Receiving a speeding ticket is always an irritating thing. Not only does it come directly out of your taxed earnings and can cost a fortune if you’re not careful, but it also highlights your own failures as a responsible driver, and introspection is rarely easy. But perhaps more often than should be the case, the speeding fine doesn’t sit well for other reasons, like it not being valid. When the people in charge of enforcing the law break it, the world is not in a good place.
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That’s now the case in Louisiana, where a constable reportedly skirted the law to dish out thousands of fines under a program that was never approved, using a form of LiDAR technology (although most people call it a radar gun) like you’d find on a self-driving F-Pace. According to WBRZ Channel 2, “more than 4,000 speeding tickets were issued by mail for alleged violations in school zones,” and all of them have now been deemed invalid.
Taking The Law Into Your Own Hands Puts You On The Senate’s Radar
It seems that Ward 2 Constable Ron Tetzel wanted to set up an automated traffic enforcement system around Lukeville Elementary School, pitching the idea to the West Baton Rouge Superintendent Chandler Smith at the beginning of the 2024 school year. He allegedly wanted to install two permanent speed cameras, fining drivers $150 for each speeding offense. The school board was allegedly offered a 10% kickback, and the other 90% was to be shared between the local municipality (the Constable and Justice of the Peace) and the camera contractor. According to Smith, he hadn’t heard anything of the idea since, but not long after, residents started getting unexpected speeding tickets despite no infrastructure being erected. That’s because, as photos sent to Unfiltered with Kiran seem to prove, a man associated with the scheme allegedly donned a high-visibility jacket and a hat, aiming a tripod with a LiDAR gun at passing traffic. It’s assumed but not confirmed that this may have been Tetzel.
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Since so many tickets were issued, numerous complaints reached the desk of Senator Caleb Kleinpeter. The Senator started investigating complaints at the end of October and spoke to Senator Stewart Cathey, who told him to look into newly passed Senate Bill 302. This allows appeals of tickets received from an electronic camera, whether for speeding or red lights, under a variety of circumstances, such as bad weather or another individual having been at the wheel. It also provides a framework for how automated traffic enforcement systems can be used and how those tickets ought to be issued, and Senator Kleinpeter rightly determined that the law was being broken.
Senator Kleinpeter reportedly informed Tetzel and the Justice of the Peace that what they were doing was not within the legal framework. He then got in touch with Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murril to confirm his view, which she did, but as UWG reports, that wasn’t enough. “She spoke with the Justice of the Peace and the Constable and told them as well to stop,” according to Kleinpeter. “The problem was, within two weeks, they started writing tickets again.” And whoever was collecting the offenses didn’t even have a police car nearby, so Kleinpeter questions the point.
“I’m a huge supporter of law enforcement, but this is nothing but a money grab. Nothing was being accomplished by this, like if you had an impaired driver or a kid unrestrained, [or] any kind of reckless situation, they couldn’t have done anything because they didn’t have a vehicle. They were out there on foot, hiding behind signs, hiding behind metal boxes to where they weren’t even able to pull people over. So what good was that?”
– Caleb Kleinpeter, District 17 Louisiana State Senator
Worse still, Kleinpeter says they were writing tickets when school wasn’t even in session. As many as 5,000 citations were written and roughly 4,000 of them processed, with some people receiving multiple tickets. As confirmed with the Attorney General, these tickets should not be paid. According to The Drive, Constable Tetzel and the Justice of the Peace would have stood to receive as much as $300,000 from the tickets issued this year alone. That kind of windfall makes clear why Tetzel would want to operate the camera, circumventing the normal infrastructure processes, as well as any agreements on how the funds ought to be spent or what appeal protections supposed offenders would have. Hopefully, this nightmare is over for residents of the area. That said, things could be worse. Some countries have issued fines beyond the six-figure range.
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