By Josh Sweigart
Dayton Daily News
DAYTON, Ohio — Dayton’s photo enforcement cameras routinely catch city vehicles, RTA buses, school buses, police cruisers, fire trucks and ambulances blowing through red lights, a Dayton Daily News investigation found.
Some of them get a pass, including police and fire vehicles regardless of whether there’s any indication they are responding to an emergency, the newspaper found.
The Dayton Fire Department is investigating the findings. Videos show a command vehicle, a ladder truck and a non-Dayton ambulance running red lights without their emergency lights on.
“I would have to look into that,” Fire Chief Herbert Redden told the Daily News when shown the videos.
Others say they’re making their employees pay, though the Daily News found that two Dayton school board vehicles are among the more than 4,000 vehicles Dayton police say they will tow for unpaid red light and speeding camera tickets and parking tickets.
Dayton Public Schools officials said they will start next school year analyzing ticket data to see if they have a “chronic issue.”
The newspaper’s investigation involved obtaining through public records requests, and reviewing, the databases of the 177,640 times a camera went off between January 2008 and mid-April 2012. Reporters searched through thousands of videos from three months in 2011 and 2012 to find emergency vehicles running red lights without their lights on and other publicly owned vehicles cruising through intersections against the light without slowing down.
The police department says there’s no way of knowing from the video whether officers were responding to an emergency - sometimes requiring a silent approach to not tip off a suspect. Officers have broad discretion in obeying traffic signals and speed limits.
“I have great confidence in the judgment of my officers,” said Police Chief Richard Biehl.
Reviewing findings
The city’s contract with the Arizona-based company Red-Flex specifically exempts emergency vehicles from speeding and red light tickets regardless of whether they appear to be responding to an emergency with their lights on.
Of the 73,524 times photo enforcement was triggered between January 2011 and mid-April 2012, the Daily News found 3,331 were thrown out by RedFlex because they involved emergency vehicles.
While sometimes they turn off sirens to not disturb patients, Dayton Fire Chief Redden said there is no reason why a fire or medical transport vehicle would go through a red light without its lights on.
“As a result of the lights and sirens, you are requesting from the citizens ... that they yield to you,” Redden said.
One of the videos showed an ambulance or privately run ambulette - it wasn’t clear from the video - running a light that was red for seconds without slowing down. It was shot on a rainy night in May 2011. Redden said the driver was lucky there was no one coming the other way.
“If they did not have a patient in the back, there would’ve been two in the front,” he said.
A video from March 2012 shows a fire department ladder truck passing under a red light while driving southbound at the intersection of Gettysburg Avenue and Cornell Drive, apparently without its lights on.
Another video shot around 10 a.m. in March 2011 shows a fire department command vehicle blow through the same red light.
All of these incidents resulted in no action - they were thrown out by RedFlex and never shared with the city - because they were deemed to be emergency vehicles. Redden said he would “have to look into it.”
“If my people are wrong, there would be some discipline, administratively,” he said.
‘Police discretion’
They weren’t the only ones to possibly get a pass. The Daily News reviewed photo enforcement actions issued since January 2008 - a total of 177,639 times a camera went off - and found 37,594 citations were issued.
In 93,433 cases, either Red-Flex or Dayton police determined that the driver slowed down enough while turning right on red or came to a “screeching stop” but did stop, so no tickets were issued.
In 8,050 cases, the camera or flash malfunctioned and didn’t get a clear enough image of the vehicle to issue a ticket. There were 4,641 thrown out because police didn’t issue the citation quickly enough.
Another 475 were tossed due to “police discretion,” meaning the officers who reviewed the video weren’t confident it would withstand appeal.
Dayton started installing red light cameras in 2004 and added speeding cameras in summer 2011. The program gained new controversy earlier this year with the city’s decision to tow vehicles with two photo enforcement or parking tickets. The threshold was raised to three tickets in response to a public outcry that included a class-action lawsuit, which is still pending.
School vehicles
There are 4,532 vehicles on the city’s list of vehicles that the city will tow if found, including two owned by the Dayton Board of Education.
Those vehicles are not buses, according to school officials. They are used by the school district’s maintenance and groundskeeping staff. School officials said the fines were being paid to get them off the tow list and they blamed “miscommunication” within their ranks for the vehicles making the list.
The newspaper’s analysis found 68 citations were issued to Dayton Public Schools vehicles since January 2008.
The videos include school buses running red lights at all hours of the day. It’s not clear from the videos whether children are on board, but the times of day are during routine runs.
Dayton Public Schools spokeswoman Melissa Fowler, when shown the newspaper’s findings, said there was “cause for concern.”
Fowler said the school district pays the $85 tickets, then takes it out of the drivers’ paychecks. She said the district is looking to crack down on repeat offenders.
“That’s one of the things going forward that we’re looking at with the new school year, is really examining and tracking these tickets to see if it’s a chronic issue,” she said.
The school district has long tracked, and disciplined, drivers who rack up points on their drivers license for moving violations. But photo enforcement tickets are civil violations, so they don’t put tickets on people’s licenses.
The school district transports more than 14,000 students every day on 163 bus routes.
RTA: ‘Unacceptable’
Frank Ecklar, planning and marketing director for the Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority, was shown videos culled by the Daily News and called what he saw “certainly very unacceptable.”
RTA drivers have received 23 citations since January 2008 for violations caught on camera.
Videos reviewed by the Daily News include buses breezing straight or on left turns through red lights at several intersections, including Smithville Road and Patterson Road.
“When we see something like this we take it very seriously and deal directly with the operators when a violation does come to the RTA,” he said. “We haven’t had many, but one is too many, obviously.”
When they get a ticket, the driver is required to pay it, he said. There is then the possibility for discipline up to termination.
“The community expects RTA, and really anybody in the public sector, to operate safely,” Ecklar said. “And we’re watching.”
Rental cars
Rental car companies top the list of private individuals or companies with the most violations, the newspaper’s analysis found. The holding company for Avis Rent A Car has received 114 citations.
Mike Risheill, who has 90 cars available for rent through Golling’s Arena Dodge near Hara Arena, said the system is unfair to rental companies. He said by the time they get the ticket in the mail, the vehicle often is rented to another person.
“We get someone that has rented the vehicle, they’re on their vacation, stop in downtown Dayton on their way out of town and their vehicle gets towed,” he said. “They got a car full of luggage (and) the police won’t even let them get their stuff out of the car.”
Risheill has to go to the tow yard to get the car back. Costs include $105 per tow and $20 per day for storage if a vehicle isn’t picked up in four hours. Plus, there’s the customer service nightmare of having a client’s car towed.
Firing ‘too harsh’
The city of Dayton has also been struggling to get drivers to pay for citations garnered when driving city vehicles. Twenty city vehicles have been ticketed for speeding or red light violations at cameras since 2008. Videos include a massive garbage hauling truck cruising through a left turn on red, a large street maintenance truck running a red light without slowing down and several smaller vehicles running red lights.
City spokesman Tom Biedenharn said employees are required to pay tickets they receive while on the clock. He produced invoices showing that the tickets had been paid, though some were paid late and included a $25 late fee.
The city tried to fire a water department meter reader in December after cameras caught her speeding or running red lights three times in 2011. City records say she drove 100 miles a day, five days a week for more than a decade reading meters in a city-owned vehicle. The Civil Service board reversed her termination in April, saying it was “too harsh.”
‘Balancing act’
Dayton police officials say there have been no police officers terminated for reckless driving of a police cruiser in recent years, though collisions are somewhat common.
“You drive **/ , you’re going to get into some traffic accidents,” said Sgt. Maurice Speaks. “People see us and sometimes they freak out and run into us.”
Per state law, “The driver of any emergency vehicle or public safety vehicle, when responding to an emergency call, upon approaching a red or stop signal or any stop sign shall slow down as necessary for safety to traffic, but may proceed cautiously past such red or stop sign or signal with due regard for the safety of all persons using the street or highway.”
Dayton police policy stipulates that officers can be held responsible for injuries or damages caused by not following proper safety procedures.
“It’s a balancing act and we have to balance it every day,” Chief Biehl said.
On June 22, officers responded to a burglary alarm at a Key Bank on Linden Avenue. Because they responded “covertly,” according to the police report, officers were able to find a man nearby who caused it. He was mentally unstable and didn’t steal anything, but said he was trying to find a restroom.
“There’s a number of situations officers are responding to that you do not want to alert the suspect on the scene you’re responding,” Biehl said.
The videos reviewed by the Daily News included a dozen examples of police cruisers traveling through red lights without their lights on at various times of the day. Sometimes officers slowed down and stopped, other times they drove through without slowing down.
A speeding camera in April 2012 caught a Dayton police cruiser driving 71 mph in a 35 mph zone on southbound Salem Avenue, according to camera data.
At the intersection of Gettysburg Avenue and Cornell Drive, the video captured seven times when cruisers turned left against a red light without emergency lights on.
Officer Carole Johnson, who reviews videos to determine their credibility, said the left turn light in the southbound lane of that intersection stays red for more than three minutes so officers routinely run it when it’s safe to do so to get on with their business.
“We’re not going to sit at a three-to-four minute light waiting for a suspect to get away,” she said.
Biehl said the city plans to start auditing cruiser cameras as part of routine performance checks on officers. But he said he has seen no evidence that police are not generally using caution.
If someone sees an officer driving in a seemingly inappropriate way, he suggested they call the police department and ask to speak to a supervisor.
“We have not seen any kind of a problem with vehicles driven by officers. Occasionally they’re in an accident and if they’re wrong they’re dealt with appropriately,” he said.
Copyright 2012 Dayton Newspapers, Inc.