Red Light Green: LA Extends Collections On Photo-Enforced Traffic Tickets
LOS ANGELES (CBS) — City Council members may have put a stop to the photo-enforced red light ticket program, but Los Angeles is still looking to collect some green from tickets already issued.
KNX 1070's Bill Polish reports on a vote to continue trying to collect fines from about 50,000 drivers who were cited for running a red light.
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City Councilman Mitchell Englander is among those who voted to continue paying an Arizona contractor to maintain the ticket database that is expected to remain online for possibly as long as the next six months.
Englander believes that while the red light ticket program is "dead", the city has a legal and fiduciary duty to continue collecting the fines.
"This is not a program that has restarted or extended, the only relationship now with the provider is strictly for the data, because this will stay on somebody's record in the court system," he said.
Englander called the extension a kind of legal clean-up program, as the LAPD still needs access to the company's database of photos and evidence to try to collect the fines.
"When this was first negotiated, the city failed to put in the "out" clauses — the exit strategy, if you will — [such as] what happens to cameras? What happens to the data?" he said. "They just moved forward without thinking about those consequences."
