Court

Shortly after they take your picture, City Police will send you a "Notice of Offence to Registered Owner, and Violation Ticket" in the mail. This document contains a photocopy of the picture of your vehicle, particulars about the alleged offence, a proposed court date and the date when the money must be paid. When you receive this document, the first thing to do is decide if you want to fight or dig in your pocket for money. If you decide to fight, no action is required at this time. If you decide to give the greedy government your money, the Notice of Offence will specify the date by which you must feed the cash cow and send in your payment, along with the Violation Ticket.

PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THE DATES AND ALLOW SUFFICIENT MAILING TIME (10 DAYS MINIMUM) TO SEND IN YOUR PAYMENT.

If you decide that you want to fight for your "Vehicles Due Justice", enter your Not Guilty Plea on the ticket and send it back to the Law Courts (address will be given) BEFORE THE PROPOSED TRIAL DATE (10 DAYS MINIMUM VIA MAIL). The clerk will then send you a letter telling you when to appear in court. This process takes a fair amount of time and all the while you still have the use of your money. If you want to procrastinate even further, you can request an adjournment of the original court date by going down to the Law Courts Building and talking to the duty magistrate. Just about any legitimate-sounding excuse will get you an adjournment and you can request a specific day of the week you wish to appear (Friday's are good). Such a request must be made at least 7 days before the scheduled trial date.

Before your court date, you should request full disclosure from the Crown Prosecutor's office in writing. (I myself rarely do this as I have found that just going through the previously described processes has been sufficient for me). The Crown has an obligation to disclose those instruments they will use in the courtroom to try to obtain a conviction.

The Edmonton Crown Prosecutor's office is a typical feckless bureaucracy that is not adverse to using dirty tactics. In my case, I requested disclosure in writing on two occasions and never heard back from them. When it came time to appear in Court, I thought I would have grounds for having the case dismissed because they never provided me with disclosure.

The Crown Prosecutor maintained that she had prepared the disclosure and it had been available for pickup at her office. Even though I never received so much as a phone call saying the material was ready, the Magistrate did not seem to think this was a breach of my rights. So it would seem the court has put the onus on the defendant to obtain disclosure rather than upon the Crown to provide it. The lesson here is to keep phoning until you get assurances that the material is ready. In any case, you may gain some satisfaction in making the Crown Prosecutor's Bureaucratic life of leisure a little less comfortable.

Fight it in Court
Governments have become accustomed to this newfound wealth and photo radar has become virtually untouchable. It is being jealously protected by crown prosecutors and magistrates in Edmonton's traffic court.

So if a person believes (as many do) that Photo Radar does little to curb speeding and exists primarily as a revenue generating tool, how do we fight this injustice?

When the ticket arrives in the mail, most people currently send in their contribution without a whimper. Many are intimidated by the justice system. Many are angry but believe protest is futile. Many just do not have the time in their busy lives to try to right a fundamental wrong.

Right now the most effective method of fighting Photo Radar is to appear in court and contest the ticket. Consider the numbers. Currently when you contest a Photo Radar ticket in an Edmonton courtroom, the crown calls the officer who operated the radar unit to testify. The crown prosecutor also spends a bit of time preparing a case and briefing the officer on expected responses. Lets assume a very efficient prosecutor and say preparation time is one hour including the officer's time.

When you appear in court and it takes an hour to hear your case, that means you are costing the crown one hour of a magistrate's time plus one hour of a court reporter's time plus one hour of a crown prosecutor's time plus one hour of a city police officer's time. Additional costs are incurred in serving the ticket, preparing disclosure if requested, and administrating the judicial process. If you contest your ticket, you can reasonably expect the crown to pay for a minimum of 6 hours time - most of it for high-priced help.

Let's assume an extremely conservative figure and say this time is worth $30 an hour. Remember, there were 165,000 tickets issued in 2002 in Edmonton. If only half of those who got a ticket exercised their right to a hearing, it would have cost the crown 6 hours X $30 X 82,500 which amounts to almost $15 million.

Suddenly the balance sheet doesn't look quite so rosy. Remember, the city did not get the whole $12.4 million in revenue. Lockheed Martin got almost $2.4 million or roughly 19% of the revenue (Note, Lockheed's share used to be around 12%). And you can bet the farm Lockheed Martin did not share in any court costs.

My guess? If more people contested in court, it would not take long before some bureaucrat somewhere added up the figures and those photo radar machines started gathering dust.

The bottom line is, Photo Radar does not accomplish any legitimate traffic control function. Police efforts and revenue should be directed towards more effective speed control mechanisms. If we don't take the time to fight this blatant revenue grab, other governments will jump on the bandwagon and we will be victimized at every opportunity. The situation will only get worse, and the fact of the matter is, it does.

The Court Appearance
In Edmonton, Photo Radar cases are tried before a Magistrate. Many traffic cases are scheduled for the same time on the same date. The court deals with all the guilty pleas and the "no-shows" first. Most of these appearances take no longer than a few minutes so if your case does not appear on the list until near the end, don't sweat it. Chances are good the wait won't be too long. (At best, I have only ever waited an hour and that was because the Magistrate was late in starting court proceedings. They have their own clock and depending upon how good the coffee is and general chit chat they engage in, you may have to wait a little longer. (Hope for a bad coffee day.)

The Crown Prosecutor will likely call the officer who operated the Photo Radar machine to testify. The crown's case will be presented first with the prosecutor questioning the officer. Then you will have a chance to raise your own questions. Remember to take your time and if additional questions come to mind during the questioning, take the time to jot them down on a piece of paper and make sure they get asked.

Let's face it, the odds of not having to pay your ticket are not good. The Provincial Justice Systems are a powerful machine and the incentive to keep lucrative sources of revenue flowing is strong enough that the courts will be extremely reluctant to let anyone put the Government's Photo Radar revenue at risk. I need to stress that the idea of appearing in court is to make the system as unprofitable as possible for the Government without causing any excessive inconvenience to yourself. At the end of this writing, you'll understand why I want you to Fight Your Ticket.

Remember, if the process becomes tedious, at any point in the proceedings you can elect to plead guilty and pay your fine. The fine will not be increased if you do. If you are respectful of the court while presenting your case, the magistrate will grant you a great deal of leeway. You are not expected to be an expert in the law. You may present your case in whatever manner is the most comfortable to you.

Remember too, it is not necessary to dress like a lawyer to make a court appearance. Appearing in court in your ordinary, everyday clothing is perfectly acceptable and citizens do it all the time. Do not be intimidated by the trappings of the justice system, the people officiating are no better than you. Remember, you are entitled to fair treatment under the law.

One last comment about attending court. If the witness (police officer) doesn’t show up, in most cases the court will toss out your ticket. The costs of having to schedule a re-trial are just way too expensive and it is not in their best interests to schedule you for another appearance. You automatically stand a 50/50 chance of having your ticket tossed out just by contesting the ticket and showing up in court. Make sure you keep that in mind. This has personally happened to me 2 times. I once had 2 Tickets to challenge on the same day. One got tossed, one got reduced.

Don’t let the Prosecutor “goad” you into pleading guilty if you don’t want to. However, that being said, most will try and cut a deal with you relative to a reduced fine just to get you to go away. Remember, these are busy people with Golf Games to play and Beers to drink down at the Pub.

For your info, Traffic Court starts at 9:30 am and is usually wrapped up by 11:30 am for mornings. It restarts at 1:30 pm and finishes no later than 3:30 pm in the afternoon. This is actually better than Banker Hours.

SOME OTHER OPTIONS (SENSIBLE OPTIONS!!!)
More-enlightened police forces in North America are aware people do not deliberately speed out of malice or disregard for the law. They realize the majority of motorists speed because of inattention or distraction and that raising awareness is much more effective than punishment in keeping the roads safe.

If you travel Interstate 5 in Northern California, you will see a number of electronic signs along the highway at select locations. Wherever the posted speed is critical to safely negotiating a dangerous corner, the highway patrol have installed solar-powered, radar-operated traffic signs. Only instead of the radar taking your picture and mailing you a ticket 3 weeks later, it displays your actual speed immediately so you can slow down in time to negotiate the turns safely. Of course, the highway patrol doesn't make any money from this technology but they do manage to save lives and protect citizens... which after all should be the primary purpose of any police agency.

In less-traveled areas, the California highway patrol employs the same technology effectively using mobile trailers. Called SMART for "Speed Monitoring Awareness Radar Trailers", these solar-powered trailers can be towed wherever they are needed and can be set up in minutes to help motorists slow down. They are extremely effective at making drivers more aware of their speed.

PHOTO RADAR ISN'T ABOUT SPEEDING (EDMONTON STATS)
But, of course, Photo Radar isn't about speeding, it's about revenue. And we didn't need this sorry episode in CalgaryAlberta to prove that.

Just go for a drive along a major thoroughfare. Do the speed limit. At least half of the cars on the road will pass you, many of them at blistering speeds. Don't be surprised, either, if some of those speed demons happen to be driving marked police patrol cars.

I had the experience a couple of weeks ago of having a patrol car constantly speed up ahead of me on 170 Street. I'd catch up to him at the light, and he'd take off again when it turned green. We'd meet at the next light, and on it went all the way to 69 Avenue before he turned off. About 8KM or 5 Miles of travel distance.

There was no emergency (or else he wouldn't have stopped for the red lights) but he sure seemed to be ignoring the speed limit. Not exactly setting the best example for the rest of us.

Beyond that, Photo Radar is useless for getting people to slow down. Because unless you're driving at night and you see the flash in your rear-view mirror, chances are you won't even realize you've been caught by the camera.

In other words, photo radar does nothing to stop you from speeding at that point in time. And you'll keep speeding until you get the ticket in the mail, at which point you'll still keep speeding.

No, you will. We've had photo radar for years here in Edmonton and the vast majority of drivers still ignore the speed limit. So how can Photo Radar be a deterrent?

In my experience, there's only one surefire way to get people to maintain the speed limit, and that's to blanket the road with Police Cruisers nailing people for going too fast. However, this is currently a “catch 22” because real Tickets are accompanied by Demerits which are reviewed by your Insurance Company. Then, these guys raise your insurance rates, sometimes making it unaffordable for some motorists to drive. You can’t win it seems. However, by following my steps and challenging each and every ticket you get, you are making it financially hard for the police to keep up with this nonsense. The courts cannot handle the overload. Plain and simple.

Ever wonder where CHQT (Radio Station) gets the information they broadcast every day about photo radar locations? Well I phoned the guy on the news desk and he told me occasionally a listener will phone in but usually the Edmonton City Police supply them with the locations. Pretty nice of the police don't you think? When they do things like that, you would almost think their primary concern is really to slow down traffic and not to raise revenue. Well, better think again.

Recently, CHQT broadcast that Photo Radar was set up at 170 St and 117 Ave and at 82 Ave and the Yellowhead highway. Well about the same time they were broadcasting this choice news, I was coming home from work along the Yellowhead and noticed a photo radar unit set up westbound at Anthony Henday Drive thought it strange CHQT had not broadcast that location so I decided to drive by the two locations they did mention.

Guess what? There were no Photo Radar units set up at either location broadcast by CHQT. It would seem the police are using the media as pawns to mislead the public into thinking they are taking pictures in locations other than where they really are. Of course, if they broadcast the real locations where photo radar was set up, people might slow down in those locations and then their cash cow would dry up. That would never do.

An alert reader named Bill recently brought my attention to some deliberate misinformation on the Edmonton Police website. At one photo radar location, Edmonton police state "Photo Radar has been challenged at all levels of court, up to and including the Supreme Court of Canada". Not content to accept EPS statements at face value, Bill searched the Supreme Court database and came up with absolutely nothing about photo radar. In actual fact, no Photo Radar case has yet made it to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Bill also noticed how Edmonton police exaggerate the facts to justify their cash cow. On the Edmonton Police website, Edmonton police say "Survey after survey has shown overwhelming public support for the use of photo radar systems to reduce collisions." However, at on another spot on their website Bill found the claim "survey after survey" translates into two surveys and "overwhelming public support" is actually between 52% and 57.6% of the public. This was a stat from 2002, and in 2006 I am lead to believe support for Photo Radar enforcement is less than 40%. Why, because everyone knows it is a cash cow.

In fact, some of Edmonton’s Cops were suspended and ACS, the company now running the Cash Cow at the time have been investigated for corruption. Naturally, they didn't want anymor bad publicity and the charges were dropped without reason, and the City took over running the Photo Enforcement Duties. ACS was fired. Gulity one would obviously think, but NOT proven in Court.

It's pretty obvious that Photo Radar has "Ruined" many, many peoples lives no matter what your Social or Economic Status. You would think that the Politicians would have figured this out already and scrapped it.

Money Does Change People