Interesting nonetheless.

Public support for these revenue-enhancing and safety-reducing devices is dropping fast, everywhere.

How ’bout you, Northglenn?

Democrats were not the only losers on Election Day. Traffic cameras designed to catch red-light runners also took a ballot box beating as they were voted down in Houston and at least four other cities nationwide.

I hereby send an invitation to the City Attorney.

If you have a bonafide Traffic Investigation, in compliance with Colorado State law, that justifies the sudden drop of speed limit from 35 mph to 25 mph north of Malley on Community Center Drive, please send it to me and I will publish it, and will make an update to my post asserting the City has constructed a revenue-collecting speedtrap there.

At a more general level, I invite public dialog, and will happily post responses from you in the comments anytime, or more substantive responses as separate Guest posts should you be interested in commenting or rebutting the citizen journalism research of this blog.

Her summary is quite accurate. The road design, and the speed limit reduction at the intersection with Malley Drive, seem to be explicitly designed to funnel people into the trap, and revenue into the City of Northglenn coffers.

Moreover, given the nature of the roadway on that particular section of Community Center Drive, I would posit that the City may be in violation of the Colorado Law, which explicitly stipulates that “speed limits are not to be higher or lower than the basic prima facie speed limits” and that speed limits ought to be “30 mph in any residential district” (unless “unless a Traffic Investigation has justified the change”).

Community Center Drive north of Malley Drive is very clearly a residential area. Not only is it residential, it has a wide street, wide grass before the sidewalk on each side, more grass and then apartment complexes behind fences after that. In other words, this is nowhere near a particularly dangerous residential area, for which the speed limits are generally 30 mph in many areas of Denver I drive in every day.

It appears to me that it may be the case that the City can’t get the revenue it wants by treating its denizens fairly, so it goes with a classic speed trap move, drop the speed limit significantly, in an area which does not “invite” lower speed to the driver by any real change in the nature of the roadway, and then enforce aggressively in the area immediately after the drop in the legal limit to maximize the number of “marks” you can hit on.

I would highly doubt that Northglenn could produce a bonafide Traffic Investigation, as required by State law, if challenged in court.

I would encourage any with tickets on Community Center Drive to consider a challenge to your speeding ticket on this basis.

Houstonians rejected the city’s red light camera program in a hard-fought ballot contest, delivering an immediate $10 million hit to an already dire budget situation at City Hall.

With all votes counted, 53.2 percent of voters demanded a decisive end to the use of the devices, which had been used to issue more than 800,000 tickets and collected $44 million in fines since 2006.

So with relation to this blog, Northglenn is a Speed Trap, how, you might ask, do the local police get the power to take any sort of action for the collective public? How is this power justified? Are there limits to this power?

Yes, I accept that the government of the City of Northglenn does, indeed, have a valid and legal right to exercise the “police power” in their local area.

The legality of the police power of any municipality is simply a power given them by the U.S. State in which they are geographically located.

The State, in this case the State of Colorado, gets (inheres…) its power, from the people, as part of the constitutionally delegated power of the US Constitution via Article IV and the 9th amendment, as well as the 1876 Colorado Constitution.

So I have no general quibble with police power. I think I would be one of those who, with my neighbors, would privately contract for a night watchman for my neighborhood if one weren’t already provided by the state.

But where the line should be drawn on how much police power ought to be given, or tolerated, has been in debate for millenia. I want the night watchman. I might want the “King’s protection” which implies military service of myself or others under my dependent care. I don’t want the government breaking into my home in the middle of the night and shooting my dogs and family because some (poorly incented and drug-addled) informant screwed up when he gave the police my address.

So back to the blog and speed traps: while it may be debatable just where to draw the precise line on police power in general, I’m quite certain I don’t want the police empowered to cross that line in order to increase the revenue for the local municipality.

An acquaintance of mine relates this similar story of a speedtrap run-in with the Northglenn traffic bureaucracy. I’ve tried to capture it as she understands the driving scene, the ticket, and the Northglenn municipal response.

driving like a “grandmother” eastbound on 112th Avenue, at the speed limit of 35 mph or a bit below, she continued eastward as the roadway goes up and over an overpass, crossing Interstate 25. “112th Avenue” is renamed “Community Center Drive” as it crosses I-25 — with no visible change in the nature of the roadway, and the speed limit remains 35 mph — and then curves northward heading to intersect 120th Avenue. The street descends a hill as it drops elevation from the bridge over the interstate highway as the land elevation decreases to the north where Community Center Drive crosses Malley Drive. She had gained a bit of speed going down the hill and was now “cruising” at the “high” speed of exactly 35 mph as she crossed Malley Drive. No problem, or so she thought. Well, actually, no. Northglenn drops the speed limit from 35 mph to 25 mph right where Community Center Drive crosses Malley, which is exactly at the bottom of the hill. A Northglenn mototcycle cop radar-ed her in the first couple hundred feet after Malley, and issued her a ticket for doing 35 mph in a 25 mph zone, immediately after the first posted sign of the new lower limit.

Because she had an absolutely clean driving record, the City Attorney for Northglenn offered her a “plea bargain offer”: a 2-point violation of “Defective Equipment”, plus a $130 fine. She took the “deal”, acquiesced and paid the fine, because she is intimidated by the legal system and the bureaucracy that would drag her before it.

This fine, as with commenter MR in the previous post, seems exorbitant. And the description of the catch point is classic speed trap. I drove through there myself and it is exactly as she described it.

Have a story to share? Write us at dldelong02@gmail.com.

Missouri State Auditor Defunds Speed Trap City
State of Missouri applies the anti-speed trap law for the first time ever.

A notorious Missouri speed trap town was busted Wednesday [15 Sep 2010] by the state auditor for violating the law. Randolph, Missouri has a population of just 47 people, but the police department last year dished out 3132 fines — nearly all speeding tickets issued to motorists passing through on Highway 210. A formal examination of the city’s book uncovered the fact that Randolph made more than thirty-five percent of its revenue from freeway traffic ticket, in violation of the “Macks Creek” law, an anti-speed trap statute named for a town that went bankrupt after its ability to issue speeding tickets was revoked.

Well, as we previously covered on this blog relative to another state that starts with “M”, I would say it is about time.

Of course one simple way for the state to change this predatory behavior by the local municipality would be to change the incentives of the “game”. Simply requiring that fees collected from speeding tickets on state highways go to the state’s general fund ought to do the trick. Or perhaps allow the city to keep some portion of the fines, perhaps proportional to number of miles of state highway that run through a town. That would not be too much for a town with a population of only 47, and would no doubt reign in an overeager and predatory police force.

Northglenn will routinely offer persons cited for traffic violations “adjustments” that carry lower points but higher fines (presumably to collect revenue). My wife and I have both been subject to this.

Also, while an automatic “down plead” in not novel as an alternative to traffic citations by any means, it does seem to be used quite a bit by Northglenn, certainly with revenue in mind. As an example, $190 and 3-points as an alternative for “10 over” in a 45 mph zone is excessive in my opinion.

Good point MR. Seems to be, essentially, the guvmint extracting a rent from the franchise they hold on being the sole traffic enforcer. They want the money; the traffic enforcement may be quite secondary. They’ve got the citizen in a vise: either waste a lot of time with the administrative and judicial bureaucracy, or “pay up” for this “benefit” that the city will “sell” you of reducing your point count. Economically, it is an ordinary exchange. Politically, it is the utilization of a state-granted monopoly franchise to coercively extract rents from the populace.

In the meantime, thought you might enjoy this:
Non-Compliance Topples Arizona Traffic-Cam Program.

The natives are restless. Those who would be our overlords are just a bit less secure this year than they were last year.

And I enjoyed this bit: “The State, as an institution, thrives on confrontation. The best antidote is peaceful non-compliance. Simply ignore the State, disengage, and the State is rendered impotent.”