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Enemies of Houston Motorists and Taxpayers

1. American Traffic Solutions - have been robbing motorists blind for years in Houston, all under the guise of safety and “sending badly needed money to trauma centers,” which never actually happened. Instead they are costing taxpayers millions in a settlement with the city over removal of their red light scam cams.

2. Judge Lynn Hughes - has no respect for the will of Houston voters or even that of city council. Hughes is in bed with ATS, plain and simple and is a disgrace to the bench.

3. Mayor Annise Parker - serial flip flopping lap dog of ATS who first agreed to turn the cameras back on when threatened with a $25 million pie-in-the-sky lawsuit. She was then exposed by the Houston media as a liar and was forced by an overwhelming show of public opposition to hold hearings on the matter in front of city council.

4. George “Hit-Man” Hittner of ATS - Hittner, American Traffic Solutions General Council, had no problem scamming Houston with his company’s red light camera rip-off, then colluding with Judge Hughes behind the scenes to overturn a 2010 election in which his company was overwhelmingly voted out.

#2 Houston City Council Votes 11-1 to Ban Red Light Cameras

In a saga that took almost an entire year to iron out, the city of Houston finally honored a voter mandate from election day of 2010 to shut off their American Traffic Solutions’ red light cameras program.

Texas Town Sees Accidents Skyrocket After Red Light Cameras Installed

Main Street in Port Lavaca

photo courtesy of PortLavacaMainStreet.com

Port LaVaca, TX has some serious issues surrounding their red light camera program. The latest news, in the form of accident figures, further proves what a terrible choice the mayor and town council have made for their citizens. Let’s start from the beginning.

January 2009: Port LaVaca, a town of around 12,000 which is located between Corpus Christi and Galveston on the Gulf Coast of Texas, installs red light cameras, with no justification, after a decision by their town council who had been heavily lobbied by Redflex. Accidents were not a problem at any of the intersections where cameras were installed according to a report just released. [Report]

January 2011: After months of collecting signatures on a petition circulated throughout 2010, which garnered enough to put the red light camera system to a vote they were turned in to the town recorder.

March 2011: Port Lavaca town council chooses to ignore the petition, which has now been validated by the town recorder. This was a ploy to keep the red light camera referendum off the ballot, because the council members, who were in the pocket of Redflex, knew they would lose.

April 2011: Revelations surface that a powerful Chicago political machine with direct ties to Rahm Emanuel created a front group which filed a lawsuit to stop the vote on the initiative, “even though no court order was issued in the case” and the referendum on photo enforcement did not violate the town charter. In violation of state law, the vote never took place.

October 2011: Money grubbing Police Sergeant Kelly Flood fraudulently signed a photo ticket for a motorist who passed through an intersection on a green light. Port Lavaca refused to turn over the info on the ticket. According to TheNewspaper.com,

Byron Schirmbeck, director of SaferBaytown.com, filed a formal complaint with Calhoun County District Attorney Dan Heard over the city’s refusal to comply with the terms of the state open records statute that generally requires the disclosure of public documents within ten days.

November 2011:

The green light ticket along with accident numbers have been released to Schirmbeck, which prove that not only was the ticket issued illegally, but also accident numbers have gone from near zero, prior to camera installation to 350% increases in some intersections.

[REPORT HERE]

In review, what the town of Port Lavaca town council and mayor have done in the past 33 months is install fraudulent red light cameras with no justification, attempted to hide accident numbers, suppressed a citizens’ initiative illegally and have a police sergeant signing off on tickets for motorists who drive through green lights.

The worst part, for the citizens of Port Lavaca, is that all this has accomplished is to increase accidents, including those with injuries in intersections that didn’t have any collisions prior to camera installation.

On a smaller scale, the town leadership is about to learn some very tough lessons that the city of Houston spent valuable time and taxpayer money learning:

by CameraFRAUD

Houston City Council Votes 11-1 To Ban Red Light Cameras

American Traffic Solutions has been kicked out of Houston for the second time in less than a year. This time it was by politicians, which has to sting for the Scottsdale, AZ based camera vendor.

The 11-1 vote to repeal the ordinance that allows for the use of red light cameras really shouldn’t have been necessary, given that the voters of Houston booted them out last November by a landslide.

The cameras had been off for more than six months when they were turned back on by the actions of activist Judge Lynn Hughes and Mayor Annise Parker. Hughes used an obscure rule to overturn the election and Parker reinstated the scamera program with an executive order.

ATS will undoubtedly take the case back to Federal Court, at this point in a desperate move to attempt to collect money they feel they’re owed.

With all the national attention garnered by ATS’s defeats in both Los Angeles and Houston, they are now under a microscope and it will be much more difficult to shop their lawsuits around. Lynn Hughes would most likely lift his original order to keep the cameras up, which does not bode well for ATS.

Video courtesy of MyFoxHouston.