Alan C. Posted September 10, 2014 Posted September 10, 2014 D.C. is the Wild West when enforcing tickets for traffic violators, audit finds In Washington, D.C., where issuing traffic citations is a $179 million-a-year business, drivers get speeding tickets for violations they don’t commit and for vehicles they’ve never owned.Those are among the findings in a 115-page audit of the three city agencies that issued nearly 2.5 million parking and traffic tickets in fiscal 2013, according to a withering report issued Monday by the D.C. inspector general.The report portrays the District as the Wild West of traffic enforcement when compared with neighboring jurisdictions and the states, with a shortage of regulations, a legion of ticket writers often confused about the rules, “arbitrary” decision-making about who gets some speed-camera tickets and parking-meter monitors who get called on the carpet if they don’t write enough tickets.. . .In addition to the police department (745,875 tickets in 2013), which operates the speed and red-light cameras, tickets also are issued by parking-meter minders from the Department of Public Works (1,731,861 tickets) and traffic-control officers from the District Department of Transportation (3,389 tickets).“Ticket writing in Washington, D.C., proper has become a capricious, arbitrary and draconian money-making undertaking,” said John B. Townsend II of AAA Mid-Atlantic. “Unfortunately, it has also become a quarter-billion- dollar annual enterprise based upon 3 million tickets in the city that merely pays lip service to traffic safety.”
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