Redlight Camera Sherwood (Help reducing fine)

[Just Me]

I choose to "stick it to the man" by not breaking traffic laws. That really gets 'em.

 

[CounterOfBeans]

I choose to "stick it to the man" by not breaking traffic laws. That really gets 'em.

By that do you mean like making sure you have all your public safety related gear in order, like a "license" and "registration" and "tags"?....

Or sitting and waiting for an intersection red light to change at 3:00 AM when there is absolutely no one on the road but you?...

Or dutifully going 20 mph through a school zone during Christmas break or summer vacation?...

Or turning on your turn signal when there is no one around you to benefit from your signal?....

Or any other similar situation where if you exercised your common sense, you could be sent to traffic court by an officer who was parked where you didn't see him? An officer who is aware of the common sense of your actions, but writes you a ticket anyway?

Suppressing good faith common sense sticks it someone, but it's not the man. Suppressing common sense also does not honor the law. It says we are trained like dogs to comply with enforcement policies out of fear because we don't know the law well enough to defend ourselves intellectually. It says that in a world that holds "ignorance of the law is no excuse" against us, that public schools have, all the same, manufactured a society that is uniformly ignorant of the laws that not only protect it from itself, but more importantly, also protect it from those who are supposed to serve and protect it. For example, laws in the Oregon Revised Statutes like:

"181.030 Powers and duties of department and its members.
(3) Each member of the state police has the same general powers and authority as those conferred by law upon sheriffs, police officers, constables and peace officers. A member of the state police may be appointed as a deputy medical examiner."



"181.400 Interference with personal and property rights of others. No member of the state police shall in any way interfere with the rights or property of any person, except for the prevention of crime, or the capture or arrest of persons committing crimes."



"801.305 "Highway." (1) "Highway" means every public way, road, street, thoroughfare and place, including bridges, viaducts and other structures within the boundaries of this state, open, used or intended for use of the general public for vehicles or vehicular traffic as a matter of right."


"Violations" and "crimes" are two different kinds of "offenses". "Violations" can only be punished by a fine. "Crimes" can be punished by a fine and/or jail. The tickets issued for exercising common sense in the scenarios I mentioned above are not crime tickets. They are "violation" tickets. Here's what the law says about who LEOs can LAWFULLY issue "violation" tickets to.


"153.039 Stop and detention for violation.
(1) An enforcement officer may not arrest, stop or detain a person for the commission of a violation except to the extent provided in this section and ORS 810.410.

(2) An enforcement officer may stop and detain any person if the officer has reasonable grounds to believe that the person has committed a violation. An enforcement officer may stop and detain any employee, agent or representative of a firm, corporation or other organization if the officer has reasonable grounds to believe that the firm, corporation or other organization has committed a violation.

(3) Except as provided in subsection (4) of this section, the period of detention may be only as long as is necessary to:

(a) Establish the identity of the person, firm, corporation or organization believed to have committed the violation;

(b) Conduct any investigation reasonably related to the violation; and

(c) Issue a citation for the violation.

(4) The authority of an enforcement officer to stop and detain a person for a traffic violation as defined by ORS 801.557 is governed by ORS 810.410."



And no, the word "person" above can not be construed to mean a member of the public. I'll cite the laws for that too if need be. As a public member who is doing his due diligence in good faith to be informed about the laws that impact his life and inform his fellow Citizens of the same, I welcome and encourage any LEOs on this site to challenge me on this.

 

[Just Me]

By that do you mean like making sure you have all your public safety related gear in order, like a "license" and "registration" and "tags"?....
Or sitting and waiting for an intersection red light to change at 3:00 AM when there is absolutely no one on the road but you?...
Or dutifully going 20 mph through a school zone during Christmas break or summer vacation?...
Or turning on your turn signal when there is no one around you to benefit from your signal?....
Or any other similar situation where if you exercised your common sense, you could be sent to traffic court by an officer who was parked where you didn't see him? An officer who is aware of the common sense of your actions, but writes you a ticket anyway?

Well, the school zone is not in effect if: the light is not flashing, if not a school day, or not applicable hours (depends on the zone).

So yes. I stick it to "the man" by following the rules. They ain't getting a dime from me for violating traffic laws.

The side benefit to following the rules is that I don't have to worry about being at fault for a crash.

Oh, and I can honestly tell my kids that I follow the rules, just as they need to follow mine.

They can only take your money if you give them a reason.

 

[CounterOfBeans]

Well, the school zone is not in effect if: the light is not flashing, if not a school day, or not applicable hours (depends on the zone).

So yes. I stick it to "the man" by following the rules. They ain't getting a dime from me for violating traffic laws.

The side benefit to following the rules is that I don't have to worry about being at fault for a crash.

Oh, and I can honestly tell my kids that I follow the rules, just as they need to follow mine.

They can only take your money if you give them a reason.

I know for a fact that people get pulled over in school zones where speed zone lights flash, even though student 1 is not to be found out and about campus and I noticed you had nothing to say about the other scenarios I listed or the laws I cited. Don't get me wrong, I totally value your deference to responsible exercise of rights in using the highways. Everyone should be so responsible, especially in front of their kids. But when Citizens teach their kids, by example, to squelch their common sense in rote compliance with "rules", it only aids and assists the bigger message of blindly accepting a policy package that includes extracting revenue without lawful authority.

There are plenty of times when "violation" citations are issued in the absence of evidence that a Citizen has threatened public safety by using their vehicle on the road. Like when tags are expired or the one behind the wheel doesn't have a license. When policies lump non-safety related citations together with safety-related citations in the same body of law, that association creates a smoke screen illusion of legitimacy for revenue to be generated at the expense of Citizens who have done no harm to anyone. Did you read the laws I cited? I'd like to hear your comments on those.

 

[oneharmonic]

I got a ticket at the same intersection.

The named driver on the ticket and the picture of the driver were not the same person, so it was dismissed.

But if they have a clear photo of you, and you're the named driver on the ticket, they got you.

 

[Just Me]

I know for a fact that people get pulled over in school zones where speed zone lights flash, even though student 1 is not to be found out and about campus and I noticed you had nothing to say about the other scenarios I listed or the laws I cited.

Did you read the laws I cited? I'd like to hear your comments on those.

If the light is flashing, the school zone is if effect, regardless of children being present. Pretty simple concept really.

I did read your entire post, I just don't want to get into a discussion on something we won't agree on.

As for you other scenarios, I follow traffic laws 99.99999% of the time. The times I don't, I am willing to take my lumps for. Thus my earlier post about the OP accepting responsibility for his admitted violation. Unfortunately, that is not the norm in our society.

 

[lola85]

Just going to roll over, eh?

When did $205 become 'not bad'?

In this particular case I didn't have much choice, but just to sum things up.

-Current work schedule doesn't allow me that ability to even of made the court date
-Didn't want to spend $$ on a lawyer
-Fairly clear pic of my face so they pretty much had me on that account
-Rolled a right turn on red, so wasn't speeding/blowing through red lets/ect

 

[Grunwald]

I cannot comment on how things are in Oregon, but in Washington state you have a constitutional right to demand a jury trial for any civil matter. I know that they will ignore simple written requests, and have not had put in the time to learn the proper process, but it is something worth exploring. If these cities have to absorb the cost of jury trials for all the cases they lose it might make them quit this crap.

 

[CounterOfBeans]

If the light is flashing, the school zone is if effect, regardless of children being present. Pretty simple concept really.

Gotta say, common sense and officer discretion are pretty simple concepts too, wouldn't you say?

I did read your entire post, I just don't want to get into a discussion on something we won't agree on.

If I'm following what you're saying, that something just so happens to be the law. In a country that is based on the rule of law, why would you want to exclude what it brings to the table in a meeting of the minds about its role in our lives in general and instead keep the focus on your views of the one scenario out of the several I mentioned, that allows you to dwell on the exact kind of emotions that are ironically being used as the very same red herring wedge to pry our gun rights away (i.e. fear for our children's safety).

As for you other scenarios, I follow traffic laws 99.99999% of the time. The times I don't, I am willing to take my lumps for. Thus my earlier post about the OP accepting responsibility for his admitted violation. Unfortunately, that is not the norm in our society.

[/QUOTE]

As far as taking responsibility goes, the expression "ignorance of the law is no excuse" tends to make me think that we have a responsibility to know the laws that affect our lives. Which is also to say that if we do know these laws, we also know which ones don't apply to us and can defend ourselves accordingly, intellectually. Just because you want to corral the discussion into the pen of fear for our children, it doesn't mean that that one issue is the only matter on the table. According to the "law", it is not a "privilege" for a Citizen to use their car on the highway. It is a "right", as the law at 801.305 that I cited plainly states. And as 181.400 and 181.030 combine to state, LEOs have no authority in law to interfere in any way with that right or our property unless criminal activity is suspected.

I appreciate that you are a conscientious, safe user of the highway, and that you try to be a good role model for your kids, but if safety is the standard to measure these issues by, I have to point out that Lola85 opened this thread by saying he saw no cars coming, which means he WAS being conscientious and safe also. That is no different than you teaching your kids to be responsible by looking both ways before they cross a street. The fact that Lola85 said he was "in the wrong" for making sure the coast was clear before he continued on, should give us all reason to pause. Because by "admitting" that he was wrong for taking the responsibility to exercise good judgement, it can be argued that in light of 153.039 cited previously, his case is an illustration of how we are being socially engineered by unlawful revenue generating enforcement practices to trade in our own good sense for mechanical compliance to thoughtless, blanket application regulations, "as a norm".

This is, after all, why we sit at a red light at 3:00 in the morning with no vehicles around us and ask ourselves, "Why can't I just go?" If it was common knowledge by Citizens and LEOs alike that LEOs are not authorized to stop or detain Citizens for silly "violations", do you think we would hesitate to exercise our better judgment and just go on our way....through the red light, even in the presence of a patrol car?

How can you know if you follow the traffic laws, if you refuse to even talk about them when they're brought up?

 

[CounterOfBeans]

I cannot comment on how things are in Oregon, but in Washington state you have a constitutional right to demand a jury trial for any civil matter. I know that they will ignore simple written requests, and have not had put in the time to learn the proper process, but it is something worth exploring. If these cities have to absorb the cost of jury trials for all the cases they lose it might make them quit this crap.

Hey Grunwald,

First of all, I hope you and others forgive me for being long-winded with my posts. The way I am asking people to see things like traffic court, puts me in a position of having to provide more context than I would prefer.

You talk about having a constitutional right to a jury for any civil matter and I just wanted to cite ORS 153.076, and other laws below, to point out that the matters before traffic courts are administrative, regulatory matters. Traffic courts are not constitutional courts. By law, traffic courts deprive persons of their liberty and property (vehicle and money) without a jury or assistance of counsel and the mode of conviction in these courts is different than in constitutional courts. The standard of conviction in a constitutional court is described with the words "beyond reasonable doubt", which a jury decides. In a traffic court, the standard of conviction is called "preponderance of the evidence". Which means, since there is no jury, who ever has the most widgets of evidence wins. See 153.076 below:

"153.076 Conduct of trial. (1) Violation proceedings shall be tried to the court sitting without jury. The trial in a violation proceeding may not be scheduled fewer than seven days after the date that the citation is issued unless the defendant waives the seven-day period.

(2) The state, municipality or political subdivision shall have the burden of proving the charged violation by a preponderance of the evidence.

(3) The pretrial discovery rules in ORS 135.805 to 135.873 apply in violation proceedings.

(4) The defendant may not be required to be a witness in the trial of any violation.

(5) Defense counsel shall not be provided at public expense in any proceeding in which only violations are charged.

(6) A district attorney or city attorney may aid in preparing evidence and obtaining witnesses but, except upon good cause shown to the court, shall not appear in violation proceedings unless counsel for the defendant appears. The court shall ensure that the district attorney or city attorney is given timely notice if defense counsel is to appear at trial."

What I'm trying to raise awareness about is that when you start studying the vehicle code laws and related provisions, these laws make it only too clear that Citizens don't actually belong in traffic courts to begin with, but are all the same being forced into them.... with their expectation of constitutional due process intact. In the same way that businesses are fined for simply not complying with industry regulations, traffic courts are there to mete out regulatory punishments for highway related offenses committed by commercial entities.

When a commercial entity fails to comply with an industry regulation, there are no injured parties to act as accusers, only government inspectors/witnesses (LEOs) who certify that regulations have not been complied with. The only thing that explains the surreal game of depriving Citizens of their liberty or property without constitutional standards of due process is that, at the center of the process that entraps Citizens into these courts, are documents (licenses and registration) that technically give traffic courts the pretense to treat Citizens like they ARE subject to mere administrative business regulations, without telling Citizens that that's what's going on. By not knowing what the nature of a "license" is in law, Citizens make uninformed confessions in traffic court that paint them with a commercial brush, giving the traffic court power to treat them like business operators or agents because of how "license" is defined in law. See ORS 183.310(5) below:

"ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURES ACT
(General Provisions)
183.310 Definitions for chapter. As used in this chapter:
(5) "License" includes the whole or part of any agency permit, certificate, approval, registration or similar form of permission required by law to pursue any commercial activity, trade, occupation or profession."


Notice how the definition of "driver license" matches right up to this:


"801.245 'Driver license.' 'Driver license' or 'license' may have any or all of the meanings provided for the terms under this section as required or appropriate under the section referring to the term. The term 'driver license' may be used interchangeably with 'license' and either term may be used in any or all of the following ways:

(1) It may refer to a document issued by this state or any other jurisdiction as evidence of a grant of driving privileges.

(2) It may refer to general driving privileges granted by this state or another jurisdiction."

As you see in post #66 above, ORS 153.039 only authorizes LEOs to stop, detain and issue "violation" citations to commercial entities and their agents/ employees and it is these "violation" citations that paint Citizens with the first stroke of commercial color and force them into traffic court where the judge locks up their commercialness through further questioning.

Since LEOs are strictly forbidden from interfering "in any way" (see 181.030 & 181.400 in #66) with people who have a "right" to use their vehicle on the highways (i.e. Citizens....see 801.305 in #66 above), unless criminal activity is suspected, it logically stands to reason that since LEOs are presumed to be applying the law, lawfully, when they stop and detain someone for a "violation" and issue them a citation for it, that person must be a commercial agent or employee.

So when a traffic court judge asks a Citizen if they were "operating a motor vehicle" and the Citizen says "yes", there is an Oregon Administrative Rule (OAR) called 735-016-0010 that implements chapter 803 (titling and registration) and chapter 807 (driver licenses).

This rule is adopted to "clarify how application of the residency and domicile laws in the Motor Vehicle Code relate to acquisition and maintenance of vehicle registrations, driver licenses, driver permits and identification cards.", and it defines "operating a motor vehicle" at subsection 7 below:

"(7) "Operating motor vehicles in Oregon" means the physical operation of vehicles for business purposes."

So if OAR 735-016-0010 lawfully implements the legislative intent of titling, registration and licensing laws (which is "for business purposes"), then when a Citizen says "yes" to "operating a motor vehicle", he is telling the judge that he is a business operator. That confession is stacked up along with their confirmation to the court of their "driver license" number and "registration plate" number on their vehicle to further confirm that they are using the highways commercially. By all the evidence revealed in these provisions, logic can lead to only one conclusion. Traffic courts get away with what they do to Citizens because they fraudulently invite us to unwittingly declare ourselves to be persons who are technically not eligible for constitutional standards of due process, because we are talked into accepting the legal identity of a commercial user of the highways, rather than the legal identity of a Citizen who has an un-infringeable right to use the highway.

We all know that traffic courts are well-oiled revenue factories that are unhindered by juries and publicly funded defense lawyers and constitutional standards of conviction. And of course the revenue they collect is taken, at the expense of Citizens being less capable of providing for themselves and spending their money into the economy where it belongs.

What I am doing is providing information intended to educate and re-frame the way we see important issues, like traffic court. I may be wrong with what I have presented above or how I've presented it, but other laws and authorities need to be offered to prove it. The laws I have cited don't need my commentaries to plainly say on their own what I am claiming they say. In view of the active/good case law below, it is clear the information I have provided still presents itself, by its own force, as evidence of systemic fraud under color of law against the rights of Citizens.

Public schools fail to provide the Constitution and law education that they are required to by law (ORS 336.057 & 067). Through deprivation of the lawfully required opportunity to become literate on the Constitution and laws, we emerge from high school with legal cataracts through which to assess the legitimacy of the policies that are foisted upon us. Only by being made aware of these laws, and others, can Citizens confirm the fraud that their intuition detects and come together in numbers to collapse it and other frauds that are systemically diminishing our rights and exhausting the resources we need to support ourselves and be effective civic participants. Only by collapsing these frauds can we truly reacquaint ourselves with what we intuitively know has been taken from us... our rights to responsibly, respectfully pursue life, liberty and happiness.

The fact that we are only familiar with a world where DMV or DOL inserts itself into our lives, is only evidence that we have never been given an opportunity to imagine a world without them in our lives. It, in no way, proves that we cannot live without them. We can just as easily devise alternative legal solutions to the ownership and safety concerns that interest us on the highways, without surrendering our rights or identities as Citizens in the process. Below is some case law to support what these laws say on their own.

See Hadfield vs. Lundin, 98 Wash 657, 168 P. 516 (1917) below:

"These cases, though involving regulatory statutes or ordinances, all recognize and are based upon the fundamental ground that the sovereign state has plenary control of the streets and highways in the exercise of its police power, may absolutely prohibit the use of the streets as a place for the prosecution of a private business for gain. They all recognize the fundamental distinction between the ordinary right of a citizen to use the streets in the usual way and the use of the streets as a place of business or main instrumentality of a business for private gain. The former is a common right, the latter an extraordinary use. As to the former the legislative power is confined to regulation, as to the latter it is plenary and extends even to absolute prohibition. Since the use of the streets by a common carrier in the prosecution of its business as such is not a right, but a mere license of privilege, it follows that the legislature may prohibit such use entirely without impinging any provision either of the state or federal Constitution." -

Or State vs. Johnson, 75 Mont. 240, 243 P. 1073:

....For the reasons stated....for, while a citizen has the right to travel upon the public highways and to transport his property thereon, that right does not extend to the use of the highways, either in whole or in part, as a place of business for private gain. For the latter purpose no person has a vested right in the use of the highways of the state, but is a privilege or a license which the legislature may grant or withhold in its discretion, or which it may grant upon such conditions as it may see fit to impose, provided the imposition applies impartially." -

 

[Just Me]

How can you know if you follow the traffic laws, if you refuse to even talk about them when they're brought up?

I am trying to stay civil in my discussion and not delve into an argument with you regarding traffic laws and whether or not police officers have the lawful authority to stop me. We will not agree, so I simply move on. You sound like every "sovereign citizen" I have ever talked with in that you seem to want to live in this society but not abide by the laws you happen to dislike. That is fine with me. I just don't feel like beating my head against the wall trying to convince each other that we are right.

 

[CounterOfBeans]

I am trying to stay civil in my discussion and not delve into an argument with you regarding traffic laws and whether or not police officers have the lawful authority to stop me. We will not agree, so I simply move on. You sound like every "sovereign citizen" I have ever talked with in that you seem to want to live in this society but not abide by the laws you happen to dislike. That is fine with me. I just don't feel like beating my head against the wall trying to convince each other that we are right.

Civil? Are you sure? I have to admit, when I put a good faith effort into trying to inform someone about what the laws ACTUALLY say in relation to their rights, only to have the words in those laws fall on willfully, intentionally deaf ears, it concerns me. You say you're trying to "stay civil" but then turn around and call me a "sovereign citizen", as if it's understood that that's a label one uses to cast aspersions on people who actually try to read and understand the limitations placed by law. When the law is specifically there to protect Citizens' rights and property, why would you want to denigrate those who exercise their civic duty to be informed of the law and then feel enough affection for their community to share the benefits of that knowledge.

Your aversion to the opportunity to think critically about laws that I've simply copied and pasted, is intriguing to me. If I didn't consider people like you, in my surrounding community and society in general, as my extended family, do you think I would bother. What would be the point. The fact is, is that we ARE all in this together. In a world where abuse of power is becoming more fashionable (see LEO Wichaka's thread: "The Direction of Law Enforcement), that means that as long as we are on that descending path, the window of opportunity to peacefully nip that descent in the bud is shrinking by the day. Hence my sense of urgency or persistence that you perceive as a cramp in your style.

Of course I vastly prefer fixing the problems we have now.... peacefully. In that pursuit, the safeguard of our rights as individuals, depends on how much conviction the community at large has to stand against unlawful policies. And it should go without saying that the only way people can have that conviction is if they are enabled to identify the unlawfulness of policies with confidence, by knowing what the laws themselves actually say.....and not just those laws that power abusers try to confine issues to.

I do take exception to being described as someone who doesn't want to abide by laws. It is you who are refusing to entertain that the laws "I happen to dislike" as you call it, are laws that, upon inspection (if you inspect them), are not legislatively intended to apply to us. But I hear you loud and clear though.... that you just want me to leave you alone. So that's what I'll do. But as someone who has no interest in putting boilerplate policy assertions under the microscope of the law, it is only fair to expect that any complaints you have about the inconveniences or injuries caused to you by unauthorized policies, deserve no more sympathy or attention than you yourself are willing to offer.