Traffic Court

Traffic Court Judge Willie Singletary, suspended for allegedly showing a phone-camera photo of his genitals to an employee, has submitted a resignation. Common Pleas Court Judge Gary S. Glazer, the acting administrative judge of Traffic Court, said Singletary submitted his resignation by iPhone. Glazer said, however, that under state law, a judge must resign directly to the governor, so Singletary would have to resubmit his resignation to Gov. Corbett. Glazer declined to provide the contents of Singletary's resignation e-mail, received this week.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has called for creation of a separate agency to take over the job of collecting motorists' fines and costs from Philadelphia's scandal-ridden Traffic Court. Under the high court proposal, Traffic Court would be limited to ruling on the guilt or innocence of cited drivers and would no longer act "as a collection agency. " Chief Justice Robert N.C. Nix Jr. said the proposal hinges on the willingness of the General Assembly to enact legislation authorizing establishment of an agency to collect fines and to dispose of traffic cases on an administrative basis.

IT'S a go-big-or-go-home campaign year for Philadelphia Traffic Court, with 23 of the 39 candidates for three open seats now facing legal challenges to their nomination petitions or financial-disclosure forms. Candidates had to file petitions with at least 1,000 signatures from registered voters in the city by March 12. The deadline to challenge those documents in Common Pleas Court was Tuesday at 5 p.m. A list of the challenged candidates can be found at ph.ly/challenge. The Philadelphia City Commission on Wednesday will select ballot positions for the candidates, with a top position often the easiest path to victory.

Fortunato Perri Sr. was once hailed as a tough but efficient judge and administrator at Philadelphia's Traffic Court, the man behind a surge in collections and a crackdown on the city's worst scofflaws. They called him "The Terminator" around court. Perri basked in the role. "The day they pulled me out of my mother's womb, they said 'This guy's going to be a traffic judge,'" he told The Inquirer in 2002. This morning, a shell of that once lively judge shuffled slowly into a federal courtroom - and onto the traffic bench's increasingly crowded wall of shame.

Spurred by a recent probe that found widespread ticket-fixing in Philadelphia Traffic Court, the Republican leader of the state Senate, Dominic Pileggi of Delaware County, is developing a proposal to abolish the court and transfer its authority over traffic violations to Municipal Court. "It's a commonsense idea, to see whether or not there's sufficient outrage at the historical behavior of Traffic Court to support these remedies," Pileggi said in an interview Friday. "I have yet to hear a good reason for maintaining this fatally flawed concept of Traffic Court as it is. " Pileggi cited an investigation initiated by state Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille that concluded in November that Traffic Court had "two tracks of justice - one for the connected and another for the unwitting general public.

As I read William G. Chadwick's report on Philadelphia Traffic Court and the news articles that surrounded it, several questions leaped to mind. For example, why, in the age of the smartphone, is it necessary to drive all the way to Eighth and Spring Garden to get a ticket fixed? And, if guilty people are being found not guilty because of whom they know, does that mean that not-guilty people are being found guilty to make up for the lost revenue? But the question that really stumped me was this: How exactly does someone flunk the Traffic Court judge test?

Common Pleas Court Judge Gary S. Glazer, the reformer brought in to drive out corruption at Philadelphia Traffic Court, was joking - sort of. Glazer predicted that it would take just an hour for the culture of corruption in the court to come roaring back once he left his post as supervising judge. An aide said Glazer had it all wrong. His prediction: 15 minutes. Glazer told the story Friday as he appeared before a legislative panel considering a plan to abolish Traffic Court and replace its elected judges with hearing examiners who are part of Municipal Court.

Within hours of Traffic Court President Judge George Twardy's firing of his top administrator yesterday, a state Supreme Court justice halted the action in letters to Twardy and the city Finance Department. Justice Nicholas P. Papadakos, who has been given enormous budget-cutting authority over the city courts by the Supreme Court, said he was also stopping Twardy's attempt to fire 47 other Traffic Court employees. Papadakos had said earlier that about 100 of the Traffic Court's 202 jobs can be cut without any loss of productivity - in part because the court has far less work since the city moved the processing of parking tickets to the Philadelphia Parking Authority.

At least one Philadelphia lawmaker - State Rep. W. Curtis Thomas - is making a bid to save Philadelphia Traffic Court. Thomas announced a proposal Monday to turn six Traffic Court judgeships into court masters, who would conduct fact-finding hearings on alleged traffic violations but leave it to a Municipal Court judge to determine whether a driver is guilty. Thomas said he was as angry as anyone else about the Traffic Court's ongoing corruption problems - most recently, the federal indictment of nine current and former judges for alleged fraud and conspiracy in a massive ticket-fixing operation.