amber Light the Hearing Officer dropped a bombshell. He advised us and the city that in about 70% of the Red Light Camera appeals he has been seeing recently the Amber is less than 3 seconds and based on that he has been dismissing them. He went on to tell the City Representatives "The City needs to get it's act together. We are seeing too many of these".
As this story spreads we will post links starting with this first one from DNAInfo
https://soundcloud.com/dnainfo-radio/city-dismissing-red-light-camera-tickets-in-droves
Video from demonstration Saturday at 119th & Halsted. Watch Sgt Brown change his tone when he realizes we know our rights and he's on camera.
Citizens Demonstrate 8/2/14 at Kostner & Ogden and tell Ald Munoz, 22nd Ward, it's time to take these Red Light Cameras down. Since being installed 5/28/08 Scameras at this one location have issued over 25,000 tickets and robed 22nd Ward drivers of over $2.5 million dollars.
TRIBUNE WATCHDOG UPDATE
More red light tickets under review August 3, 2014
Critics say city isn’t making effort to check entire system
By David Kidwell Tribune reporter
Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration has nearly doubled to 16,000 the number of red light camera tickets now eligible for review after a Tribune investigation that found suspicious ticket spikes throughout Chicago, but city officials continue to sidestep broader questions about the system’s operation.
In the two weeks since the investigation was published, the mayor and his transportation chief, Rebekah Scheinfeld, have declined to address the issue of the fundamental soundness of a program prone to wild swings in ticketing that officials still cannot explain.
Instead, they are increasing their focus on whether drivers broke the law at a dozen intersections cited by the Tribune as the strongest examples of the problems. City Hall critics say the administration’s attention on individual cases is misplaced, and they are calling for a broader look at the fairness of a program that has raised nearly half a billion dollars for Chicago in $100 increments.
“It looks to me like they are going to try to get through this by going back and looking at a few tickets without taking responsibility for their own lack of oversight at the highest levels,” said Ald. Scott Waguespack, 32nd, an outspoken Emanuel critic who is among 19 aldermen calling for City Council hearings to investigate.
“Well, the first thing they need to do? Acknowledge they have a serious problem,” Waguespack said. “And to me, the fact that they haven’t is a serious problem in itself.”
In a brief interview Friday, Scheinfeld said that while the city is focused on the review process at the dozen intersections most prominently featured in the Tribune report, her staff is working with the city’s inspector general to find the causes of the spikes.
“We are taking this very seriously,” Scheinfeld said in her first interview since the story broke July 18. “If we find evidence that points to inconsistent enforcement, then we will be addressing those situations appropriately. At this time we are not aware of any specific evidence of the kinds of inconsistent enforcement you are talking about.”
Scheinfeld would not commit to refunds in those cases.
“I think it would be unfair to speculate on what we would do,” she said. “But we want to make sure we maintain the public’s confidence in the red light camera program.
“Our first priority is to look at the 12 that got the most attention. But we are looking at all of them. The 16,000 is still just for those 12 locations, but we are being very inclusive.”
On Thursday, city officials told the Tribune that they have broadened the number of letters being sent to ticketed motorists eligible for a review from the 9,000 Emanuel announced to 16,000, which they have identified from the dozen intersections featured in the Tribune report.
They have also reached out to Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., the camera company Emanuel fired last year amid bribery allegations, and asked for its help retrieving video evidence long since discarded by the city. According to the administration, the company was able to provide the videos in all 16,000 cases now eligible for review.
In an email response Thursday to a series of Tribune questions, the administration said it is “looking at all potential causes of these anomalies” and that it has no evidence “that there was any purposeful intent to alter the methods of enforcement at a particular intersection.”
A 10-month Tribune investigation that analyzed more than 4 million automated red light camera citations issued since 2007 found that thousands of drivers got tickets during dozens of unexplained spikes throughout the city. More than 13,000 tickets were issued during the 12 most dramatic spikes.
Cameras that normally tagged only several cars a day suddenly and temporarily shot up to as many as 56 per day. The duration of yellow lights — a critical factor in ticketing — varied widely in some cases. At some of the spikes, the rates of ticket appeals also rocketed up.
Experts who reviewed the Tribune’s findings concluded that such dramatic swings could be caused only by faulty equipment or human tinkering. They said refunds were in order because tickets issued under such questionable circumstances would be unfair even if technically valid.
At one location on the city’s North Side, the Tribune examined every ticket issued from one camera for an entire year. It found that for six months before a 12-day spike, no drivers were issued tickets from the right-turn-only lane. Of the 563 tickets issued during the spike, all but three were for right turns on red. And then after the spike it went back to the previous pattern.
“It sure as hell shouldn’t look like this,” Joseph Schofer, a Northwestern University engineering professor who examined the Tribune’s finding, said in the initial report. “Suddenly everyone at that intersection decided to only turn right? I don’t think so.”
In the wake of the Tribune’s report, Emanuel told reporters he has ordered the new vendor to be more vigilant, that his office intends to post daily ticket counts online, and that city officials will be more diligent in their oversight of the program.
But Emanuel and his aides have largely focused their efforts on a review of only 12 spike-prone intersections most prominently featured in the Tribune report.
Asked how it intends to address the dozens of other spike intersections representing tens of thousands more citations that were less prominently featured, the city said “we are focusing our efforts to offer the additional review during those anomalies that were most dramatic as the Tribune identified.”
“We continue to review data from all of the intersections to detect other anomalies, as well as investigating all potential causes of these anomalies,” the Emanuel administration said in its email response. “And we do not agree with your assertion that any driver behavior was targeted.”
There are broader questions about oversight as well because city officials said they were unaware of the ticket spikes despite requirements in the city’s contract that Redflex conduct daily monitoring for any anomalies. City Hall has not provided any records related to such problems with the system, and Red-flex has declined repeated Tribune requests for interviews.
The administration has identified the auditing firm of KPMG LLP as the outside auditor it will pay $90 per hour to conduct the ticket review process. City officials declined to say if the process will be open to public scrutiny.
According to the city, each eligible driver will receive a letter containing an email address, mailing address and telephone number they can call to request the review. A sample letter provided to the Tribune tells drivers they can also request a review at any of the city’s payment centers. Ticket holders will have 45 days from the time they receive the letter to request a review.
Once it is requested, an auditor at KPMG will receive the video and photographic evidence, review it to see whether a violation occurred and make a finding within 30 days, the letter says. People will be notified by mail whether they will receive a refund, the letter says.
In the usual appeals process, ticket holders can stand before the administrative law judge in a public forum and make an oral argument or have an attorney present. This review makes no provisions for oral presentations and offers no recourse for motorists who may not agree with the auditor’s decision.
According to the auditor’s contract, it appears the KPMG auditors will be reviewing only the video and photograph to determine whether a violation occurred. There is no mention in the contract of the more stringent approach during the normal appeals process, where hearing officers go through a checklist aimed at figuring out whether the camera system and ticketing process operated as intended.
The administration also said that despite the city policy that video evidence be destroyed after two years, it is now available “for citations by all potentially affected motorists during the identified spikes over the last seven years.” The city said the evidence will be posted and available on the city’s website to any ticketed driver who receives a letter offering a new review.
According to the administration, the video was obtained through Redflex, the Arizona company that founded Chicago’s program and grew it into the largest in the nation. Emanuel fired the company last year after its officials acknowledged it had paid up to $2 million to the former city official who oversaw the contract since its inception, an arrangement it said was likely to be considering bribery by authorities.
In May, the former City Hall manager was charged with bribery by federal prosecutors in an ongoing corruption investigation. He denied all charges. But Redflex continued to manage the program until March of this year while City Hall hired a replacement.
“We have also asked Red-flex for additional reports or information that might help to explain any anomalies or spikes at these intersections,” the city email said.
For months, Redflex executives have declined to answer questions during the Tribune investigation. On Friday, a Redflex spokeswoman confirmed the company is assisting the city in addressing the controversy but again declined to comment further.
City transportation officials were first presented evidence of the spikes Jan. 14, when the Tribune sent 24 examples in an effort to understand their causes. The Emanuel administration said it was unaware of the spikes and could find no legitimate reason for them then or in the six months since.
Only after the Tribune published its report did Scheinfeld, Emanuel’s transportation commissioner, appear before a City Council committee hearing to suggest that one particularly dramatic spike at the corner of 119th and Halsted streets was probably the result of diverted traffic because of bridge repairs on nearby I-57. “We think it is likely that drivers used Halsted to bypass this work,” she told aldermen.
When the Tribune first presented evidence of this spike in December, city transportation officials suggested it was caused by funeral processions.
A Tribune examination of each of the 1,717 tickets issued during that 52-day spike found no evidence of funeral processions. And interviews with more than two dozen of the ticketed drivers there, all of whom were asked about road construction or other unusual events, found no evidence that any of them were diverted because of I-57 bridge repairs or any other road construction.
Scheinfeld also told aldermen during her appearance that such spikes are normal.
“There are always spikes in any automated enforcement system due to fluctuations in traffic volume and driver behavior,” she said. It was a point she reiterated during her interview Friday.
Northwestern’s Schofer, who sits on a city transportation advisory panel, called Scheinfeld’s assertions “nonsense.”
“Come on,” he said. “That would explain spikes of that level? Nonsense. It’s just fundamental; you can’t look at something that is red and call it green.” [email protected] Twitter @DavidKidwell1
More red light tickets under review August 3, 2014
Critics say city isn’t making effort to check entire system
By David Kidwell Tribune reporter
Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration has nearly doubled to 16,000 the number of red light camera tickets now eligible for review after a Tribune investigation that found suspicious ticket spikes throughout Chicago, but city officials continue to sidestep broader questions about the system’s operation.
In the two weeks since the investigation was published, the mayor and his transportation chief, Rebekah Scheinfeld, have declined to address the issue of the fundamental soundness of a program prone to wild swings in ticketing that officials still cannot explain.
Instead, they are increasing their focus on whether drivers broke the law at a dozen intersections cited by the Tribune as the strongest examples of the problems. City Hall critics say the administration’s attention on individual cases is misplaced, and they are calling for a broader look at the fairness of a program that has raised nearly half a billion dollars for Chicago in $100 increments.
“It looks to me like they are going to try to get through this by going back and looking at a few tickets without taking responsibility for their own lack of oversight at the highest levels,” said Ald. Scott Waguespack, 32nd, an outspoken Emanuel critic who is among 19 aldermen calling for City Council hearings to investigate.
“Well, the first thing they need to do? Acknowledge they have a serious problem,” Waguespack said. “And to me, the fact that they haven’t is a serious problem in itself.”
In a brief interview Friday, Scheinfeld said that while the city is focused on the review process at the dozen intersections most prominently featured in the Tribune report, her staff is working with the city’s inspector general to find the causes of the spikes.
“We are taking this very seriously,” Scheinfeld said in her first interview since the story broke July 18. “If we find evidence that points to inconsistent enforcement, then we will be addressing those situations appropriately. At this time we are not aware of any specific evidence of the kinds of inconsistent enforcement you are talking about.”
Scheinfeld would not commit to refunds in those cases.
“I think it would be unfair to speculate on what we would do,” she said. “But we want to make sure we maintain the public’s confidence in the red light camera program.
“Our first priority is to look at the 12 that got the most attention. But we are looking at all of them. The 16,000 is still just for those 12 locations, but we are being very inclusive.”
On Thursday, city officials told the Tribune that they have broadened the number of letters being sent to ticketed motorists eligible for a review from the 9,000 Emanuel announced to 16,000, which they have identified from the dozen intersections featured in the Tribune report.
They have also reached out to Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., the camera company Emanuel fired last year amid bribery allegations, and asked for its help retrieving video evidence long since discarded by the city. According to the administration, the company was able to provide the videos in all 16,000 cases now eligible for review.
In an email response Thursday to a series of Tribune questions, the administration said it is “looking at all potential causes of these anomalies” and that it has no evidence “that there was any purposeful intent to alter the methods of enforcement at a particular intersection.”
A 10-month Tribune investigation that analyzed more than 4 million automated red light camera citations issued since 2007 found that thousands of drivers got tickets during dozens of unexplained spikes throughout the city. More than 13,000 tickets were issued during the 12 most dramatic spikes.
Cameras that normally tagged only several cars a day suddenly and temporarily shot up to as many as 56 per day. The duration of yellow lights — a critical factor in ticketing — varied widely in some cases. At some of the spikes, the rates of ticket appeals also rocketed up.
Experts who reviewed the Tribune’s findings concluded that such dramatic swings could be caused only by faulty equipment or human tinkering. They said refunds were in order because tickets issued under such questionable circumstances would be unfair even if technically valid.
At one location on the city’s North Side, the Tribune examined every ticket issued from one camera for an entire year. It found that for six months before a 12-day spike, no drivers were issued tickets from the right-turn-only lane. Of the 563 tickets issued during the spike, all but three were for right turns on red. And then after the spike it went back to the previous pattern.
“It sure as hell shouldn’t look like this,” Joseph Schofer, a Northwestern University engineering professor who examined the Tribune’s finding, said in the initial report. “Suddenly everyone at that intersection decided to only turn right? I don’t think so.”
In the wake of the Tribune’s report, Emanuel told reporters he has ordered the new vendor to be more vigilant, that his office intends to post daily ticket counts online, and that city officials will be more diligent in their oversight of the program.
But Emanuel and his aides have largely focused their efforts on a review of only 12 spike-prone intersections most prominently featured in the Tribune report.
Asked how it intends to address the dozens of other spike intersections representing tens of thousands more citations that were less prominently featured, the city said “we are focusing our efforts to offer the additional review during those anomalies that were most dramatic as the Tribune identified.”
“We continue to review data from all of the intersections to detect other anomalies, as well as investigating all potential causes of these anomalies,” the Emanuel administration said in its email response. “And we do not agree with your assertion that any driver behavior was targeted.”
There are broader questions about oversight as well because city officials said they were unaware of the ticket spikes despite requirements in the city’s contract that Redflex conduct daily monitoring for any anomalies. City Hall has not provided any records related to such problems with the system, and Red-flex has declined repeated Tribune requests for interviews.
The administration has identified the auditing firm of KPMG LLP as the outside auditor it will pay $90 per hour to conduct the ticket review process. City officials declined to say if the process will be open to public scrutiny.
According to the city, each eligible driver will receive a letter containing an email address, mailing address and telephone number they can call to request the review. A sample letter provided to the Tribune tells drivers they can also request a review at any of the city’s payment centers. Ticket holders will have 45 days from the time they receive the letter to request a review.
Once it is requested, an auditor at KPMG will receive the video and photographic evidence, review it to see whether a violation occurred and make a finding within 30 days, the letter says. People will be notified by mail whether they will receive a refund, the letter says.
In the usual appeals process, ticket holders can stand before the administrative law judge in a public forum and make an oral argument or have an attorney present. This review makes no provisions for oral presentations and offers no recourse for motorists who may not agree with the auditor’s decision.
According to the auditor’s contract, it appears the KPMG auditors will be reviewing only the video and photograph to determine whether a violation occurred. There is no mention in the contract of the more stringent approach during the normal appeals process, where hearing officers go through a checklist aimed at figuring out whether the camera system and ticketing process operated as intended.
The administration also said that despite the city policy that video evidence be destroyed after two years, it is now available “for citations by all potentially affected motorists during the identified spikes over the last seven years.” The city said the evidence will be posted and available on the city’s website to any ticketed driver who receives a letter offering a new review.
According to the administration, the video was obtained through Redflex, the Arizona company that founded Chicago’s program and grew it into the largest in the nation. Emanuel fired the company last year after its officials acknowledged it had paid up to $2 million to the former city official who oversaw the contract since its inception, an arrangement it said was likely to be considering bribery by authorities.
In May, the former City Hall manager was charged with bribery by federal prosecutors in an ongoing corruption investigation. He denied all charges. But Redflex continued to manage the program until March of this year while City Hall hired a replacement.
“We have also asked Red-flex for additional reports or information that might help to explain any anomalies or spikes at these intersections,” the city email said.
For months, Redflex executives have declined to answer questions during the Tribune investigation. On Friday, a Redflex spokeswoman confirmed the company is assisting the city in addressing the controversy but again declined to comment further.
City transportation officials were first presented evidence of the spikes Jan. 14, when the Tribune sent 24 examples in an effort to understand their causes. The Emanuel administration said it was unaware of the spikes and could find no legitimate reason for them then or in the six months since.
Only after the Tribune published its report did Scheinfeld, Emanuel’s transportation commissioner, appear before a City Council committee hearing to suggest that one particularly dramatic spike at the corner of 119th and Halsted streets was probably the result of diverted traffic because of bridge repairs on nearby I-57. “We think it is likely that drivers used Halsted to bypass this work,” she told aldermen.
When the Tribune first presented evidence of this spike in December, city transportation officials suggested it was caused by funeral processions.
A Tribune examination of each of the 1,717 tickets issued during that 52-day spike found no evidence of funeral processions. And interviews with more than two dozen of the ticketed drivers there, all of whom were asked about road construction or other unusual events, found no evidence that any of them were diverted because of I-57 bridge repairs or any other road construction.
Scheinfeld also told aldermen during her appearance that such spikes are normal.
“There are always spikes in any automated enforcement system due to fluctuations in traffic volume and driver behavior,” she said. It was a point she reiterated during her interview Friday.
Northwestern’s Schofer, who sits on a city transportation advisory panel, called Scheinfeld’s assertions “nonsense.”
“Come on,” he said. “That would explain spikes of that level? Nonsense. It’s just fundamental; you can’t look at something that is red and call it green.” [email protected] Twitter @DavidKidwell1
Click on any of these links to learn more about the Tribunes expose' on Red Light Cameras and find out if they caught you on camera.
July 25, 2014
Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras step up rallies, State Rep Duncan plans repeal legislation and City Council Progressive Caucus asks Inspector General to investigate Red Light Cameras
Red Light Camera Opponents Plan To Ramp Up ProtestsJuly 25, 2014 1:23 PM
The bane of Chicago motorists: red-light cameras. (CBS)
CHICAGO (CBS) – Reports of red light camera “ticket spikes” for thousands of motorists have energized those who have long opposed traffic enforcement cameras.
WBBM Newsradio’s Bernie Tafoya reports the group Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras planned to step up its protest schedule, in the wake of a Chicago Tribune investigation revealing mysterious spikes in the number of tickets issued by cameras at at least 12 intersections since 2007.
Instead of demonstrating every other weekend, Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras planned to be out every Saturday for the next four weeks.
WBBM 780’s Bernie Tafoya
WBBM 780/105.9FM
play
They’ll start at 119th and Halsted, one of the 12 intersections noted by the Tribune that had unexplained, questionable spikes in red light camera tickets.
Group director Mark Wallace said the cameras are not only inaccurate and inconsistent, but unsafe and unconstitutional.
“This is all about generating revenue for private corporations, and generating revenue for the city of Chicago on the backs of the citizens,” he said.
Wallace said he knows of what he speaks; he’s been caught several times by red light cameras.
He said the sheer number of tickets issued during those mysterious spikes at 12 intersections is all the more proof red light cameras should be abolished altogether.
“We do have some 54,000 signatures that people have signed on petitions in opposition to the photo enforcement,” Wallace said.
Meanwhile, efforts are underway to abolish red-light cameras through legislation.
CBS 2’s Dorothy Tucker talked with state Rep. Ken Dunkin, D-Chicago, who is pushing legislation to shut them down. He voted for the cameras in 2011, but says his constituents have convinced him they need to go.
Dunkin says people have been wrongly ticketed and subjected to “injustices.”
A two-page letter signed by Ald. Bob Fioretti and seven other city council members asks the Inspector General to look into false tickets, glitches and where ticket revenue has gone.
“We’re excited that the powers be are looking at this closely,” he says.
The city of Chicago has promised to review the 9,000 tickets issued at the intersections where there were ticket spikes, but Mayor Rahm Emanuel couldn’t say how that review will be done nor whether motorists have any recourse to appeal the results
The bane of Chicago motorists: red-light cameras. (CBS)
CHICAGO (CBS) – Reports of red light camera “ticket spikes” for thousands of motorists have energized those who have long opposed traffic enforcement cameras.
WBBM Newsradio’s Bernie Tafoya reports the group Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras planned to step up its protest schedule, in the wake of a Chicago Tribune investigation revealing mysterious spikes in the number of tickets issued by cameras at at least 12 intersections since 2007.
Instead of demonstrating every other weekend, Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras planned to be out every Saturday for the next four weeks.
WBBM 780’s Bernie Tafoya
WBBM 780/105.9FM
play
They’ll start at 119th and Halsted, one of the 12 intersections noted by the Tribune that had unexplained, questionable spikes in red light camera tickets.
Group director Mark Wallace said the cameras are not only inaccurate and inconsistent, but unsafe and unconstitutional.
“This is all about generating revenue for private corporations, and generating revenue for the city of Chicago on the backs of the citizens,” he said.
Wallace said he knows of what he speaks; he’s been caught several times by red light cameras.
He said the sheer number of tickets issued during those mysterious spikes at 12 intersections is all the more proof red light cameras should be abolished altogether.
“We do have some 54,000 signatures that people have signed on petitions in opposition to the photo enforcement,” Wallace said.
Meanwhile, efforts are underway to abolish red-light cameras through legislation.
CBS 2’s Dorothy Tucker talked with state Rep. Ken Dunkin, D-Chicago, who is pushing legislation to shut them down. He voted for the cameras in 2011, but says his constituents have convinced him they need to go.
Dunkin says people have been wrongly ticketed and subjected to “injustices.”
A two-page letter signed by Ald. Bob Fioretti and seven other city council members asks the Inspector General to look into false tickets, glitches and where ticket revenue has gone.
“We’re excited that the powers be are looking at this closely,” he says.
The city of Chicago has promised to review the 9,000 tickets issued at the intersections where there were ticket spikes, but Mayor Rahm Emanuel couldn’t say how that review will be done nor whether motorists have any recourse to appeal the results
July 24, 2014
The Red Light Doctor has been telling them about those short yellows all along and now the Tribune confirms it and Alderman Jason Ervin (28) asks why only review 12 locations
CBS 2’s Brad Edwards reports Dr. Kevin King has a question about his ticket at California and Peterson.
“I remember at the time thinking to myself, ‘Wow, that’s a really fast yellow light,” King said.
Research from Barnet Fagel, the “red light doctor,” shows the yellow was only 2. 8 seconds that’s short the federally mandated minimum of 3, one example of a bigger issue.
“The revelation is the city is waking up to maybe they have a problem,” said Barnet.
Ald. Jason Ervin (28th) asked whether if the new reviews should be limited to 12 intersections.
“Shouldn’t that be applied to, in theory, any intersection or any camera that exists in the system?” he said.
Scheinfeld responded, “if we find in that past data that there are similar spikes of this magnitude, then yes I would recommend that we offer that same opportunity to people.”
She noted no red light camera tickets are issued until evidence from a camera is reviewed by two people to confirm a violation occurred. If a ticket is issued, the car’s owner has can appeal the ticket.
The commissioner said the city has already begun reviewing red light program data in connection to the spikes reported by the Tribune, and she said they “appear to be anamolies.”
“We have analyzed a sample of more than 300 violations that occurred during these periods and have found no instances of tickets issued in error and in all cases found evidence that the law was indeed violated,” she said.
“It is important to note that there are always spikes in any automated enforcement system due to fluctuations in traffic volume and driver behavior where cameras are located. For example, if a street is closed for construction, increased traffic flow on an adjacent street or alternate route might drive up violations for a period of time during that construction. The occurrence of special events or severe weather can also create significant changes in traffic patterns,” she added.
In particular, she noted one spike cited by the Tribune — at 119th and Halsted in May and June 2011 — appeared to be the result of a project to repair the 111th Street and 115th Street bridges over Interstate 57. Shcheinfeld said the city believes drivers likely used Halsted to bypass the construction work by exiting I-57 at 99th and Halsted, then heading south to 119th Street to get back on the interstate.
“This may explain an increase in rolling stops at the red light due to the high number of vehicles turning right at this location,” she said.
Scheinfeld also told aldermen the city will begin posting online a tally of daily violations at each of the city’s 174 intersections with red light cameras.
“This information will provide the public with increased transparency about the performance of our red light cameras and trends in violations,” she said.
“I remember at the time thinking to myself, ‘Wow, that’s a really fast yellow light,” King said.
Research from Barnet Fagel, the “red light doctor,” shows the yellow was only 2. 8 seconds that’s short the federally mandated minimum of 3, one example of a bigger issue.
“The revelation is the city is waking up to maybe they have a problem,” said Barnet.
Ald. Jason Ervin (28th) asked whether if the new reviews should be limited to 12 intersections.
“Shouldn’t that be applied to, in theory, any intersection or any camera that exists in the system?” he said.
Scheinfeld responded, “if we find in that past data that there are similar spikes of this magnitude, then yes I would recommend that we offer that same opportunity to people.”
She noted no red light camera tickets are issued until evidence from a camera is reviewed by two people to confirm a violation occurred. If a ticket is issued, the car’s owner has can appeal the ticket.
The commissioner said the city has already begun reviewing red light program data in connection to the spikes reported by the Tribune, and she said they “appear to be anamolies.”
“We have analyzed a sample of more than 300 violations that occurred during these periods and have found no instances of tickets issued in error and in all cases found evidence that the law was indeed violated,” she said.
“It is important to note that there are always spikes in any automated enforcement system due to fluctuations in traffic volume and driver behavior where cameras are located. For example, if a street is closed for construction, increased traffic flow on an adjacent street or alternate route might drive up violations for a period of time during that construction. The occurrence of special events or severe weather can also create significant changes in traffic patterns,” she added.
In particular, she noted one spike cited by the Tribune — at 119th and Halsted in May and June 2011 — appeared to be the result of a project to repair the 111th Street and 115th Street bridges over Interstate 57. Shcheinfeld said the city believes drivers likely used Halsted to bypass the construction work by exiting I-57 at 99th and Halsted, then heading south to 119th Street to get back on the interstate.
“This may explain an increase in rolling stops at the red light due to the high number of vehicles turning right at this location,” she said.
Scheinfeld also told aldermen the city will begin posting online a tally of daily violations at each of the city’s 174 intersections with red light cameras.
“This information will provide the public with increased transparency about the performance of our red light cameras and trends in violations,” she said.
C.A.R.L.C held it's 6th demonstration of the summer at Lane Tech Saturday June 14th. Drivers were warned of the Red Light Cams at the corner of Addison & Western and Speed Cameras on both Addison & Western and given flyers telling them how to reach the Aldermen that voted for them.
Plan to join us at one of our upcoming demonstrations
RALLEY WESTERN-ADDISON from Barnet Fagel on Vimeo.
July 23, 2014
Aldermen demand answers and Rahm says not for him to decide
July 21, 2014
Tribune continues with another front page article and Progressive Alderman call for Review & Refunds
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Tribune shows the proof that Red Light Cameras were either Broken or Rigged
Review: Missed chances on fines Appeals of red light camera tickets given during spikes could have succeeded, Tribune analysis shows By David Kidwell and Alex Richards | Tribune reporters Chicago drivers almost never appeal their $100 red light camera fines, but an investigation into suspicious ticket spikes around the city suggests that thousands of people may have missed their chance to win a fight with City Hall. The 21-day window for appeals has long since passed for citations doled out during the sudden surges at dozens of intersections . But drivers who did appeal those fines from some of the most dramatic spikes were far more likely to win than anyone else citywide, the Tribune found during a 10-month examination of more than 4 million tickets issued since 2007. The investigation revealed clear evidence that wild swings in ticketing — which the city said it never knew about and cannot explain — were caused by faulty equipment, human tinkering or both. Four national red light camera experts say the findings mean the city may be obliged to correct its mistakes — even if it means refunding fines. “It sounds like there are tickets that should have never been issued, or that recipients maybe should Hummer, professor and chair of civil and environmental engineering at Wayne State University in Detroit. “And if they would have appealed, they may have been successful with those as well,” Hummer said. “It certainly suggests that.” Click to set custom HTML
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Progressive Caucus calls for Review & Refunds
By John ByrneClout Street9:37 a.m. CDT, July 21, 2014 A group of Chicago aldermen is planning to call on City Hall's top watchdog to launch an audit of the city's red light camera system with an eye toward issuing refunds to anyone who has been wrongly ticketed. Today, Ald. Scott Waguespack said he and several colleagues want Inspector General Joseph Ferguson to begin an exhaustive review of the citywide network of red light cameras in response to a Tribune investigation showing evidence that wild swings in the number of tickets issued at dozens of intersections since 2007 were caused by faulty equipment, human tinkering or both. The 32nd Ward alderman said City Council colleagues also will call on the Chicago Department of Transportation to get a handle on what's happened with the cameras. "We want to see if we can have (Ferguson's office and CDOT) review every intersection" that has a camera, Waguespack said. "We want to find out what went wrong, and we want to see refunds where the ticket was wrongly issued. That would be the way to do it. The basis would be refunds in cases where tickets were wrongly issued," he said. Waguespack, a member of the City Council Progressive Caucus that often calls on Mayor Rahm Emanuel to move slower on enacting initiatives so aldermen can better get a handle on the financial impact to Chicagoans, said he and others have been complaining to city transportation officials for some time about the short length of the yellow lights at some camera-controlled intersections. "We've already asked CDOT about the yellow lights and they were like 'Don't worry about it, everything is cool,' " Waguespack said. "Well, clearly it wasn't." The alderman, whose ward includes parts of Bucktown, the Ukrainian Village, Roscoe Village and Lake View, said he has been hearing over the past few days from constituents incensed by the Tribune's findings on the problems with the red light cameras and the city's apparent ignorance of the cause of the wrongly issued tickets. "People are upset with the lack of a response from the city: 'How could they not know what's going on with the cameras?' The refund issue has been a big concern too," Waguespack said. |
July 18, 2014
Today was a big day in Chicago Red Light News with two major stories dropping
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Atty Files Class Action Suit demanding Red Light Company Give Money Back
By Jason MeisnerTribune reporter6:52 p.m. CDT, July 17, 2014 A Northwest Side man filed a proposed class-action lawsuit today seeking at least $100 million from the scandal-plagued company that ran the city’s red light camera program, claiming that an alleged bribery scheme exposed by the Tribune should nullify the company’s profits. Matthew Faulkner filed his federal complaint on behalf of anyone who paid a fine for a red light violation issued by the city from 2003 to 2013 when Redflex Traffic Systems administered the program. Attached to the lawsuit were documents showing Faulkner paid a $100 fine in early 2013 after his Nissan Infiniti was recorded going through a red light at the intersection of 76th Street and Stony Island Avenue. The complaint outlines the Redflex scandal that erupted in October 2012 after the Tribune obtained a two-year-old internal Redflex whistleblower memo by an ousted vice president that detailed the alleged bribery scheme, including lavish company-paid vacations for former city transportation official John Bills. Bills, a longtime City Hall insider who headed the city’s red light camera program until 2011, was arrested in May and charged by federal prosecutors with plotting to steer the contract to Redflex before the first ticket was ever issued in 2003. Bills coached Redflex officials in a series of clandestine meetings and helped them grow their program into the largest in the country, authorities alleged. In return, prosecutors alleged, Bills received hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash spent on a vacation home, a boat and a Mercedes convertible, along with dozens of trips and a condominium near the company's Arizona headquarters. “As such, Redflex’s $100 million (+) in revenue since 2003 generated under the corrupt contract represents ill-gotten gains that have unjustly enriched Redflex…and should be disgorged,” Faulkner’s lawsuit said. Bills has denied any wrongdoing and is awaiting trial. Neither Redflex nor any company officials have been criminally charged, though the city canned Redflex last year in the wake of the scandal. Faulkner’s local lawyer did not immediately return a message seeking comment on the lawsuit. |
Tribune Releases Study of Red Light Camera Irregularities
Red light cameras tag thousands for undeserved ticketsAnalysis of 4 million violations recorded since 2007 reveals suspicious patterns at dozens of intersections, raises questions about system's management By David Kidwell and Alex Richards, Tribune reporters11:49 a.m. CDT, July 18, 2014 Thousands of Chicago drivers have been tagged with $100 red light fines they did not deserve, targeted by robotic cameras during a series of sudden spikes in tickets that city officials say they cannot explain, a Tribune investigation has found. The Tribune's analysis of more than 4 million tickets issued since 2007 and a deeper probe of individual cases revealed clear evidence that the deviations in Chicago's network of 380 cameras were caused by faulty equipment, human tinkering or both. Chicago transportation officials say they had no knowledge of the wild swings in ticketing until they were told by the Tribune — even though City Hall legally required the camera vendor to watch for the slightest anomaly in ticketing patterns every day. Many of the spikes lasted weeks. The lack of oversight raises new questions about the controversial traffic enforcement program, the largest in the country, now embroiled in a federal corruption probe into allegations that the city's longtime red light camera manager took bribes from the camera company. “Something is terribly amiss here,” said Joseph Schofer, an associate dean at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science who reviewed the Tribune's research. Schofer, who has served as an adviser on city transportation committees, said the findings prove “the system is broken.” “The only reasonable explanation is that it is something involved in the technology,” he said. “Whether it's diabolical or mechanical or electronic and accidental, I can't look inside people's souls and know that, but the evidence is pretty strong.” He and three other national experts who reviewed the Tribune's findings suggested that drivers are entitled to refunds, whatever the cause of the spikes. Go here for the full story http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-red-light-camera-ticket-spikes-met-20140717,0,704793.story |
July 3, 2014
City Identifies Next 12 Children's Safety Zones and Speed Camera Locations
Speed Enforcement Cameras Children’s Safety Zone Program is Reducing Speeding and Improving Safety
The Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) today announced the next 12 Children’s Safety Zones around parks and schools, two zones in each of the six city regions, to be equipped with automated speed enforcement (ASE) cameras this year, part of the Children’s Safety Zone Program to increase safety, reduce speeding and fund critical safety programs.
The data from speed cameras currently operating shows that speeding is decreasing in those areas. The number of speeding events recorded by each camera has reduced by an average of 43 percent from the first week of its operation to last week, and as much as 99 percent in some locations. Data shows that 39 percent of all violations issued have gone to non-city residents.
“We are pleased with the dramatic impact the Children’s Safety Zone Program has made to reduce speeding and improve safety,” said CDOT Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld. “The whole goal of this program is making it safer for children and families to walk to school or go to the park, and clearly we’re making real strides toward that goal.”
Cameras will be installed in each of the six geographic regions during the next few months. These include:
• North Region
Taft High School, 6545 W. Hurlbut St.
Ashmore Playlot Park, 4807 W. Gunnison St.
• South Region
Beverly Park, 2460 W. 102nd St.
Chicago Vocational High School, 2100 E. 87th St.
• East Region
Loop Lab School, 318 W. Adams St.
Wicker Park 1425 N. Damen Ave.
• West Region
Keystone Park, 1655 N. Keystone Ave.
Frazier International Magnet School, 4027 W. Grenshaw St.
• Southwest Region
St. Gall Elementary School, 5515 S. Sawyer Ave.
Foster Park, 1400 W. 84th St.
• Southeast Region
Dulles Elementary School, 6311 S. Calumet Ave.
Mulberry Park, 3150 S. Robinson Ct.
Any revenue generated by the program is invested in critical safety initiatives including after-school, anti-violence and jobs programs; crossing guards and police officers around schools; and infrastructure improvements, such as additional signs, crosswalk markings and other traffic safety improvements.
Only warnings are issued for the first 30 days after cameras are activated in a safety zone. The first time a vehicle owner is eligible to receive an enforceable violation, they will instead receive a warning. Per city ordinance, fines for violations are $35 for vehicles traveling 6-10 miles per hour over the posted speed limit while in a safety zone, and $100 for vehicles traveling 11 or more miles over the posted speed limit.
The City is currently only issuing tickets for speeders going 10 or more miles per hour over the posted speed limit. That ticket threshold will gradually be lowered going forward. Since the program began in August of 2013, the City has issued more than 1.25 million warnings to motorists and 230,000 tickets in the 51 safety zones currently equipped with cameras.
The Children’s Safety Zones are designated within 1/8th of a mile from Chicago parks or schools. The City ordinance establishing the program narrows the hours and locations of enforcement that are allowed under state law, and provides for the following:
• The enforcement hours are limited from 7 am to 7 pm in safety zones around schools on school days (Monday through Friday)
- 7 am to 4 pm: 20 mph speed limit when children are present; the posted speed limit when no children are present
- 4 pm to 7 pm: the posted speed limit
• The enforcement hours around parks are limited to only those hours parks are open (typically 6am to 11pm, 7 days a week) to the posted speed limit.
With the additional 12, there will be cameras in 63 Children’s Safety Zones, which is well below the 300 allowed by City ordinance, and shows the City’s conservative approach on this program
The Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) today announced the next 12 Children’s Safety Zones around parks and schools, two zones in each of the six city regions, to be equipped with automated speed enforcement (ASE) cameras this year, part of the Children’s Safety Zone Program to increase safety, reduce speeding and fund critical safety programs.
The data from speed cameras currently operating shows that speeding is decreasing in those areas. The number of speeding events recorded by each camera has reduced by an average of 43 percent from the first week of its operation to last week, and as much as 99 percent in some locations. Data shows that 39 percent of all violations issued have gone to non-city residents.
“We are pleased with the dramatic impact the Children’s Safety Zone Program has made to reduce speeding and improve safety,” said CDOT Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld. “The whole goal of this program is making it safer for children and families to walk to school or go to the park, and clearly we’re making real strides toward that goal.”
Cameras will be installed in each of the six geographic regions during the next few months. These include:
• North Region
Taft High School, 6545 W. Hurlbut St.
Ashmore Playlot Park, 4807 W. Gunnison St.
• South Region
Beverly Park, 2460 W. 102nd St.
Chicago Vocational High School, 2100 E. 87th St.
• East Region
Loop Lab School, 318 W. Adams St.
Wicker Park 1425 N. Damen Ave.
• West Region
Keystone Park, 1655 N. Keystone Ave.
Frazier International Magnet School, 4027 W. Grenshaw St.
• Southwest Region
St. Gall Elementary School, 5515 S. Sawyer Ave.
Foster Park, 1400 W. 84th St.
• Southeast Region
Dulles Elementary School, 6311 S. Calumet Ave.
Mulberry Park, 3150 S. Robinson Ct.
Any revenue generated by the program is invested in critical safety initiatives including after-school, anti-violence and jobs programs; crossing guards and police officers around schools; and infrastructure improvements, such as additional signs, crosswalk markings and other traffic safety improvements.
Only warnings are issued for the first 30 days after cameras are activated in a safety zone. The first time a vehicle owner is eligible to receive an enforceable violation, they will instead receive a warning. Per city ordinance, fines for violations are $35 for vehicles traveling 6-10 miles per hour over the posted speed limit while in a safety zone, and $100 for vehicles traveling 11 or more miles over the posted speed limit.
The City is currently only issuing tickets for speeders going 10 or more miles per hour over the posted speed limit. That ticket threshold will gradually be lowered going forward. Since the program began in August of 2013, the City has issued more than 1.25 million warnings to motorists and 230,000 tickets in the 51 safety zones currently equipped with cameras.
The Children’s Safety Zones are designated within 1/8th of a mile from Chicago parks or schools. The City ordinance establishing the program narrows the hours and locations of enforcement that are allowed under state law, and provides for the following:
• The enforcement hours are limited from 7 am to 7 pm in safety zones around schools on school days (Monday through Friday)
- 7 am to 4 pm: 20 mph speed limit when children are present; the posted speed limit when no children are present
- 4 pm to 7 pm: the posted speed limit
• The enforcement hours around parks are limited to only those hours parks are open (typically 6am to 11pm, 7 days a week) to the posted speed limit.
With the additional 12, there will be cameras in 63 Children’s Safety Zones, which is well below the 300 allowed by City ordinance, and shows the City’s conservative approach on this program
CDOT Commissioner Finally Speaks
Cops Crack Down On Drivers Failing To Yield To Pedestrians July 1, 2014 2:24 PM
CHICAGO (CBS) – Chicago isn’t messing around when it comes to getting drivers to stop at crosswalks. Police set up Tuesday along North Clark Street near the Chicago History Museum.
One after another, drivers were pulled over for failing to yield to pedestrians. It’s a very busy area with a lot of apartment buildings, a park, some shopping and a couple of pre-schools.
Rebekah Scheinfeld of the Chicago Transportation Department says it happens all over the city.
“The fact that they are being hit is evidence that we have a problem with speeding and that cars are not going slow enough to judge the distances from those signs,” said Scheinfeld.
Ron Burke of the Active Transportation Alliance says around 3,000 pedestrians are hit by vehicles in Chicago every year.
“We need to do better in terms of designing our streets, kind of moving beyond this legacy of designing streets to move as many cars as fast as possible,” said Burke.
The fine for blowing through a crosswalk clearly marked stop for pedestrians: $120.
CHICAGO (CBS) – Chicago isn’t messing around when it comes to getting drivers to stop at crosswalks. Police set up Tuesday along North Clark Street near the Chicago History Museum.
One after another, drivers were pulled over for failing to yield to pedestrians. It’s a very busy area with a lot of apartment buildings, a park, some shopping and a couple of pre-schools.
Rebekah Scheinfeld of the Chicago Transportation Department says it happens all over the city.
“The fact that they are being hit is evidence that we have a problem with speeding and that cars are not going slow enough to judge the distances from those signs,” said Scheinfeld.
Ron Burke of the Active Transportation Alliance says around 3,000 pedestrians are hit by vehicles in Chicago every year.
“We need to do better in terms of designing our streets, kind of moving beyond this legacy of designing streets to move as many cars as fast as possible,” said Burke.
The fine for blowing through a crosswalk clearly marked stop for pedestrians: $120.
Why are they hiding and what did they say?
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Amazingly the CDOT Commissioner, who replaced the infamous Gabe Kline is quoted as "of the Chicago Transportation Department" rather than it's top officer, The Commissioner. But for those who may not know, Ms Rebekah Scheinfeld is the CDOT Commissioner.
It's also kind of amazing that the Commissioner would go to a location not designated as a Park or School "Safety Zone" to talk about pedestrian safety concerns. Is the "of the Transportation Department" telling us Kline's solution of Safety Zones and Speed Camera's isn't working because it is a perfect location with both Parks and Schools near by? Are they moving up to a $120 ticket to make up revenue that didn't materialize from the Speed Cameras or is it somehow different in this part of town which happens to have neither Red Light or Speed Cameras.. |
Ron Burke, of the Active Transportation Alliance is better known as the Executive Director of this well funded pro biker group. This is like quoting the CEO of Redflex to justify Red Light Cameras.
So Director Burke told you that around 3,000 pedestrians were hit in Chicago each year but he did not tell you that number has gone down every year since 2009 or that Chicago's rate is not even in the top 10 for large cities. And what did he mean when he said “ We need to do better in terms of designing our streets, kind of moving beyond this legacy of designing streets to move as many cars as fast as possible,” ? He meant "traffic calming" and narrowing streets by installing bike lanes in areas where there are no bikers. Go here to see the cities Pedestrian Study http://www.cityofchicago.org/content/dam/city/depts/cdot/pedestrian/2011PedestrianCrashAnalysisSummaryReport.pdf#page=4 |
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It's All About The Money!
A huge Chicago Tribune investigation into the city's red-light camera program has taken another astonishing turn. Redflex Holdings Ltd, the parent company of Chicago's ex-red-light camera vendor, acknowledged last week the entire camera program was "likely built on a $2 million bribery scheme," the Tribune reports. March 4, 2013 Read more: http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article /20130304/BLOGS08/130309949/a-harsh-spotlight-on-red-light-cameras#ixzz2NAgiomNB Chicago is a MAJOR operator of predatory ticket cameras for the sole purpose of collecting revenue that comes almost entirely from safe drivers. Chicago uses deliberately improper traffic light timing and under-posted speed limits so that thousands of very safe drivers who are not causing traffic hazards for anyone will get tickets for the "crime" of safely operating their vehicles. Chicago officials have Seventy million reasons to use red light cameras and are seeking millions more reasons to use speed cameras. James Walker Quote Look For New Warning Lettering Around Speed Cameras
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Red-Light Camera Facts:
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More Speed Camera News: New Locations
SUN-TIMES MEDIA WIRE June 29, 2014 1:10PM Speed cameras will begin issuing tickets next week in what officials are designating a “children’s safety zone” near Ogden Plaza Park in Streeterville. Automated speed enforcement cameras in the 400 block of North Columbus Drive, near the park, have completed a warning phase and will be used to issue tickets beginning Tuesday, according to a statement from the Chicago Department of Transportation. On Monday, new automated cameras will begin issuing warnings for a 30-day period in the 3500 block of East 95th Street, near Calumet Park. The children’s safety zones are designated within an eighth of a mile of parks or schools, according to the city transportation department. Near parks, the cameras will be used to issue tickets during the hours those parks are open, typically from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week. Vehicles traveling 6-10 mph over the posted limit will be fined $35; vehicles traveling 11 mph or more over the limit will be fined $100. ------------------------------------------------- |
Media Highlights: Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras
- This article, written by J. Coyden Palmer, was published by the Chicago Crusader on September 7, 2013. It is the first written article to highlight the efforts of our group. http://chicagocrusader.com/chicago/news-detail.aspx?cityID=1&typeID=1&newsid=4358
Things To Know:
Contact: Mark Wallace 773-617-2042 or Don Bransford 773-320-8121
