State suspends cameras

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Transportation Writer

State Transportation Director Brian Minaai last night suspended the state's traffic camera enforcement program until a technical flaw in the citations can be fixed.

District Judge Leslie Hayashi examines a citation against one of many people who filled two courtrooms to contest camera-issued speeding tickets. The state now must fix flaws in the citation form. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

The suspension came in direct response to yesterday's dismissal by two state judges of more than 100 contested citations.

The judges ruled that the citations were invalid because they lacked a required statement about the certification of the program's laser operators.

Minaai said the department will present the state judiciary with a corrected citation form as early as this morning. Fixing the problem could take a day or a week, Minaai said after a House Finance Committee hearing on the traffic camera program.

"In the meantime we feel it is appropriate to suspend the issuance of any further citations until the court approves the new format," he said. The state plans to begin reissuing tickets as soon as the new citation form is accepted by the courts, he said.

The camera program, designed to cut down on the state's rate of accidents and injuries, began Jan. 2 and resulted in more than 3,600 citations being issued in the first month of operations. It touched off howls of protests from residents concerned about the legal and social implications of the privately operated cameras being used as a supplement to law enforcement.

Yesterday's court rulings don't invalidate the whole camera program, but provide a clear way for thousands of people who received citations to fight them, defense attorneys said. However, Minaai said the department also would ask the courts to amend existing citations so that they don't have to be dismissed.

The decisions made by District Court Judges Leslie Hayashi and Russel Nagata, working simultaneously in adjoining courtrooms to handle an overflow crowd, came on the first day when people with citations were able to contest them in court.

Minaai said the court rulings caught the Department of Transportation by surprise because the courts had approved the existing citations before the program was launched.

"Now we know there's a flaw in the process," said state Sen. Cal Kawamoto, a strong supporter of the traffic cameras, who was in Hayashi's courtroom to see how the first cases turned out. "We'll have to talk to the Department of Transportation and the vendors to decide how to resolve it."

Honolulu Prosecutor Peter Carlisle agreed that the rulings were a setback for the camera program but said: "It seems like it could be a simple thing to fix. If we can fix it, we will."

Defense attorneys said the camera citations issued so far failed to include a required checkoff box that notes the laser operator is properly certified and failed to include room for the operator's signature, both of which are required under the state's traffic code. The information is included in speeding citations issued by Honolulu police officers.

"In all fairness, they had to throw them out," said Michael Kam, a defense attorney who appeared in Hayashi's court yesterday to successfully defend two clients.

Moments before the hearings began, Kam approached dozens of citation holders awaiting their turn in court with stories of mitigating circumstances or denials of wrongdoing and suggested they follow his lead when it was their chance to appear before the judge.

When cases handled by Kam and defense attorney Pat McPherson were quickly dismissed without the chance of being reinstated, nearly everyone in the courtroom paraded before the judge with the same line of argument, saying they wanted to contest their citations because the laser operator did not appear to be properly certified.

Randy Perez, a Carpenters Union representative who arrived ready to challenge his citation for doing 59 in a 50 mph zone near Fort Shafter, took his cue from Kam and walked away a happy man.

"Right off the bat you could see what was happening," Perez said. "Everybody started going for it."

"Ho, slam dunk," said Mike Floro, an independent salesman who was prepared to argue that he wasn't driving his car and wasn't even in the Islands at the time he was accused of doing 59 mph in a 50 mph zone on the H-1 Freeway. "They should have figured all this out before they implemented the program."

Like nearly everyone else who appeared in court, Floro saw his case dismissed. "I can do a whole lot of other things with the $72 I just saved," he said.

Those who already paid their fines by mail or failed to appear in court for their scheduled hearing yesterday weren't so lucky. Hayashi and Nagata issued default judgments against those who did not appear; attorneys said those who paid their fines in effect admitted their guilt and have no further legal right to fight their citations.

Not everyone was pleased with the way the cases were handled. Attorney Earle Partington said the court should have dismissed all the invalid tickets instead of "making people jump through the hoops of arguing every case."

"This just shows that the state thinks this program is more about money than safety," he said. "It proves they're just trying to make as much possible by requiring people to show up in court before the citation can be dismissed."

A spokesman for camera system operator ACS State and Local Solutions said the company had expected yesterday's court rulings.

"It wasn't a big surprise," said Bruce Eddy, a contract manager for ACS. "At some point along the way, we became aware of the issue. We think it's a technical flaw that can be corrected fairly easily. It's an evolving process, a learning experience for all of us."

Yesterday afternoon, the state Senate rejected a proposed resolution giving the Department of Transportation until late March to fix the program. The 25-member Senate voted 12-12; Sen. Ron Menor, D-18th (Waipahu, Crestview, Mililani), was absent but said he would have voted against a "meaningless" resolution, despite his support when it was before the Transportation Committee.