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Utah speed traps spur police probe

Published July 07, 2012

The Wall Street
Journal

Small-town speed traps are legendary among travelers, who often suspect
police of targeting tourists from other parts of the country to help fill local
coffers. But officers in tiny Springdale, Utah, may have used their radar guns
to pocket cash from foreign drivers they stopped, according to the state
auditor.

Three police officers in Springdale, a popular gateway to Zion National Park,
collected $11,640 from overseas visitors they stopped from January through
October of 2011, a report from Utah State Auditor Auston Johnson found. The
auditor maintains the collections during the stops were a violation of state
law.

"You don't want people afraid to deal with the police. You don't
want them to shake you down for cash."

- Utah State Auditor

In addition, Johnson's report said his office found 138 citation
documents—one-third of the total it examined—missing from local files with no
record of what happened to any fines collected. The citations are easily tracked
since they are numbered, officials from his office said. The report didn't name
the officers.

"The possibility exists that officers could have written citations, collected
the citation fines from defendants on the spot, destroyed the citations, and
kept the money without anyone ever noticing," Johnson said in his report,
released in June.

Washington County, where Springdale is located, referred the auditor's report
to the Utah Attorney General's office for review of any criminal misconduct,
said Ryan Shaum, deputy county attorney. "We did this in case of even a
perceived conflict of interest," he said.

Paul Murphy, a spokesman for the Utah attorney general's office, confirmed
receipt of that referral but declined to comment further.

Officials of Springdale, population 500, said they believed the attorney
general's office would exonerate the police. "We feel confident that no criminal
activity occurred," Kurt Wright, chief of the Springdale/Zion Canyon Police
Department, said in a statement.

Patrol officers in the U.S. typically aren't authorized to collect cash
fines, said former San Francisco Police Chief Anthony Ribera, now director of
the International Institute of Law Enforcement Leadership at the University of
San Francisco.

"Sometimes, particularly in small communities where they feel the individual
may never come back, they may demand immediate payment," Ribera said, "But they
would go to the court or police station" to pay.

A complaint from a Spanish tourist triggered the audit. Springdale, not far
from Las Vegas, sees hordes of European tourists, especially in summer months,
who drive through on the way to Zion, where the highway wends between stunning
canyons walls.

The Spanish tourist reported in October 2011 that a Springdale officer issued
her a traffic citation as she was driving through from Zion. She said the
officer "said that she must pay the fine immediately and that it had to be paid
in cash," Johnson said in his report, which doesn't identify the tourist. Mr.
Johnson said he opened the audit, which covered only 2011, because it was so
unusual to hear of police collecting fines.

"This is the first time I have heard of this happening, outside of Third
World countries," Johnson said. An officer acting as "law enforcement, judge and
jury by collecting cash" violates state and federal law, he wrote in his
report.

Johnson said, "You don't want people afraid to deal with the police. You
don't want them to shake you down for cash."

Click
for more from WSJ.com

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