A 44-year-old Arizona man allegedly tried to fool the photo radars that record a vehicle's speed. It worked for a while — until the police caught up with him.
Timothy Welsh allegedly used a permanent marker to change both the 3 and the 9 on his license plate to an 8, so when his vehicle got nabbed for speeding, the ticket was sent to someone else, MyFOXPhoenix.com reported.
At first, Scottsdale Sgt. Jim Butera thought it was a mistake when a Phoenix man called him complaining he had gotten two speeding tickets mailed to him, but he wasn't the one speeding.
When Butera looked at the photo and saw the man making an obscene gesture at the camera he thought, "[we] need to do some more investigating."
"He didn't think it was that big of a deal," Butera told the station. "But he admitted to everything that we accused him of."
Welsh allegedly was going 14 mph over the speed limit and would have had to pay a $175 fine, but now, he's facing a $1,500 fine and up to a year in jail.
The reason this doesn't bother me that much is that I don't like photo-enforcement systems, whether for speed or red light violations. I don't think they're constitutional, regardless of what the courts may have said. As a citizen you're supposed to have the right to confront your accuser, and you can't cross-examine a computer program or a camera. If the government is going to accuse you of breaking a law or regulation, that accusation should come from a human law enforcement officer who can be called to testify at trial.
In San Diego a couple of years ago there was quite a scandal involving red light cameras. It turns out the company that installed and maintained them was getting a piece of every fine collected, and at some intersections the amber lights had been shortened to guarantee more violations. Photo-enforcement systems are rife with potential for fraud and I don't think they have any place in American law enforcement.
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