High Court to Officers: Pay Your Speed Camera Fines

wow

At the end of my career I was a traffic officer and many times I exceeded the posted speed limit. The reason was simple, I was trying to catch up to a speeder or someone that ran a red light, stop sign, or was otherwise breaking the law. If you drive the speed limit you will NEVER catch them. If you immediately turn on your emergency equipment not only do the people around you act crazy so much that you may actually cause an accident, the subject you are going after will see you and may well decide that they can run and get away from you so they take off endangering the public. If you are suddenly right on them they almost always stop. Een while working patrol you often exceed the speed limit without using your lights such as anything where you want to catch the subjects at the scene instead of them knowing how long they have to be able to escape by the sound of your siren. Look, if an Officer violates traffic laws while off-duty, they should be treated just like everyone else and warned or ticketed as the Officer sees fit. While on duty it is up[ to his or her supervisor to take care of any speeding problems, not cameras that have no idea what the Officer is doing.

I have a problem with traffic camera that take photos of the vehicle and not the driver. I cannot believe it is legal to cite the register owner of the vehicle. As police officers we must identify the driver and issue the citatiion to the operator of the vehicle, not the registered owner. That is completely STUPID.
In this case its more police officers taking it in the lower region.

Why was this so important that it was taken to the State Court of Appeals ?

Hmm. Anyone ever stop a Judge or a Lawyer ? Time to enforce without warning & admonishing...........in my opionion.

i dont think they should have to pay any fines. we take too long to get somewhere we get sued for taking too long. or we have to pay a fine for getting there to fast. you never know how something so simple could turn bad for an officer so maybe they were trying to get closer to an officer that was on a call so god forbid something should go wrong, back up is that much closer. there was a story in illinois where a motorist was try to catch up to a state trooper so she could get his license plate and file a complaint against him for speeding saying he was not responding to a call. she says she knows the trooper was not responding to a call because he slowed down, and pulled her over and wrote her a ticket for speeding! i have a feeling that this woman has nothing better to do than "patrol" the highways looking for officers to complain about. next time she needs the police and they take too long to get there, i wonder what her complaint will be then

"A police department review found the officers were not responding to official police calls."

We're not above the law folks, pay your ticket and remember to follow your laws in regard to operating an emergency vehicle if you are responding to a call.

Instead of turning it into a publicity stunt, why not just pay the freakin 40 dollar fine...? This looks horrible on behalf of Law Enforcement as they are supposed to be enforcing speed laws. I think the time that the picture was taken, needs to be matched up with dispatch logs, and if there were no priority calls, they need to be held responsible for their actions. For those of you that don't remember, just about 3 months ago, there was a story here on PoliceLink about an Officer who crashed his vehicle and ended up in the ER for doing 110 MPH to an audible home alarm... wtf??? That's non sense... if an audible alarm is worth your life and mine, then pigs must of just grew wings..

Emergency vehicles need to be exempt. It's as simple as that. All those cameras are anyway are money making machines.