Monday, July 19, 2010

Learning How To Beat Photo Radar Ticket In Arizona

I have dived fully into the real of this business since my court date is only 3 days away. The more I read, the more I am convinced that I can win. However, I am also convinced that to be able to win, I will have to appeal it to the next higher court, as the lower courts apparently ignore law, procedural error and rules concerning such.

There are several fronts I will attack this on.
1. The contract that Redflex had with the State of Arizona has ended, as of July 15th. Redflex sends EMPLOYEES to court, not lawyers. The state made a provision to allow those employees to present evidence -- but it is becoming clear that that is ONLY while a contract it in full force.

There IS no contract with the State of Arizona now, they have no legal standing to represent Arizona in the courts.

2. The signature on the complaint. I looked at the complaint today as I read that by Arizona law, the complaint MUST be signed by a police officer - hand signed. The lawyers win -- in appeals court because lower courts ignore it -- these cases because the complaints are COMPUTER GENERATED. Yes, my complaint was signed by a computer, not by a living, human being. The signature is placed there BEFORE the facts are reviewed, was I the driver of the car and so forth.

3. Because the contract ended, the signs indicating that you are about to enter a Photo Enforcement Zone have been taken down. 2 signs are REQUIRED by state law to be posted before you get to the cameras. Were those signs present when I entered the Photo Enforcement Zone? Don't know, don't care. I ignore the signs, I have seen the signs over and over - whatever they say, it's irrelevant, you KNOW you are coming into a photo enforcement zone.

Those are 3, irrefutable ways for me to win my case. I fully expect that I will have to file an appeal in Superior Court to win. There are more grounds, however, to bring up.

Was my speed "reasonable and prudent"? A police officer uses his/her judgement in such cases. Are there pedestrians? Is it near a school? In a residential area? Is there a broken down car? Is there an accident? on and on. I was on a freeway with none of that going on. The cameras ONLY see the car, nothing else that is going on. A computer generated system cannot determine what is reasonable and prudent. Further, the zone where these cameras are located had the speed limit raised from 55mph to 65mph. Apparently the engineers who determined the speed were - what - wrong about the first assumption?

The picture itself. I look at the picture and there is glare on the windshield. I was leaning back - alleging that it is me driving - the rear view mirror is partially blocking my face. The glare is so bad, I cannot tell that it's me driving the car.

If I lose in the lower court, I WILL be appealing. 3 points on my record if I lose, I have a commercial license, I MUST fight it.

Onto other things (so if you came here looking for info on photo radar and how to beat it, well, it ends here. I suggest you get the book written by Susan Kaylor: SMILE for the speed camera! I got my copy on Amazon. Also, do a lot of reading on the internet, search Arizona statute photo radar. The book, btw, is not Arizona specific but does have a lot of references to Arizona, good luck!)

Fish. Well, they were having sex again today when I came home and went out there. Lol. Busy beavers. A crow keeps coming around - I don't know if he's looking for a meal, but those fish are much bigger than that crow. I suppose it's just interested in the water and bathing itself. Heron cannot access that pond, that I know of anyway, they have to be able to step into the pond and since it isn't in the ground, they cannot do that.

The humidity - along with high heat - is still up. You will sweat just standing there, as I was for over an hour dealing with a pump that decided to quit and cleaning out the bio-filter. The pumps get clogged with junk and you have to take them apart and clean them out. No biggies, but both pumps were clogged. One of them wasn't pumping water. Yes, they are now both working again. This is why I got the air pumps. Their only job is to pump air through plastic tubing to long aeration blocks. This is a backup - if the pumps quit, the water is still being aerated.

Will I get out there and dig today? Not sure yet, I am spending time reading all kinds of stuff about photo radar, though, at this point, I think I have enough to win the case, even if it has to be appealed. Still, I like to be ready for court. I mean THOROUGHLY ready, as much as a non-lawyer can be. I am not just reading the book and going through websites with all kinds of people chiming in, I am also going through ARS – TITLE 28 TRANSPORTATION of State statutes - and not finding anything but one blurp about photo radar. Either more is found elsewhere or there IS not more, I'm not sure yet, will continue searching.

I have come up with my own arguments now that this program is ended, the contract is severed and I do not believe that Redflex has any statutatorial right to even BE in the courtroom unless they are spectators.

Oh, my water Hyacinth. They are coming back to life. I believe the reason they were dying is that the goldfish were eating their roots. They float with their roots drifting down below them. The roots are the beneficial thing for your pond - they absorb nasty stuff. Basically, water Hyacinth and that pond are not going to work. I will bring them back to life - fully - and simply have a large container full of them as a plant feature in itself. I have the other ponds, a smaller pond with smaller fish - maybe it would work.

Of course, digging out the holes for such is a totally different story......

I received the new pump today. I'm new to this, I am learning as I go. The pump is WAY too big. I should have gone with a 500 or 600 gph pump, not an almost 900 gph pump. I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to even use it in the new setup - but one can be assured that I will try, cause' now? I own it. I'm thinking it might work very well for the waterfall that I almost completed building and have not finished yet. A lot of water, a lot of aeration and cooling. Who knows? Cross that bridge when I get the pond installed.

Onto something that has been bugging me for a long time. But only briefly here, this entry is getting long and to dive into all the facts of this issue - would take 20, long entries. A "man" that I was under on the mission field - who founded the ministry I was serving in - well, he moved to Arizona. I didn't know this until someone brought it to my attention. As I said, it would take FAR too long to go into all of this, but there wa a lot of wrong done. I contacted him - he had his cellphone number posted on his website, based out of Tucson.

When I called, he was in a big church with a pastor in a back room, apparently getting ready to "minister" in church. I began confronting him on these issues. Now that he is only 100 or so miles away, I have no problem driving down there and confronting him, face to face, on these things. He - handed the phone to the pastor. The pastor was totally full of himself. Apparently, his fame is far and wide - I have never heard of him. I don't give respect to men because of their fame, respect is EARNED, not GIVEN AWAY. So you have your face and name plastered all over the place, what does THAT mean? When I told him I had no clue who he was - being totally honest - he got offended! Lol.

But, that pastor isn't the issue. There are lots of pastors around in big churches that are just full of themselves, this is nothing new. The fact that this man I am dealing with handed me over to this pastor was the issue. As in the past, he cannot deal with situations on his own. He has to drag other people that have NOTHING to do with the situation into it to defend him. This pastor? Had NO clue what was going on. He said he was going into church in a few minutes, but could he call me back? Sure, I asked him to write down my number since it was the "minister's" phone I had called. Dunno if he did or not, he said he would call back .......... and never did.

Not surprising. "Big" men in ministry overextend themselves and make promises that they - from my view of it - never intend on keeping. Oh, I could go on, and on, and on from my personal experience with some of these people when I was on the mission field and actively involved in the church - the fact of the matter is - it's a complete waste of time.

Well, I contact this man through his website - the founder, not the pastor. I bring up the past. It is very dark, trust me, it is. I want to get this situation resolved. What does he do? Instead of responding to me, he forwards my email to another leader that was his 2cd in command during the time I was in that ministry. This guy writes him back but puts my email as a cc.

So, I write HIM, since he contacted me. He was and is also - totally full of it. Another long story, I don't have the time or the desire to go into it. He writes back, full of himself, of course, denies everything I stated and tells me to "deal with it". The world loves to tell everyone to deal with it. Well, in this case, to deal with it, I must have open, honest dialogue with the people involved. Since they won't admit blatant, obvious past, there is no connection.

I wrote him again. I have no idea where this is leading, though this number 2 guy used to get physically aggressive in the past and in reading his tones, he has the same views now. I suppose he will threaten me - this is his standard, modus operandi, at least from the 80's and early 90's - if he does then I will have to decide what to do about it.

I have had years to deal with this in my own soul and heart. I am not nearly as affected by this as they obviously are. I would LIKE to have a resolution to it, yes, but if it isn't possible, then so beit. Still, I am going to ride this one out until/if/when it becomes obvious that I am wasting my time, if such a time indeed presents itself.

ben

Monday

Weekends = disappear like magic.
Poof, they're gone.
Well, so it is.
Drive to work today under dark, overcast skies.
Too bad it doesn't bring the temps down any, it is muggy and nasty feeling outside right now.
Our company announced merit increases as of - this morning when I got in and saw an email about it. I'll take anything I can get right now, the increase starts in August.

Well, anyway, I was on the phone with Direct TV last night - for like 2 hours. I don't really like to put up with their bs, so, sometimes they hang up on me. I talked to - 5,6 don't really remember how many different people I talked to, I kept asking for an American IN America, I didn't want to talk to India, Philippines or Mexico, thank you.

I had no idea they had opened call centers in Tijuana. The manager I was speaking with there lives in San Diego but works in Mexico. Long story, it always is, my desired end result was a reduction in the amount I am paying the company.

My premise was the deals that they had on their website: $34.99 for the same amount of channels I currently have per month; $39.99 for even more channels. I am currently paying $68.99 per month plus the receivers. I FINALLY got to an American manager - it took quite a while and a lot of persistence to get to this person, the conversation was probably 40 minutes just with this one guy.

I did not know that Direct TV was charging me (and everyone else) $7.95 per month for "recording priviledges". Meaning if you have a DVR, you have to pay that fee to be able to record on your DVR. Further, they said that since I had "only" been with them a little over 2 years, I couldn't get the same deal as if I had been with them much longer. Yes, I said, I HAVE been with your company, at least a decade now on 2 separate accounts.

Cutting off the account and starting a new one also, according to them, cuts off your "tenure" with them. Even IF the reason the contract is cancelled is because of a minor little thing such as your house burning down.

Whatever. I removed the "free"movie channels that were no longer free, got the $7.95 fee removed, but only for 6 months (the man adamently stated that was as long as he could go with it, that's all the computer would give him) and then decided to start looking into Dish Network. Dish Network does not require as many receivers as Direct TV - but - the man at Direct TV claims that even though that's true, they charge $14.95 per month for the single receiver. Yes, this conversation went from the depths of the sea to outer space in it's broad ranging aspects of topic.

Oh, and I did get 2 months of other channels free - Showtime to be precise, though I doubt Showtime is any better than Starz. But, free is free, so who cares.

I expected a long, drawn out ordeal to get the information I wanted and I was not let down in that particular aspect. One guy was being cocky and a smart-@$$ - in the Philippines, I wanted to speak to an American representative - so I asked him how his nation's cannibal tribes are doing. Yes, they have cannibals, yes, they eat humans. He replied that one lives at ....and read out my address plus Phoenix, AZ.

Whatever. I got some sort of reduction, I am now going to hone in on Dish Network, get into some conversations over there and ask some pointed questions.

However, I can't do that right now, cause the work day is here, and though there is nothing to do in the truck routing system, I must be offa here.

G'day.

ben

 Sunday - early 20 minutes until departure time.  I don't much care for delivery on Sundays for it takes a while to get security to the ...