West Hollywood Red Light Camera Gridlock Ticket

[That Guy]

This is what I got so far...

Here is a link that may contain some information that is useful to you, SamsonPat. It discusses tickets that ask you to contact an entity other than the court.

Snitch tickets

At first, I too thought it was a snitch ticket... But I think we have already established this one a completely different animal. For one, those are moving violations issued on a Notice to Appear, an appearance in court is required... This one is issued by parking enforcement, no court appearance is involved, no violation points are assessed upon conviction.

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EDITED TO ADD:

I think the general plan here is to issue these citations and hope whoever receives them is oblivious to what is up.... Write the check and mail it in. For the few that may dispute them, reject their first appeal, reject their second appeal... And if that person happens to decide to go to court (I think they are charged the $25 if they lose).. But for every one that is contested where they have to pay the $25, there are probably a few that they collected $118 on.. or maybe even one of those few will go late and owe the late fee in addition to the $118.. Total if it goes late? $230 That will pay for 9 court losses!

West Hollywood used to collect in upwards of $8 million every year from Red light cameras. Now that L A County Courts will not enforce those citations, they've got a lot of making up to do! And I bet you this is one of them!

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Let me get this out of the way... The vehicle Code apparently authorizes the use of Video Imaging of Parking Violations, however, that is strictly for "Parking Violations Occurring in Transit-Only Lanes", and ONLY the City and/or County of San Francisco are authorized to use it. West Hollywood has no authority to utilize such a a program and even if they did, the program does not authorize such use to issue VC 22526 grid-lock violations. You can read the details under VC section 40240 through 40243 which you can find HERE.

Also, there is another authority under the Vehicle Code that allows any city, or county to use "Photo Enforcement and Digital Photographing of Parking Violation During Street Sweeping", but that ONLY allows such use for the violations as described; and whether West Hollywood has signed up for such program is really not relevant here simply because the program does not authorize issuing VC 22526 gridlock citations using photo evidence.

I should also add that several parking enforcement agencies have recently started using digital photography to document parking violations, and mostly for violations where the driver might not wait for the notice to be issued. Happens in "No Stopping Zones" but in theory, it can happen with any type of parking violation.

It is important to keep in mind that as afar as evidence, I personally think that those photos will not hold up in court simply because the vehicle code does not authorize the use of imaging to document such violations. And to be able to authenticate such photos, they must be a lawful authority allowing their use. So why do they use them? Well, because the first two levels to contest a parking citation are often through an administrative hearing (first in writing and then in person), and the rules of court do not apply. So parking enforcement can say "pictures are good enough proof"... The citation is valid, pay the fine. It is often only at the third level of contesting the citation, that you can get the matter heard in a court of law, where a judge or a commissioner hears the case and decides. In this case, it goes to the Beverly Hills Superior Court.

You can review the entire process here: Contesting a Parking Citation In West Hollywood

My car is in the intersection, with brake lights. Does that mean my car is stopped? Who knows?

True.. no one can tell...

I can clearly see that the car in front has brake lights but with clear space in front.

True that too... However, keep in mind that Fountain goes from two lanes merging into one right past where the car in front of you is... So he's not just stopped for no reason...

I took another look at the picture they sent and it does seem to be from a lower angle (see below).

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by “lower angle”... Lower angle than what?

If there was an officer, go ahead, come over, and ticket the car. If human, I don't understand why they didn't.

Well, the contention is that if the officer had attempted to issue a citation and either place it on the vehicle or hand it to you, you would have been gone by the time he wrote it.

Remember 40202(d)

40202(d) If, during the issuance of a notice of parking violation, without regard to whether the vehicle was initially attended or unattended, the vehicle is driven away prior to attaching the notice to the vehicle, the issuing officer shall file the notice with the processing agency. The processing agency shall mail, within 15 calendar days of issuance of the notice of parking violation, a copy of the notice of parking violation or transmit an electronic facsimile of the notice to the registered owner.

And by the way, note the 15 day condition. If the date the citation was MAILED (postmarked) longer than 15 days from the date of the violation, then the notice of parking violation is defective and you can dispute it that way.

If it is not, then you still have what I believe is a GREAT defense argument that should get this thing to go away. I cannot make any guarantees, and you may have to take it all the way to the level where you go to court before a judge, and in reality, that is where this defense is most likely to work for you.

I'll give you a sort of a brief detail and if you plan on going with it, then you can start with the first level (written appeal) immediately if you choose.

So here it goes... If you go back to the picture you can clearly see your brake lights are presumably on, and so are the brake lights for the car in front of you. Well, there is also one light that is likely to catch their attention. That being the RED light! It is not difficult to figure out that the light is in its Red phase simply because it appears that the top circular lens is illuminated and typically, the top one is red,.... Yellow/Amber is in the middle and Green is on the bottom. So their claim will likely be “you were in the intersection when the light was red, and as you can see in the picture, the light is clearly red, therefore you are guilty as charged”...

Well, that's not necessarily true... At least not 100 % true... Lets look at the code section they cited you for...

22526. (a) Notwithstanding any official traffic control signal indication to proceed, a driver of a vehicle shall not enter an intersection or marked crosswalk unless there is sufficient space on the other side of the intersection or marked crosswalk to accommodate the vehicle driven without obstructing the through passage of vehicles from either side.

So, I think we all understand what the prohibition is... Do not enter the intersection unless and until you can ensure that there is enough room for your vehicle on the other side of the intersection; the purpose for all this is simply to avoid having you obstruct the through passage of vehicles from the other side... The “other side” here clearly means northbound and south bound cross traffic on La Brea.

You should note that nowhere in that code section is the color "red” mentioned... not even once. It does talk about “an indication to proceed” but what is "an indication to proceed"? Its a green light.

So what is the element of the offense for VC 22526?
What action or lack thereof must they prove to sustain a guilty finding?

The element of the offense of a 22526 is that you entered the intersection, could not make it through on the other side, and you obstructed the through passage of vehicle from the other side.

In your case, while traveling eastbound on Fountain, and in the position you were in when the picture was taken, you could not be obstructing Southbound traffic on La Brea... You were already past that point.

So what about northbound traffic? Well, at the moment the picture was taken, there does not appear to be any vehicles that were waiting for you... Meaning, there is no evidence that you were obstructing traffic, at least not at the moment the picture was taken.

And if the cannot prove that you obstructed traffic, then how can they prove the elements of 22526 were committed?

Some may say... Nahhh, clearly, the law prohibits you entering the intersection or crosswalk if there is no room for you on the other side of the intersection or crosswalk. OK, no argument there, but without the last sentence, specifically, “without obstructing the through passage of vehicles from either side”, what is the purpose of that law... Nothing! I mean if blocking cross traffic was not the one basic issue the law was looking to prevent, then why do we call it the “anti-gridlock” law???

As for blocking the crosswalk, well, this is not the statute for that. VC 21970 covers the blocking of a crosswalk.

This is not the most reliable source for translations or interpretations but it was the first meaningful entry that came up on a Google search....
Wikipedia defines “Gridlock” as “The term gridlock is defined as "A state of severe road congestion arising when continuous queues of vehicles block an entire network of intersecting streets, bringing traffic in all directions to a complete standstill; a traffic jam of this kind."The term originates from a situation possible in a grid plan where intersections are blocked, preventing vehicles from either moving forwards through the intersection or backing up to an upstream intersection”.

Well, remove any reference to obstructing or blocking and what do you have... You don't have “gridlock” that is for sure...

Point is, without the obstruction, there is no gridlock and hence there is no reason to enforce that code section.

And I don't care what anyone says, or how bad it gets, it'll never be as bad as this:

[SamsonPat]

Very helpful, thank you. I will dispute it all the way through to court, if necessary and we'll see where this goes. By lower angle, I meant maybe it's street level and not from the red light camera? I still say, if it was an officer, he/she could easily have stopped my car. As for the car in front of mine needing to merge, there's still a block of space in front of him. There is no reason to stop there and no reasonable expectation of that happening by the car behind him.

[Mr. Knowitall]

There is no reason to believe my car could not proceed through the intersection.

I'm not following. You just told us that this was a red light. Wouldn't that be a reason to come to a full stop before proceeding?

[That Guy]

I'm not following. You just told us that this was a red light. Wouldn't that be a reason to come to a full stop before proceeding?

Problem is he could have entered the intersection while the light is green, or yellow... Nothing illegal with that... Once his light changed to red and assuming he was blocking cross traffic the allegation is he was violating 22526.

This citation was discussed in full detail in another thread: West Hollywood Red Light Camera Gridlock Ticket, apparently, the couple of hours I spent researching and posting that info for SampsonPat wasn't enough, what's even more apparent now is that he is looking for someone who'll tell him its OK to "ignore it"...

I would love to ignore this and move on. I don't have much faith in fighting tickets here.

There was no need to start another thread. ^This^ is all you had to add to the other one!

Instead, this is what you posted there:

I will dispute it all the way through to court, if necessary and we'll see where this goes.

Ignore it if you wish, you'll get a couple of letters from parking enforcement, and eventually things will quiet down. Come registration renewal time, you will have an additional $230 to pay (the amount is from your copy of the ticket that you posted) before your new tabs can be issued.

And to answer your questions again:

The photograph shows the back of my car, no driver

Its a parking ticket. How often do you see a parking ticket identifying the driver?

The red light camera warning sign is about 95% obscured by a tree

Not even remotely close to a starter... The presumption is that this ticket was not issued as a result of a picture taken by a red light camera. I tried to explore the possibility the the red light camera was somehow involved here but your answer was that the picture was taken from a lower angle... Have you seen the red light camera at that intersection? (HERE, I don't know what level that picture will come out as but you're free to stop at that intersection to take a picture from where this camera stands and compare angles). So you dismissed the idea... Now you're back to the same idea presumably because somebody told you if it was a red light camera you could ignore it!

I still think the red light camera is involved but its a huge stretch to assume that your claim there will even come close to getting you a dismissal. Why? Simply because you will have to jump through hoops to get the city to admit that it was an automated camera that took that picture, and then even if you did that, compliance with 21455.5(a) is not an element of the charged offense and therefore a dismissal is not a remedy the lack of signage announcing red light cameras, in spite of what most people think.

The car in front of my car is shown, stopped, with brake lights, for no reason. The street continues for a a couple hundred yards, wide open, with my car stuck behind him.

Quit using the car in front of you as an excuse! The fact that he was in the intersection and you still decided to enter the intersection without ensuring that there is sufficient room to accommodate your vehicle on the other side of the intersection and assuming you were still blocking traffic, you are still as guilty of gridlock as you would be if he wasn't there.

And from your other thread:

There is no reason to stop there and no reasonable expectation of that happening by the car behind him.

There is a reason to stop there... And I explained that to you already: Fountain merges into one lane at that point! It sounds like you drivve that was every day but here, maybe this will remind you: HERE, maybe this will remind you. See the arrow on the pavement? How about the yellow sign?. So there is a reason to stop and its reasonable for him not to worry about you simply because you're his cover. His plate is not showing!!!

Lastly, and before you bring it up AGAIN, and AGAIN from your other thread:

I still say, if it was an officer, he/she could easily have stopped my car.

No, he could not have easily stopped you. For one, West Hollywood Parking Enforcement does not equip their cars with RED light bars only Orange! Simply because they do not have the authority to stop anyone. As for him approaching you on foot, that too was answered in your other thread:

Well, the contention is that if the officer had attempted to issue a citation and either place it on the vehicle or hand it to you, you would have been gone by the time he wrote it.

Remember 40202(d)

40202(d) If, during the issuance of a notice of parking violation, without regard to whether the vehicle was initially attended or unattended, the vehicle is driven away prior to attaching the notice to the vehicle, the issuing officer shall file the notice with the processing agency. The processing agency shall mail, within 15 calendar days of issuance of the notice of parking violation, a copy of the notice of parking violation or transmit an electronic facsimile of the notice to the registered owner.

[1101z]

I just got notification of the same ticket at that intersection yesterday, but did not get picture of my car.

SamsonPat I am wondering what has happend with your ticket?

[JBLA]

On June 7th my wife was driving my car eastbound on Fountain crossing La Brea and remembers being stuck in the same position as SampsonPat when the light turned red. Her citation and letter are virtually identical, however, we did not receive a picture or a Declaration of Non-Ownership.

Could not receiving a photo, the driver not being the registered owner of the vehicle, or the fact that it was both a thursday and day 2 of the President's LA visit (just add rain and it would be an LA traffic jam perfect storm) help our chances to contest the ticket? Is there anything to cite or are we just appealing to the good nature of the judge?

On a personal note: The merge left sign position, short merge lane, and position and timing of the pictures being taken lead me to believe that the whole situation is designed in a rather sneaky fashion so that WeHo parking enforcement can sit on the opposite corner and shoot fish in a barrel.

[SamsonPat]

ThatGuy, no no no. I am not looking for someone to tell me different. I am following your advice, which I appreciate very much. I don't understand your change in attitude. I'm not disagreeing with you. Quite the opposite. Again, for real, thank you.

I disputed by phone and recieved notification that they still find the ticket to be valid. I am moving on to written declaration dispute. I need to file that this week.

[That Guy]

ThatGuy, no no no. I am not looking for someone to tell me different. I am following your advice, which I appreciate very much. I don't understand your change in attitude. I'm not disagreeing with you. Quite the opposite. Again, for real, thank you.

I disputed by phone and recieved notification that they still find the ticket to be valid. I am moving on to written declaration dispute. I need to file that this week.

I am not upset nor am I bothered if you disagree with me or not. Fact is, you have little defense if any. So whether you follow my recommendation or not, whether you and win or lose.

I was simply explaining to whomever might come across this thread that there is another thread regarding the same citation and topic, and I was posting my answers to the questions that you repeated here.

Lastly, and for future reference, it is usually against most forum policies to start multiple threads about the same topic. And there is good reason why that is frowned upon and that is mainly because it might create conflicting opinions in different thread and that gets confusing pretty quick.

[SamsonPat]

Last time you posted, you said I had every reason to contest it and that it should be thrown out. You advised me to contest it. I followed that advice. Now, you state that I have no defense?

[That Guy]

Last time you posted, you said I had every reason to contest it and that it should be thrown out. You advised me to contest it. I followed that advice. Now, you state that I have no defense?

Aaannnndddd!!!!!!

Actually, if you want to get technical, initially I stated that the citation is unenforceable (which is probably where you got the "it should be thrown out" part). But then I found out that it was not issued by law enforcement, it was issued by parking enforcement, found out that it was not a moving violation and therefore would not be subject to the provisions of VC 40518... etc, etc, etc....

Obviously, if you have not figured it out, this happens to be a new animal that I personally have not seen before; and as time went by, new information came along... So yes, I did make absolute statements in the beginning that were no longer valid as new information came out...

While I don't see the part where -as you claim- I stated you have every reason to contest it and that it should be thrown out, you do have the right to challenge it and you are afforded that opportunity in 3 stages. While it is obvious that I encouraged you to fight it, it should also be quite clear that I warned you that ultimately, it will depend on the judge hearing your case.

.... you still have what I believe is a GREAT defense argument that should get this thing to go away. I cannot make any guarantees, and you may have to take it all the way to the level where you go to court before a judge, and in reality, that is where this defense is most likely to work for you.

So yes, I do believe that you have a defense, but I am not the legal authority in this state, I am not "a" legal authority either. And while I am convinced that the defense should work, I cannot speak for whichever judge will likely hear your case.

Now... You still have the opportunity to pay the citation and be done with it.

Or... Do you feel lucky....?

then go for it.

Just keep in mind that at the court appeal level, you do have to pay a $25 filing fee to the court which is refunded to you if you prevail. Otherwise, if you lose, then you are out the initial citation amount PLUS the $25 court fee.

Lastly, as far as my latest comment about not having a defense at all... The defense mentioned above is untried and unproven... And until it happens to work, then it is still an idea... Not a [proven] defense!