Police Officers and Public Officals Getting Traffic Tickets? That Wouldn't be Right...
From the Orange County Register “Special license plates shield officials from traffic tickets”:
Vehicles registered to motorists who are affiliated with 1,800 state and local agencies and who are allowed to shield their addresses under the Confidential Records Program.
An Orange County Register investigation has found that the program, designed 30 years ago to protect police from criminals, has been expanded to cover hundreds of thousands of public employees – from police dispatchers to museum guards – who face little threat from the public. Their spouses and children can get the plates, too…
The confidential plate program shields these motorists in ways most of us can only dream about:
•Vehicles with protected license plates can run through dozens of intersections controlled by red light cameras and breeze along the 91 toll lanes with impunity.
•Parking citations issued to vehicles with protected plates are often dismissed because the process necessary to pierce the shield is too cumbersome.
•Some patrol officers let drivers with protected plates off with a warning because the plates signal that the drivers are "one of their own" or related to someone who is.
I'm waiting for Austin's red light camera blog to weigh in on this one...
[Update: Thanks Grits. I'm sure that's what I would have said about this, had I done more than just cut and paste...]
