Nov. 19--Alissa Friedman was not endangering children playing at the Challenger Playlot Park when she was ticketed -- twice -- by a speed camera in a "safety zone" on Irving Park Road.
Both violations happened after 9 p.m., when the park was closed and the cameras were not supposed to issue tickets. By law, the camera should be within an eighth of a mile of the park, but it's nearly twice that far. And the park is actually a fenced dog-walking lot.
Timothy Moyer wasn't endangering children when cameras ticketed him near a Northwest Side playground. The park was closed for construction, surrounded by bulldozers, for more than a month.
Deborah Lowery was ticketed by a camera when she failed to slow to 20 mph in a South Side school zone, but she wasn't endangering children either -- because there weren't any. She got a ticket anyway, but a hearing officer threw it out.
A Tribune examination of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's 2-year-old speed camera program calls into question more than 60,000 tickets totaling $2.4 million in fines.
Those citations were issued at times when the parks were closed, when the required signs were missing or obscured, when the definition of "park" was stretched to include bike lanes that intersected major thoroughfares.
A sample of tickets issued in school zones found that 1 in 3 didn't include the required photographic evidence that a child was present. That translates into more than 100,000 tickets that likely should not have been issued.
Once again, it fell to Tribune reporters -- David Kidwell and Abraham Epton -- to identify the failings of a system that ought to be scrupulously monitored by the city itself. The Tribune's reporting exposed a maddening lack of regard for whether the cameras are deployed legally or whether the tickets they issue are valid.
No wonder so many Chicagoans believe the cameras were installed to prey on motorists, not to protect the city's children.
Ask Lowery, a nurse who has successfully appealed two tickets: "I wish the mayor would listen to us and stop targeting the working people because we are not doing anything wrong. We're just driving day to day going back and forth to work, and it's not fair."
Or Friedman, whose two tickets were among 5,739 issued late at night, when the cameras aren't supposed to be fretting about children (or dogs): "It's a sneaky thing to do, insidious. It's deceptive. The city is trying to make money off of people for its own purposes. It's just wrong."
Or James Scott, whose daughter was ticketed eight times on a four-lane stretch of 127th Street in the West Pullman neighborhood. The park protected by the camera -- the most prolific ticket-spitter in the city -- is a bike path that crosses the road.
"That camera is here to make money," Scott says. "It's a trap."
We're not going to argue with him. That's the mayor's problem, and it's a big one.
We have no sympathy for drivers who ignore the speed limit. But the city has given its citizens plenty of reason not to trust the cameras -- and the public servants who are supposed to make sure they are working properly and fairly.
The fact is that city officials fought the newspaper every step of the way, just as they did when reporters uncovered serious and still-unexplained ticketing spikes by the city's red light cameras. City officials refused to answer questions about the speed camera program until just before the stories were published.
We have defended the safety value of both programs in the past, but their credibility is shot.
This is a big deal. A $100 fine is not chump change; it's a significant hardship for many Chicagoans.
But challenging a ticket can be costly too -- taking time off work, traveling to and from the hearing, paying for parking and assorted other hassles. It's a burden too many drivers have been saddled with, thanks to the city's cavalier oversight of the speed cameras.
Then consider what happened to Moyer, who was ticketed five times while the park near his home was closed for construction. He appealed -- and lost.
The Tribune found that the cameras had issued nearly 13,000 tickets -- or more than $500,000 in fines -- while the park was closed.
Only then did the city move to vacate Moyer's tickets, along with about 23,000 others that it now acknowledges shouldn't have been issued.
"That's great," Moyer said, "but why did it take the Chicago Tribune to figure this out?"
That's a very good question.
Chicagoans have no reason to trust those cameras. If City Hall can't make them an honest safety tool, then yank them out.
