SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

Report: Former exec says red light camera company bribed city officials

Jan 24, 2014, 1:19 PM | Updated: 11:16 pm

For years, I’ve been covering the scam that is red light cameras. Now there’s a new rep...

For years, I've been covering the scam that is red light cameras. Now there's a new report adding fuel to the fire. (AP Photo/file)

(AP Photo/file)

Taken from Friday’s edition of The Dori Monson Show.

This is a story you need to know about and you’re not going to hear about anywhere else.

For years, I’ve been covering the scam that is red light cameras. Local cities, Lynnwood being one of the most prominent, have been using red light cameras not as a means for public safety increasing, but so they can transfer as much money from citizens to government control.

They told us when they sold the red light cams that it was to prevent these horrible T-bone accidents in intersections. But the fact is, accidents with red light camera intersections stay the same or increase because there are more rear-end accidents.

The other fact of the matter is 85 percent to 90 percent of the red light tickets are people doing what is called a “California stop,” where you slow down to two or three miles an hour, see that nobody is coming from the left, and you take your free right in an intersection. That is where 85 percent to 90 percent of red light camera tickets are written, nothing to do with public safety whatsoever.

I have covered rather extensively the sleazy company that local governments have climbed in bed with, and that is Redflex Traffic Systems.

We told you a few years ago about how executives for Redflex were going on newspaper comments sections and posing as average citizens, saying, I live in Monroe and I would desperately love to have a red light camera in my neighborhood to keep my kids safe. Then it was revealed that it wasn’t average citizens posting in the comments, but it was executives for Redflex. They were caught “Red-handed.”

When you have a sleazy company and you have government, which is inherently sleazy – because all government wants is to get as much of your money as possible for their control – when you have the collusion of the sleazy working against us, that is a pretty powerful force that we’re up against. When big business and government collude to control us, then it becomes a pretty scary opposition.

So let me tell you the latest with Redflex Traffic Systems. I just saw this story in The Chicago Tribune:

“A fired executive of Chicago’s beleaguered red light camera company alleges in a lawsuit that Redflex Traffic Systems doled out bribes and gifts at “dozens of municipalities” in 13 other states and says he is cooperating in an ongoing federal investigation,” says the article.

According to The Chicago Tribune, Redflex bestowed gifts and bribes on officials in dozens of municipalities including in Washington state.

If this Chicago Tribune story is accurate, it is confirmation about everything I have been telling you about Redflex Traffic Systems for years now.

This is absolutely outrageous that we have local government in bed with this company, with the history of problems that Redflex has had. And all so that they can get tens of millions of dollars transferred from citizens to their control, that they can split between Redflex and the local cities.

This is what we’re up against – we taxpayers, we citizens – we’re up against government and big business colluding, big business bribing government officials. I want to find out every government official locally who has taken a bribe from Redflex. Chicago Tribune is on it. We’re working the story now. We have got to out them.

Taken from Friday’s edition of The Dori Monson Show.

JK

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Report: Former exec says red light camera company bribed city officials