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Some suburbs take only seconds to review red light camera citations, analysis shows

Red light cameras were supposed to be the ultimate impartial witness, providing police with clear evidence that a driver had broken the law.

When Chicago’s suburbs began pushing for their installation a decade ago, the law required that police officers review every video and citation, to further ensure fairness.

But a Tribune investigation found some police officers race through those reviews, approving dozens of $100 tickets in minutes, as if on an assembly line. Reporters found one suburban officer who reviewed and approved 41 tickets in 59 seconds. His boss, the chief, had more than 400 instances where he assessed and approved a citation in 2 seconds or less.

The Tribune also found wide disparities from suburb to suburb in how often towns approve violations flagged by vendors. Lynwood and East Dundee use the same camera vendor, yet Lynwood issues a citation for nearly every violation cited by the firm, while East Dundee rejects almost all of the firm’s suggested tickets.

Those ticketed can appeal, but the suburbs largely control the process and tickets are rarely tossed out, the Tribune analysis found. Drivers can then take their case to traditional courts, but it’s costly and odds of victory are long.

Previous Tribune investigations have shown how the state ignored its own guidelines by allowing the lucrative cameras on some of the area’s safest intersections, and then failed to monitor cameras to see if they truly reduced crashes. Cameras were allowed to stay in places where crashes rose, without question.

The latest review highlights a largely unregulated suburban system that collectively pumps out 75 percent more tickets than the older and more well-known camera program in the City of Chicago.

Supporters of cameras say they’re easy to disparage because no one likes getting a ticket. They say the decade-old program is designed to be fair and above-board — a system that penalizes dangerous drivers while keeping firms and suburbs honest.

“If a town is using this properly, it saves lives and it pays for itself,” said Fox Lake Police Chief Jimmy Lee.

Critics counter that leaving suburbs to define the ticketing process creates a Wild West atmosphere where some towns focus on generating cash, not boosting safety or imposing uniform justice.

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Police must OK every ticket suggested by a camera firm. Some suburbs OK almost every one, while others reject most.

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The 85 suburbs with cameras collectively issue about $95 million worth of tickets a year, with some issuing far more than others.

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Lombard-based Redspeed has the most contracts, while Safespeed suburbs issue the most tickets.

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Rejections

In the last decade, cameras have sprouted from west suburban Bellwood — where a leader infamously boasted red light cameras were like having a casino — to now issuing roughly $94 million worth of tickets per year across suburban Chicago, the Tribune analysis found.

There is no central list kept by the state on which suburbs have cameras and where. The Tribune sought the most recent 12 months of available records from 85 suburbs it identified as having cameras, then created or obtained dozens of data sets to document a process that begins with a simple triggering of roadway sensors.

Those sensors spur cameras to roll, with the videos sent to one of the private firms that screens the videos. Those firms describe a rigorous process of reviewing the videos before sending the ones deemed worthy of violations to Police Departments for a final check. Some firms say they winnow the list of potential violations further, working with client suburbs in advance to identify the kinds of violations each town is likely to approve.

It’s a process long described by proponents as nearly foolproof. Videos don’t lie, the argument goes. But the Tribune found that, behind the scenes, there can be plenty of debate.

On a recent weekday morning at the Fox Lake police station, Chief Lee logged in to the software of one of the firms, Redflex, and reviewed the latest batch of videos that Redflex said showed violations.

At U.S. Highway 12 and Illinois Route 134, a video showed a semi barreling through a light that had turned red 1.6 seconds earlier. Lee noted the driver had plenty of time to see the light and stop.

“Would I write it if I saw it happen (in front of me)? Yes, I would,” Lee told a reporter. “That’s probably a 70,000-pound vehicle, and if he hits someone, somebody’s taking a trip to the hospital — or the morgue.”

With a click of his mouse, Lee ensured a ticket would be mailed to the semi’s owner.

After that, two videos showed drivers who stopped beyond the white stop line before turning right on red. Lee said the law doesn’t allow camera tickets to be issued if drivers stop before turning, even if they’re past the line. Redflex routinely includes videos of those maneuvers as suggested violations, he said, even though it shouldn’t.

Lee rejected both. His department nixes about half the potential violations that Redflex sends, a Tribune analysis found. Some other departments reject even more.

Redflex gained infamy after a top executive was convicted of bribing a City Hall operative to get Chicago’s lucrative camera contract. But, amid pledges of reform, it still holds contracts in eight suburbs, where ticket approval rates range from 30 to 95 percent.

A Redflex spokesman attributed the difference in part to variations in how intersections are designed. Some prohibit right turns, making it easy to approve tickets, while others allow for a stop first, requiring a judgment call on whether a driver came to a stop.

He also said the firm can tighten or loosen its own standards of what’s passed on to police based on what a suburb requests. Two other firms, Gatso and ATS, told the Tribune similar things, as did multiple suburbs that contract with one of the biggest firms, Safespeed.

It’s why Skokie says it approves 95 percent of what Safespeed suggests — because Skokie said it already worked out with Safespeed to not send violations that may be in a gray area.

But Safespeed sends all the gray area ones to Palos Heights, police there said, where officers reject more than 80 percent of them, the Tribune analysis found.

Approval rates vary the most with the firm that holds the most contracts in the area: Redspeed.

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Departments with the vendor told the Tribune that Redspeed sets a standard threshold for violations and does not tailor its results by town as some other camera firms do. Redspeed operates out of an office park in west suburban Lombard. It touts a “robust violation review process” where two sets of eyes agree on a violation before it’s ever forwarded to police for review.

The Tribune found 12 suburbs that reject most of Redspeed’s suggested violations. Among them is Lisle, which rejects nearly three of every four.

Deputy Chief Ron Wilke said the reason is simple: “Ones that are borderline, we are not issuing the citation.”

He cited a broader philosophy that every Police Department contacted by the Tribune said it followed: Approve tickets issued by cameras only if the same traffic maneuver, witnessed by an officer on patrol, would result in a ticket.

That’s the philosophy cited as well by the suburb least likely to agree with Redspeed — East Dundee — which approves just 11.6 percent of what the firm suggests.

And it’s the same philosophy cited by suburbs that almost always agree with Redspeed, including Melrose Park and the most agreeable of them all: Lynwood.

In 12 months of records provided to the Tribune, the south suburb, which hugs the Indiana state line, approved 99.85 percent of Redspeed’s suggestions.

Of the 4,811 violations flagged by Redspeed, Lynwood rejected just seven.

The department attributed that to a corner that prohibits right turns on red.

“It’s very black-and-white,” said Deputy Chief Terrence Shubert. “It’s not something that calls for a lot of judgments.”

The department said it’s such an easy call, it can be made in seconds, sometimes in far less time than it takes to watch the entire video of an infraction.

A matter of seconds

The law requires a police officer to sign off on any violations before a ticket is mailed.

Officers across the suburbs are assigned to sit at computers and view pictures and videos uploaded by the red light vendors. Videos can range from 8 to 20 seconds, according to suburbs and vendors.

Officers not only check that a violation occurred, but they also ensure the license plate in the picture matches the letters and numbers that the firms plug in to their system.

The Tribune sought approval logs for a recent three-month period from a sampling of departments. Those logs chart down to the second when officers approve each ticket. Reporters could determine how long each officer typically spent to review a citation. On the high end, one officer’s median number of seconds for review — the midpoint of his review times — was about 24 seconds between citations.

But some officers were much faster. For Skokie Officer Steven Odeshoo, the median was 7 seconds.

On a recent morning, he showed the Tribune how: sitting in front of a 42-inch flat screen TV that instantly pulled up video after video, with special color-coded cues that let him know if the intersection had unique rules such as no turn on red, allowed him to fast-forward the videos to make a quicker judgment. With two quick clicks of the mouse, a ticket was approved or rejected, and the next suggested violation immediately began playing.

Faster still was Lynwood Officer Stevie Bradich, at 5 seconds. Her deputy chief explained that with the no-turn-on-red, they were relatively easy calls.

“I can see how that can be done in as short as 5 or 6 seconds, and have an approval with what is a true violation,” Shubert said. “Yes, it’s fast, but it’s a pretty fast process. You’re not actually inputting any numbers. It’s just a lot of mouse clicks.”

But one department acknowledged its numbers suggest problems. In Riverdale, one officer typically took 3 seconds to review tickets.

From October through December, Officer Anthony Milton approved 754 violations in just 2 seconds each.

He approved 594 violations in 1 second each.

And 33 times, his review was so fast that the computer logged the approval in the same second as the previous ruling. In other words, he made 33 approvals in less than 1 second each.

His speed was on display toward the end of an overnight Christmas shift, when he reviewed hundreds of tickets in less than 20 minutes. During one stretch, beginning at 4:47 a.m. he approved 41 consecutive violations in 59 total seconds.

HIs chief wasn’t much slower. While Chief David DeMik’s median was 6 seconds, there were 396 citations approved in 2 seconds each, and 53 approved in 1 second each.

DeMik declined to be interviewed but provided a written statement that said the Tribune’s investigation “brought to light some issues that have been immediately corrected.”

The chief said no one felt pressure to quickly approve tickets. Rather, he said: “The department is simply doing the best that it can with the resources that it has.”

It’s impossible for the Tribune to review any videos from a suburb’s red light program to assess how some violations were approved so quickly.

Illinois law usually allows the public to obtain records that form the basis of government actions. The state’s Freedom of Information Act allows such access for electronic records too, such as videos.

That’s not the case, though, for red light violations. Lawmakers — in passing the law allowing suburbs to install cameras — specifically prohibited anyone from seeing the videos or pictures of the violations, other than police and the red light vendors. Those ticketed can see the video too, but only of their own violation, not anyone else’s.

It was billed as a way to protect drivers’ privacy. But it means no one can audit each suburb’s decisions, even when officers approve tickets in a matter of seconds.

Legal challenges

Under the law, red light cameras citations are treated more like parking tickets than speeding tickets.

Drivers may contest traditional moving violations, such as speeding, to a judge who may hear evidence and rule whether to find someone guilty.

But camera tickets get a lower tier of judicial oversight, called administrative hearings. Appeals are sent to suburbs issuing the tickets, who hire their own lawyers to decide if the ticket was deserved. Those appealing rarely win.

That tone was clear on a recent night in Riverdale, where the Village Council chambers turned into a make-shift courtroom. The 40 audience chairs were packed with people there to contest their camera tickets.

In front was the lawyer hired by the village to be its hearing officer, Luke Hajzl. And he had bad news for those attempting to appeal the most common type of ticket: rolling right turn on red.

Before the session began, Hajzl explained that to void a ticket, he wanted to see a vehicle’s momentum stopped before restarting to make the turn. That meant no movement of hubcaps or wheels.

And so there was little chance for Morris Euman.

The Dolton musician said he came to contest three tickets he received in 36 hours in August when he was giving rides to bandmates. In each case, the videos show him braking to a near-stop and, with no traffic, accelerating to complete the right turn.

Hajzl offered to let Euman watch the videos, but after watching the first one, he knew he was beat. He pivoted the conversation. He wanted to know if the village ever considered fixing the corner to lower any safety risk that prompted the cameras.

“We’re all here for the same thing,” he said, gesturing to those seated behind him, some of whom nodded or murmured um-hums. “It just seems to me that, as a safety issue, if we’re all doing the same thing, rather than rake in the revenue, how about doing something so that you could be countering that and not have this issue?”

Past Tribune investigations found cameras were put in relatively safe corners that showed little safety improvement afterward, sometimes getting worse. Data show that corner in Riverdale was an example of a relatively safe corner with little change after cameras.

But it’s a question Hajzl said he couldn’t answer. His job, he said, was to focus on cases at hand. In a soft, sympathetic tone, he told the crowd he didn’t make the law or even necessarily agree with it. He told Euman to complain to people who could change the law at the suburb or General Assembly.

“I don’t like giving out fines. I really don’t,” the hearing officer said. “But I’ve got a job to do, like everybody else.”

Euman admitted defeat and left. The next case was called. Another defeat. And another. And another.

The Tribune analysis found that the suburb reaffirms the violation for roughly 19 in every 20 citations that are appealed. It’s among the highest rates in the area. Across all of suburban Chicago, the Tribune found, drivers lose four out of every five appeals.

Supporters of cameras say the numbers prove the vast majority of tickets are legitimate. Critics argue it shows the system unfairly favors suburbs over drivers.

Drivers can appeal to a traditional court. But they must pay the filing fees — $84.71 in Cook County — and, as the law is written, the judge must give the benefit of the doubt to what the suburb’s lawyer ruled.

Defense attorney Larry Davis characterized appeals as such long-shots that he doesn’t take camera cases. After all, he said, why should a client pay legal fees and gamble with court fees on top of the original $100 fine when the chance of success is so slim?

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$8,000 per day

What’s often left for those ticketed are arguments over technicalities of how suburbs have implemented their camera programs. So far, suburbs have withstood several legal challenges to their procedures.

The next test will come in Crestwood, a suburb that separately gained fame for being among the first to offer “rebates” of property taxes to residents, and then infamy after the Tribune exposed how, along the way, penny-pinching officials repeatedly and secretly put toxic water into the village water system.

Crestwood has a new mayor and a new designation: The most prolific camera ticketer in the suburbs.

Most of those tickets originated at Cicero Avenue at Cal Sag Road. Cameras there issue roughly 100 tickets a day, almost all rolling right turns on red. Not everyone pays, with the suburb collecting about $8,000 a day from those tickets, records show.

Mayor Lou Presta makes no apologies, saying it’s about safety and bad drivers deserve tickets.

Critics say it’s not that simple.

A class-action lawsuit filed Oct. 5 alleges all those rolling right turn tickets at that corner should be thrown out — and those ticketed repaid — because the intersection is uniquely engineered in a way that drivers turning right can’t see the stoplight. The lawsuit argues the engineering violates state requirements, leaving drivers to assume they can legally merge into traffic without stopping — only to get tickets in the mail weeks later.

Crestwood has responded in court that the intersection complies with engineering requirements and, even if it didn’t, it wouldn’t matter. The suburb said those ticketed have no legal right to question the engineering.

IDOT’s engineers approved the cameras after determining the corner was dangerous, Presta said, and the village is confident the lawsuit will be thrown out.

In the meantime, Safespeed keeps sending videos of perceived violations there, and village police continue to approve them.

mwalberg@chicagotribune.com

jmahr@chicagotribune.com

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