New York State Screws Speeders

This diary is about speeding tickets. And Eliot Spitzer.  And George Pataki.  And the New York State Police.  And the state legislature.  And why drivers who speed in New York get shafted. And, of all things, the inefficiency of local politics.

Let’s face it.  Speeding tickets are the common cold of law enforcement.  And, unless you’re the recipient, its unlikely that you care about how a speeding ticket is handled.  But it’s still a big deal.  In New York troopers issued more than 1,000,000 tickets in 2007. And nearly half were for safety restraints, speeding and DWI.  These tickets represent a gigantic flow of funds to state and town coffers.  And how they’re handled speaks volumes to motorists about how fair their government is.

Join me on the road.

The executive summary: motorists who speed get screwed if they are ticketed by troopers in certain places in New York.  That might not be a surprise.  The problem is that the outcome of tickets depends on what police agency wrote the ticket and on where the ticket was written.  As you’ll see, this is totally irrational and ultimately unfair and, quel surprise, the government is utterly unwilling to fix the problem.

Before September 1, 2006, when police officers (troopers, deputy sheriffs, local police) issued a speeding ticket, the motorist could enter a not guilty plea, show up in a town justice court on a trial date, negotiate a reduction with the officer, and plead guilty and be fined for a lesser offense. This was advantageous to towns because they quickly received revenue from the tickets.  A plea bargain facilitated receiving fine money quickly because there was no delay for a trial. It was advantageous to the police because they received overtime for showing up in night courts (most town courts meet at night) to negotiate the tickets.  And it was advantageous to drivers because they could avoid insurance premium hikes because of speeding tickets, and because they could moderate the number of points they received on their licenses.  11 points in 18  months, or 3 speeding convictions were mandatory revocation of a driver’s license.  And because they could avoid the dreaded NY Mandatory Driver Assessment (this begins at $300 and increases into the thousands as the number of points increases), which a driver receives when there are 6 points on the license.

The system wasn’t glamorous but it worked.  It was essentially a win win.

But nothing is safe in New York from tinkering, even if it works, maybe especially if it works.  In 2006, the New York State Police brass decided that troopers would no longer be able to negotiate the tickets they wrote.  They would no longer be allowed to “plea bargain.”  Instead, the tickets would have to be handled by somebody else, an Assistant DA, or a town attorney, or a traffic prosecutor.  The troopers would still show up for trial in town courts and collect their overtime.  But they couldn’t talk to the drivers.  And they couldn’t negotiate the tickets.  Instead, they could only say they were “ready for trial.”  They were in court to be witnesses to the offense, not to bargain the tickets.  In fact, troopers who negotiated tickets would be disciplined and Zone Sergeants were dispatched to town courts to make sure that none of their troopers dared to negotiate anything.

In some places towns and counties understood that plea bargaining was essential to a smooth flow of revenue so they assigned assistant district attorneys or town attorneys or traffic prosecutors to negotiate the plea bargains.  This was an advantage to motorists and to the towns, because the town courts continued to operate efficiently and to generate a smooth flow of money from the tickets.  And, of course, the troopers continued to receive overtime for appearing, only now they didn’t really have to do anything except to sit around.

But in other places, and especially in many towns in Dutchess County, New York, about 1.5 hours north of New York City on the Hudson River, the DA refused to prosecute tickets or to assign an assistant DA to the town courts for that purpose and the towns, unable to see that they needed to plea bargain if their flow of money was to continue smoothly, refused to hire traffic prosecutors or to use their town attorneys for the tickets.  And the town judges, most of whom are not lawyers, didn’t know what to do.  Ultimately they decided that if a driver got a speeding ticket the driver had two and only two choices: plead guilty to the ticket or go to trial and be found guilty of the ticket.  I know of exactly 1 case of a traffic trial in which the person accused of speeding was ultimately acquitted. Traffic trials are generally unwinnable.  Why?  Because no judge is going to find the motorist’s credibility that s/he wasn’t speeding is greater than the credibility of the officer, who writes dozens and dozens of tickets in the town and might not do so if s/he felt insulted by an adverse ruling.  These two choices were also utterly unfair to drivers.  Drivers didn’t get any reduction at all.

What’s the unfairness?  The outcome of a ticket is determined solely by the agency that wrote the ticket and where it was written.

*If the ticket were written by a deputy or a local police agency, the officer could negotiate a reduction and the court would accept it.

*If the ticket were written by a trooper in a town where the DA handled the tickets or where there was a traffic prosecutor, there could be a negotiated reduction of the ticket and the court would accept it.

*If the ticket were written by a trooper in a town where there was no traffic prosecutor or DA to handle it, but the motorist was also arrested for something (possession of pot, e.g., or disorderly conduct arising from the motorist’s interaction with the authority figure), the ticket could be negotiated because the DA would have to handle the other charges.

*If the ticket were written by a trooper in a town where there was no traffic prosecutor or DA to handle it, the motorist would receive no negotiated reduction and would ultimately have a worse disposition of the ticket.

Put simply, the outcome of speeding tickets was determined by what agency wrote the tickets and whether the town had a prosecutor.  Everything except for trooper tickets in towns without a prosecutor was favorably and quickly plea bargained away.

It’s hard to believe, but the NY legislature managed to notice these obvious inequities.  And in 2006 legislation passed to require the state police  to continue to negotiate tickets.  The vote in both houses was virtually unanimous.  Guess what?  The legislation was vetoed by then Governor Pataki.  Why did he veto the measure?

Pataki, in his veto message, said he believes the responsibility for prosecuting all crimes, including traffic crimes, rests with local district attorneys.

source D’oh.  This is, of course, complete nonsense.  The Troopers negotiated tickets for decades before 2006 without any problems.

When Pataki left office at the end of 2006 and Eliot Spitzer began his term as governor, the legislature again passed legislation to require the state police to negotiate tickets.  Guess what?  The legislation was vetoed again, this time by Governor Spitzer.  Why did he veto the measure?

“The governor’s veto message says State Trooper plea bargaining creates an appearance of impropriety, favoritism, or corruption. To that, I can only respond that we trust Troopers with a gun; we trust them to stand in harm’s way; we trust them to penetrate drug rings and gangs; we trust them to judge when they need to shoot to kill,” said Bonacic [the sponsor of the legislation]. “I think they can handle plea bargaining.”

sourceThis too was utter nonsense.  And the troopers felt it was a slap: the opportunities for corruption in other areas dwarfed traffic tickets and plea bargaining.

Now that two governors have vetoed the provision, it appears to be a dead issue.

And what is now happening in town court’s with no prosecutors? The troopers still show up for trials.  The troopers still collect their overtime.  If there has been any saving in trooper overtime (I suspected this was the reason for the initial change of policy), nobody has ever mentioned it.  The judges still insist on a guilty plea or a fruitless trial.  The flow of funds to the town is delayed while motorists delay their cases to ponder the impossibility of their situations.  And, of course, the motorists are screwed.  There is no more legislation pending on the topic.

Meanwhile, a state police attorney has sued a local judge for granting a motion to reduce a speeding ticket.  That meritless, procedurally flawed case is pending in Dutchess County Supreme Court (in NY, Supreme Court is a trial court).  Doubtless the filing is designed to frightened other town judges into continuing the unequal system without making innovations.  I doubt the case has any viability for a host of procedural reasons.

It would be easy to say that the current situation is no big deal.  It matters, you might say, only to a subset of those who get speeding tickets.  But it reveals a far broader problem.  When something is obviously wrong in government, why is it so very difficult to fix it? Why does something as simple as equitably handling speeding tickets get submerged in a sea of political rhetoric?  How can citizens be expected to believe in the efficacy of local governments when they are incapable of rectifying even the most obvious problems?