Posted on: Thursday, December 27, 2001

Editorial
No two-tiered system for Isle speeding laws

One equitable feature of the state's new traffic cameras is that they don't care whether you're a cop, a judge or a teen-age drag racer.

So it's no wonder that of more than 3,000 warning citations issued under the Photo Enforcement Program, violators have included a Honolulu Police Department squad car and several state vehicles.

If you're speeding, they've got you on digital camera. And unless you've got a good reason for pushing the pedal to the metal, you've got to pay the fine.

Gone are the days of the late Tom "Fat Boy" Okuda, a former state judiciary official who fixed thousands of speeding tickets for the powerful and influential. Theoretically, our high-tech traffic cops aren't part of any patronage system.

Or so we should expect.

Right now, several government agencies are struggling with what to do when their employees are caught speeding on camera, such as who should pay the fine.

Well, unless it's an emergency, the driver of the speeding vehicle should pay for the ticket. At least, that's how it should work.

If the Honolulu Police Department, for example, finds that an officer caught speeding on camera was on a legitimate emergency call, it will contest the ticket. If not, the officer will have to pay the fine out of pocket, according to HPD spokeswoman Jean Motoyama.

We hope that distinction is clear-cut. For a police vehicle to exceed the speed limit, it must be responding to an emergency, and that requires reporting the situation to headquarters and turning on a siren and flashing blue lights.

But Motoyama says there are instances when officers don't want the suspect to know they're being followed and don't turn on the lights and siren. It's up to the HPD to clearly define and limit this exception. We don't need a gaping gray area that lets all speeding police officers off the hook.

The state and the counties must establish clear guidelines governing all official vehicles so we don't have a two-tiered system where some get away with speeding while others don't. The last thing our controversial Photo Enforcement Program needs is to be regarded as a high-tech version of the good old boy network.