Traffic Tickets

Procedures in Burlington County traffic courts must return to normal while legal issues concerning tickets are decided, the state Supreme Court ordered yesterday. The court temporarily rescinded a decision by Burlington County Superior Court Judge Martin L. Haines, who recently ruled that many traffic tickets are issued illegally. Haines said the tickets are not examined by a neutral third party to determine whether the police officer had probable cause or sufficient reason to file the charge.

Car thefts, shoplifting and robberies might have gone up in the last decade, but don't fret. There is at least one number headed down - traffic tickets. In 1988, township police wrote 15,916 citations for moving violations. Since then, the number has been steadily dropping. Last year it was only 9,465, down 41 percent, according to the Police Department's 1997 annual report. "Maybe there aren't as many speeders," guessed David Dellaporta of Radnor, as he waited for his Volvo at the White Glove car wash in Bryn Mawr.

It started small, with a $5 parking ticket. But it ended big, with a confrontation with a district justice and decisions by the Downingtown Borough Council to withdraw the ticket and reconsider its policy on notifying offenders. At the center of this ticketing tempest is Heather Bruno of the 300 block of Washington Avenue. During Wednesday night's Borough Council meeting, she said she had been ordered to pay $44 in fines and court costs for failing to pay a $5 parking ticket in May. Bruno wasn't denying that her meter had expired while she shopped on Lancaster Avenue, but she said she never saw or heard about the ticket until she received the citation from the office of Downingtown District Justice Burtis C. Coxe.

"Embarrassing" is the way Philadelphia Traffic Court President Judge Charles H. Cuffeld put it. Philadelphians, the judge said yesterday, are still ignoring their traffic tickets. Just as they were doing last year. And the year before that. And the year before that. Since becoming president judge in December, Cuffeld, like his predecessor, Traffic Court Judge George Twardy, has vowed to get tough on scofflaws. But yesterday, Cuffeld decided to try something nice as well.

The number of traffic tickets issued by Philadelphia police has dropped 35 percent over the last five years, prompting the department to "reemphasize" that officers are supposed to write violations when they see them. "I don't think driving habits have improved," said police spokesman Lt. Ray Evers. Tickets for running a red light are down 43 percent since 2007, while citations for driving without insurance are down 49 percent. At the same time, the number of cars registered in Philadelphia has, on average, remained stable.

Is there a city in America other than Philadelphia where a person can get convicted and sentenced for fixing traffic tickets and still keep his taxpayer-funded job? Charles "C.P. " Mirarchi 3d was caught on FBI surveillance tapes in 2002, playing the bagman for former city Bureau of Administrative Adjudication director Joseph F. Hoffman Jr. Hoffman was receiving payoffs from taxicab company owner Michael Etemad, who wanted his cab fleet's $47,000 in parking tickets wiped off the books.

Police officers in New Jersey may continue to write their speeding tickets, parking tickets and other traffic citations as they always have, the state Supreme Court ruled yesterday. The justices affirmed the current way traffic tickets are issued and overturned a ruling last month by Superior Court Judge Martin L. Haines of Burlington County that the way many tickets are filed is illegal. Changing the way traffic tickets are filed would have meant a major change in the way municipal courts in New Jersey do business and required millions of dollars for additional court personnel.

A Burlington County judge yesterday ordered that some prosecutions of routine traffic cases in the county be halted until an appellate court can decide whether the tickets were issued legally. The ruling by Superior Court Judge Martin L. Haines follows a recent opinion in which he said that a judge or court clerk must examine and sign a copy of a traffic ticket within 30 days after it is issued. If the copy is not examined by a neutral, impartial authority, police and prosecutors cannot prove there was probable cause to issue the ticket in the first place, Haines said in his decision.

The manager of the clothing workers union in Philadelphia told a jury yesterday that he and other union officials were "taking care of" members' traffic tickets while buying clothes for two Traffic Court judges and other city officials. "If a member had a ticket, he would bring it in (to the union)," said John Fox, manager of the Philadelphia Joint Board, Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. At first, said Fox, the tickets were "taken care of" by Frank Pepe, the union's secretary-treasurer and a Democratic Party committeeman who denied in prior testimony having anything to do with fixing traffic tickets.

For careless Philadelphia motorists, 2011 was a good year to yak on a cellphone, roll through a stop sign, run a red light, or save a few bucks by forgoing insurance or annual vehicle inspection fees. They probably got away with it more often, due to the reported one-third drop in tickets issued last year for moving violations and vehicle-related infractions by the Police Department. In addition to drivers' logging fewer miles amid the economic downturn - and red-light cameras at 19 busy intersections possibly having a positive impact on driving habits across the city - it's also clear from the statistics that police simply weren't citing some motorists when they witnessed a traffic violation.

After such a dramatic drop in 2011, shouldn't Philadelphia police officers be writing more traffic tickets?

For careless Philadelphia motorists, 2011 was a good year to yak on a cellphone, roll through a stop sign, run a red light, or save a few bucks by forgoing insurance or annual vehicle inspection fees. They probably got away with it more often, due to the reported one-third drop in tickets issued last year for moving violations and vehicle-related infractions by the Police Department. In addition to drivers' logging fewer miles amid the economic downturn - and red-light cameras at 19 busy intersections possibly having a positive impact on driving habits across the city - it's also clear from the statistics that police simply weren't citing some motorists when they witnessed a traffic violation.

A Lancaster County judge was suspended with pay today after allegedly fixing her own traffic tickets with a courthouse computer. Kelly S. Ballentine, a District Judge, was suspended by the state Judicial Conduct Board after being charged with two felonies and a misdemeanor. Judge Ballentine, 43, of Lancaster, was charged by the Attorney General's office on February 13, with failing to pay fines for traffic citations - including one for an expired registration on her BMW sedan.

The number of traffic tickets issued by Philadelphia police has dropped 35 percent over the last five years, prompting the department to "reemphasize" that officers are supposed to write violations when they see them. "I don't think driving habits have improved," said police spokesman Lt. Ray Evers. Tickets for running a red light are down 43 percent since 2007, while citations for driving without insurance are down 49 percent. At the same time, the number of cars registered in Philadelphia has, on average, remained stable.

TO BORROW a line from one local wag, Philadelphia Traffic Court so resembles a comedy club that it should require a two-drink minimum. Except it's hard to laugh. Consider Court Comedy Club's headliner, Willie Singletary. Yesterday, the state Supreme Court relieved him from any and all judicial and administrative responsibilities as a judge of Traffic Court, and suspended him without pay. Singletary was escorted out of court last year after a female staffer claimed he had shown her pictures of his genitals.

1FIREFIGHTER MAKES NASTY COME-ON, COPS SAY Get a grip, man! Joseph Phillips, a longtime Collingdale firefighter, was arrested Thursday after he reportedly masturbated in a Walgreens parking lot in Darby while offering a woman money to touch his genitals. Phillips, 48, allegedly told the woman - who was in her car, with an infant, in the lot on Chester Pike near MacDade Boulevard - that she aroused him, and that he was unhappily married. He also suggested that they could have sex at an Upper Darby bar where he worked, cops said.

Gloucester City police went live Friday with an electronic traffic ticketing system that is supposed to let officers issue tickets more efficiently. Matawan, in Monmouth County, got on board with the electronic system the same day, and Ocean City is scheduled to start Monday. Officers will be able to electronically issue summonses and tickets for moving and nonmoving violations in a fraction of the time it takes to write them by hand, supporters of the technology say. The efficiency should free officers to do more police work - a benefit as departments deal with reduced manpower, said officers and advocates of the technology.

I AGREE with letter-writer Jim Hart. Readers do have long memories. Now that we've settled the issue of the money the Eagles owed to the city, let's collect all the outstanding parking tickets, traffic tickets, recycling tickets and city taxes owed by city employees, too. Maybe it is time for the Daily News to do a story titled "Who Else Owes Our City of Brotherly Love. " I bet the names and amounts will be very interesting. Cheryl Jackson Philadelphia

AS APOLOGIES from public officials go, the one from Philadelphia Traffic Court Judge Bernice DeAngelis to Edward Harris is pretty sweet. "I am so, so sorry for what happened to Mr. Harris," DeAngelis told me yesterday, two days after my column detailed how a Traffic Court judge in November had ordered Edward to begin paying off traffic tickets that Edward's brother had gotten. "We will refund his money," DeAngelis said. In fact, she'll be glad to tell that to Edward in person, if he's not suitably reassured by the letter she has mailed to him, which confirms that he was wronged.

As a man who once owed $11,000 for back traffic tickets, Willie Singletary presumably would see the benefit of a sympathetic Traffic Court judge. That certainly seemed to be his message in April when he exhorted a crowd of motorcycle enthusiasts to contribute to his campaign for Traffic Court. "I'm telling you all just like it is. I need some money," the 26-year-old Democratic nominee told the crowd. "I got some stuff that I got to do, but if you all can give me $20. You're all going to need me in Traffic Court, am I right about that?"