Boulder Police: Some photo-radar tickets could be invalid
Unmarked van may have been parked illegally for a year
Got a speeding ticket in Boulder lately? You might just catch a break.
Boulder police and city transportation officials are investigating the possibility that a photo-radar van was parked illegally when it snapped pictures of passing speeders — possibly hundreds of them.
Cmdr. Robert Thomas, who heads the traffic unit for the Boulder Police Department, said he’s looking into allegations that one of the city’s photo-radar units was operating in a clearly marked “no parking” and “tow-away” zone along Broadway, just north of Norwood Avenue in north Boulder.
Boulder resident Mac Fraser, 67, lives near the intersection and said he became concerned when the van started parking in a patch of public landscaping off the road where Broadway merges northbound drivers into a single lane at the crest of a small hill.
“Those that live out here know they either have to slow down or speed up past a car to get into that lane,” Fraser said. “It’s a great speed trap — that’s really all it is.”
Fraser said the van has been snapping pictures of drivers and license plates in the same spot as many as four times a week for more than a year.
“My wife and I actually call each other, and occasionally a friend, when we come down” Broadway, Fraser said. “We’ll just pick up the phone and say, ‘If you’re coming down, the van’s out.’”
After the Camera told Thomas about Fraser’s complaint earlier this week, the commander said he personally drove to the site and looked for himself.
“The citizen’s right,” Thomas said Friday. “You can’t have a van breaking the law and a citizen getting a ticket for breaking the law — that’s not right.”
But Thomas said it’s also not quite as simple as that.
The person who parked the van at the questionable site, a city transportation employee who mans the van for the police department, is arguing that there is a posted sign specifically allowing the van to operate near the intersection.
Such signs are posted throughout select locations in Boulder, Thomas said, but neither he nor the Camera was able to locate a sign allowing photo-radar use along the north stretch of Broadway.
According to Camera archives, the van was operating at the intersection as long ago as 2006, when it was deployed 20 times for a total of 827 violations. Photo radar has been in use in Boulder since 1998.
Thomas said he’ll work with the city transportation office and photo-radar employees early next week to determine whether the van was allowed to operate there.
“I know this is a hot issue,” Thomas said. “I’m trying to get to the bottom of this.”
City managers in charge of the photo-radar program were not able to be reached by phone Thursday or Friday.
If it turns out the van was operating in an illegal spot, Thomas said he’ll work with the city attorney’s office and the Boulder municipal courts to dismiss all tickets given from that location. Anyone who already paid for or lost an appeal from such tickets would likely be issued a refund, he said, although the final decision on those actions would have to come from the city attorney’s office and the courts.
Janet Michels, a prosecutor with the Boulder city attorney’s office, said there is nothing in Colorado law that specifically invalidates tickets issued from an illegally parked photo-radar van — but she’ll listen to whatever recommendations the police issue.
“When the enforcement agency makes recommendations to us about what they believe is an appropriate disposition of a case, we factor that in very seriously,” Michels said.
Fraser, whose brother received a $40 speeding ticket from the van Feb. 20, said getting a refund and removing the van would only be fair.
“Finally, they can be taken to task like all of us.”
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March 26th, 2008 at 9:02 am
UPDATE ON THIS SITUATION:
The city won’t refund speeding tickets issued to motorists from a photo-radar van that has been enforcing the speed limit while sitting next to “no parking” and “tow-away zone” signs in north Boulder.
But the Boulder Police Department, which oversees the van’s operations, will likely add signs to make it clear the van can sit at the spot, on Broadway just north of Norwood Avenue.
Last week, Cmdr. Robert Thomas said he’d have to examine the validity of tickets issued from that spot, saying, “You can’t have a van breaking the law and a citizen getting a ticket for breaking the law — that’s not right.”
But police Monday said they think the tickets should stand, and an assistant city attorney — whose office would need to initiate any effort to make refunds — agreed.
“It’s our department’s position that we could probably do more in the way of signage in that area,” police spokeswoman Sarah Huntley said. “We are actually planning on posting some signs to make it clear that the no parking’ signs do not apply to police vehicles.”
But Huntley said it’s debatable whether the vans are actually parked, since an operator is always on board — and, she said, the engine’s always left running.
“Our people can always move the vans if they’re asked or if there’s an emergency,” she said.
Huntley said a survey of records shows the van has observed 4,924 vehicles driving 10 or more miles above the speed limit and has issued 2,708 citations since Jan. 1, 2006. The van started spending more time at the north Broadway spot last July, Huntley said, and is responsible for 9 percent of the photo-radar program’s tickets.
She said the van has clocked some motorists cruising at “highway speeds.”
“The location has always been troubling,” she said. “There’s a bike path there, a very well-used crosswalk and a lot of schoolchildren who cross that area. … It used to be that when you got to that point on Broadway, you were pretty much out of town. But that’s not the case anymore.”
Janet Michaels, a prosecutor with the Boulder city attorney’s office, said she researched state statutes governing photo-radar operations, and she didn’t find a reason to throw out the tickets.
“There is nothing in that ordinance that invalidates a citation that is written if the van is not in compliance with traffic regulations,” she said.
Mac Fraser, a Boulder man who first brought the parking situation to light last week, said he was disappointed to learn that speeders’ money wouldn’t be returned. He said his public campaign against the van has met with an overwhelmingly positive response from friends and acquaintances.
“I disagree with them breaking the law,” he said. “I’ve gotten 20 or 30 phone calls from friends and a similar number of e-mails. … When I went to the doctor’s office, the three nurses in there gave me a round of applause.”