Here are the facts, M’am, just the facts, you tell me the question.
LA contracted with a private company to install red-light cameras at 32 of its 4,300 intersections to catch scofflaws. The company went bankrupt and now is owned by a firm from Arizona, the state the city is boycotting, and its contract is up.
In five years, the program has chalked up a $1.5 million loss for the city because two-thirds of the $466 fine goes to the state and county and nearly one in five of the tickets for red-light crashing — fully 50,000 of them worth nearly $6 million — have gone unpaid.
You can’t renew your license or car registration if you have unpaid tickets.
One final fact: The Council took the boycott issue off the table and clearly intended to extend the contract for 10 months although accidents are actually up or the same at half the 32 intersections..
So what’s the question? Here’s the question that leaped to my mind:
How come 50,000 motorists haven’t paid their tickets?
The answer is simple: Most of them are driving without a license and don’t register their cars so they can laugh at the law and the law-abiding with impunity.
For the most part, they can’t get licenses or register their cars because they are illegal immigrants — the class of people Arizona is cracking down on and the reason why LA is boycotting everything to do with our neighboring state. Some estimates are as high as 25 percent of motorists here are unlicensed, unregistered and uninsured.
In 45 minutes of nonsensical debate by the Council and dissembling by the LAPD, the focus was almost entirely on public safety, whether the cameras help or hurt. The answer was largely mixed and certainly far from definitive.
Yet no one ever asked how come 50,000 motorists haven’t paid their tickets.
The answer, of course, would have made the boycott as silly as the red-light cameras that lose money every year, persecute the law-abiding and don’t prevent accidents significantly even in the handful of places were they are installed.
Understand that for all the talk Wednesday about public safety, the same Council resisted sending four helicopter officers to a training conference in Arizona last week and forced the Chief of Police to cancel it.
So much for public safety is all the matters.
The vote was 13-0 to extend the contract with Jan Perry absent and Lt. Eric Garcetti tweeting from his Navy reserve duty assignment.
WTF???? Where the hell is Wendy Greusome on this? Isn’t she the one who is the bill collector for the city? this is as bad as all those businesses who owe taxes over $100 million and Parks saying they can’t collect from them. City council clowns side skirting the issue that illegal immigrants are driving, getting tickets and not paying the fines like we all have to. I got a damn red camera light ticket and it cost $450 for the ticket, $40 for traffic school. I loved when LAPD had those task force in miniority areas to get DUI’s and unregistered cars but idiots like Cedillo said it was targeting Latinos. IDIOT!!!! That’s the point cause they drive without insurance, license and get drunk.
You couldn’t make up this material!
So if your a legal citizen you get stuck with 100% of the bills while the dirtbag illegals live for free. Wake up people your state is completely fucked up.
To paraphrase the Jackson 5, its easy as 1, 2, 3:
1. It cost more money than it brings in.
2. It causes more accidents because once drivers are aware of them they either speed up or slam on the brakes when coming up to a yellow light.
3. It awards an Arizona-based company $2.3 million at a time of layoffs, budget shortfalls, and concerns of the City Council regarding Arizona’s new immigration law.
the ones goin braking the law dont have insurance or i.d. how the hell they goin to pay the fine yet if you have insurance and i.d you will pay, 100% illigals dont have insurance or i.d yet this idiots in city hall belive they goin to collect the money from them are they so ignorant and stupid we need to get this out to lunch crooks out of office there are right wing radical liberals democrats even now some of them say they are repoblicans there are not , in california if you are illigal you have more rights that of a americans
Didn’t you guys get the memo? Apparently it’s now both racist and Nazi for police to ask drivers they pull over to produce license, registration and proof of insurance, because, you know, those are “papers.”
They should change the term “illegal alien” to “supra-legal alien:” they are ABOVE the law in this City.
“The answer is simple: Most of them are driving without a license and don’t register their cars so they can laugh at the law and the law-abiding with impunity.”
I like how you state this as fact but don’t offer any actual proof. Good one
“The answer is simple: Most of them are driving without a license and don’t register their cars so they can laugh at the law and the law-abiding with impunity.”
I like how you state this as fact but don’t offer any actual proof. Good one”. . . He doesn’t need proof, because common sense tells you he is more than likely to be correct. If 50,000 citations have not been paid, it usually means that either the State or the City have been unable to contact the registered owners of the vehicles (because the vehicles are not currently registered, or properly registered), OR they have been contacted and don’t give a rats backside about driving legally. That means they are either driving unregistered vehicles or their licenses have been suspended and they drive anyway (imagine that). How difficult do you think it is, anyway, to drive without getting caught in a state with MILLIONS of vehicles and never enough police. And when the police do try to stop such drivers through checkpoints, people get all upset and claim the police are targeting races, even though this isn’t true. I got hit by one of them. The truck took off, and even though I had the license plate, SURPRISE! The plate didn’t come back to that vehicle! so, until the State and Cities are allowed to stop, check AND enforce the way they should, they law abiding citizens will continue to pay the brunt and be laughing stocks to those who thumb their noses at the law.
Judging by the above comments, there are a few sane people left in L.A., albeit several of them failed LAUSD composition classes…or typing classes.
But how long will the sane ones remain in L.A.?
I for one, am ready for my family to pack up my rawhide bones and food bowl and head for northern Arizona.
Grrrrrrr!
Bruno’s Pal,
G.
What we have come to know posthumously about the personal conduct of many of history’s most extraordinary political leaders suggests that a combination of charismatic personality, a drive to attain power, and sexual compulsivity is a common pattern among heads of state; speaking of Bill Rosendalhs rear-end comments…dark room under the Kennedy Admin….hello!!
The City of LA has a chronic pathetic inability to track, process, and recover sources of revenue. City Council has a chronic pathetic ablity to expose these problems and the inablity to correct said problems. Why, City Leaders have baseball games and other events to attend, ambitious political goals, and other hobnobbing engagments they need to attend.
The City can issue Citations up the rear-end, but without a plan to recoup the money; the “so-called” safety program is really just scheme to raise money.. Since neither has been achieve why did they agree to extend said Contract. This is negligence on the part of City Council.
I can’t keep up with you guys. Here’s an interesting bit of info, wouldn’t it be great if the DA’s office tied AEG into those freebies with the Mayor. Didn’t the Mayor help AEG lobby to get the NFL stadium right next to LA Live. Well now some people aren’t happy with AEG.
“” A coalition of 44 groups including the Sierra Club and the National Resources Defense Council sent a message to California lawmakers Tuesday, urging them not to grant Staples Center owner AEG an exemption from state environmental laws to build a football venue close by.”"
Villaraigosa’s Five-Year Free Ticket Spree
The Los Angeles mayor’s usurping of anticorruption rules could spread to pols across California
L.A. WEEKLY
By Tibby Rothman and Jill Stewart Thursday,
Jun 24 2010
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom recently attended Cirque du Soleil and other events, and he will write up those tickets on his city’s “Form 700.” Doing so will ensure that Newsom doesn’t run afoul of ethics laws designed to reassure the public that politicians are not bought by gift-bearing corporations and rich patrons.
Tony Winnicker, Newsom’s communications director, explains, “There’s almost never a time when the mayor appears in public when he’s not in some way carrying out an official duty, so in many respects he’s never really off duty as mayor.” But the rules are so strict, Winnicker says, “To be candid, we probably overreport.”
When several elected officials from San Diego City Hall attended that city’s two Super Bowls, despite the major civic aspects to these huge events, each politician bought his own ticket. Stacey Fulhorst, executive director of San Diego’s Ethics Commission, says simply: “They pay for their tickets.”
When Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn attended the Oscars in 2003, he paid $400 of the $500 price, getting a $100 discount he duly reported as a gift. When he was thinking of attending the Grammy Awards in 2004, he asked the City Ethics Commission if it was okay for him to buy the costly tickets, using his “officeholder” account — money he raised from supporters. It wasn’t, and he didn’t.
In this context, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s behavior occupies a unique, new spot in the annals of political ethics and freebies in California.
http://www.laweekly.com/2010-06-24/news/villaraigosa-s-five-year-free-ticket-spree/
“The answer is simple: Most of them are driving without a license and don’t register their cars so they can laugh at the law and the law-abiding with impunity.”
Here’s a little tidbit of info for ya. Vehicles licensed under a corporation or local government are usually the ones not paid. Since the ticket issuer does not have the actual drivers name, they send out a “ticket” to the corporation/government body stating that they need to pay the fine or provide the name of the driver. A large majority of the time these “tickets” are simply thrown away as there is hardly ever any follow up from the issuer.
But, you know, let’s not let facts get in the way of your thought process.