Phoenix News Blog

DPS Believes that Dave Vontesmar is the "man behind the mask" in 37 photo radar photos

​If you live in the Valley of the Sun, you probably have a trick or two to avoid getting busted by  the speed cameras we all love so much. Some people just know exactly where they are, some buy devices to mask their license plates, and one man, police say, resorted to wearing a mask.

The man, according to police, is Dave Vontesmar.

Police say Vontesmar is the man behind the mask in at least 37 photo-radar tickets, where the driver can be seen wearing a mask to hide his identity.

Vontesmar says it's not him, despite being the owner of the car, but police disagree.

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Dave Vontesmar, seen here, is believed by DPS to be the man behind the mask, responsible for at least 37 photo radar tickets

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You want to ignore that speed-camera ticket -- good for you. Heck, we even encourage it.

But we also encourage authorities to prosecute to the fullest those who would commit violence as some sort of malicious protest against photo enforcement. The fatal shooting of an innocent photo-radar van worker earlier this year made the whole Valley queasy.

Now another horrible -- though, thankfully, less brutal -- incident has occurred. This time, a process server delivering a speed-camera ticket in Gilbert was punched so hard, he was knocked out, according to an article today by Channel 15 (KNXV-TV).

The article by Corey Rangel 's a bit light on details, with no name of the victim or date of the altercation, but we'll assume for the time being the facts are essentially correct.

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In following up our earlier post today about 3,600 speed-camera cases on the docket for this morning in a single justice court, we stumbled upon the answer to a good question.

Many readers have asked: What happens if you get a speed-camera ticket on the freeway in Arizona, but you live out of state?

We had been barking up the wrong camera housing, it turns out, by asking a Redflex official whether process servers from other states deliver the tickets outside of Arizona. It doesn't matter if those tickets are served -- failing to pay does not result in any action taken with the Motor Vehicles Department, says MVD spokeswoman Cydney DeModica.

There is a consequence to failing to pay: You won't be able to register a vehicle in Arizona until you pay the fine and other fees.

But if you never plan on registering a car in Arizona -- then who cares?

 

​About 3,600 speed-camera cases are on the West McDowell Justice Court docket this morning at 8:30 a.m., and officials are bracing for hundreds of citizens -- at the least -- to appear in person.

"What we don't know is how many will show up," says Terry Stewart, justice courts administrator.

About 2,000 of the cases represent people who recently received state Department of Public Safety photo-enforcement tickets in the mail and have a court date set for this morning, explains Stewart, a former state Department of Corrections director.

It's safe to say few people from that group will come to the downtown court at 620 West Jackson, since they still have the option to pay their fines or wait to see if a process server shows up after they miss the court date.

The other group, however, consists of about 1,500 people who blew off their mailed citations, were served by a process server, and now have a hard court date set for this morning.

Many will probably choose to deal with their ticket by calling in, paying the fine, or signing up for driving school, Stewart says. On the other hand, many may choose to show up in court to request hearings or talk to court staff about their tickets.   

Our blog posts about beating photo-enforcement tickets have spurred a few comments like this one:

Walt says:
Hello.

My wife made a right turn on red at one of Avondale's traffic lights. Received a violation notice in the mail to me since the vehicle is only registered to me. The picture shows her driving though. The notice wants me to identify the driver. Should I send it in and just wait for the ticket, or should I just not send it in and see what happens? Also are there any points involve here? Thank you for any help you can give me.

Posted On: Monday, Jul. 6 2009 @ 8:10AM

Elsa Lynch, a judge and court manager in Paradise Valley, tells us that only 40 people who received bad red-light camera tickets took defensive-driving class. None had yet taken the state-mandated Traffic Survival School class for red-light runners, and no hearings had been yet held for people with the tainted tickets, she says.

Still, if you're one of the 40 -- that's eight hours of life gone. PV isn't reimbursing anyone for his or her time. But the Valley's own Bel Air is sending refund checks to anyone who paid the fine or class fee. The defensive-driving schools involved will refund the portion of the fee they collected, Lynch says.

The Town of Paradise Valley is reimbursing more than 1,000 motorists who were ticketed by a red-light camera with a hair trigger, but some people who took driving classes still get short-changed.

The camera, installed by Redflex for the town in the intersection of Tatum and McDonald, was actually working just fine. But the yellow light for left-hand turns, for some reason, was set to three seconds in May instead of the town-mandated four-and-a-half seconds.

Suddenly, the number of tickets went through the roof. Even the town's mayor, Vernon Parker (pictured), got one -- soon after that, the town decided it had made a mistake and decided to cut refund checks. Motorists simply paid the citation get a refund of $182, says the Arizona Republic this morning. People who took a defensive-driving class get $234.

But red-light runners also take a traffic-survival-chool class like this one, which is mandatory whether they pay their ticket or opt to take a separate defensive-driving class. The town doesn't plan to pay additional reimbursements at this time, but it's not through reviewing the situation, he says.

A couple of weeks ago, we asked Jay Heiler, spokesman for the Scottsdale office of the Australian speed-camera firm, Redflex, about the situation of out-of-state violators being visited by process servers.

Heiler (at left) told us that Redflex wanted to be "transparent" about the issue and would get back to us. We appreciate that level of candor, since Redflex could lose money if out-of-state speeders didn't sign the waiver of their right to process service on photo enforcement tickets and no process servers ever showed up.

Heiler was away on business for about a week, but assures us as of this morning that he's working on providing some answers.

One of our fleet-fingered readers managed to cut and paste the text of a right-wing blog post and its comments about Brett Mecum (above), executive director of the Arizona Republican Party, just before the blog site deleted the content.

Like many blog sites, including our own Valley Fever, the popular, conservative blog Sonoran Alliance had published an article on June 3 about the dismissal of Mecum's speed-camera case. Mecum, if you'll recall, was photographed by a speed camera on April 10 while traveling at an alleged 109 miles per hour in his bitchin' Ford Shelby GT Mustang. The article soon picked up a healthy 25 comments, including many that were harshly critical of Mecum.

The SA article, written by the androgynous, anonymous "Pat," explains how Judge John Keegan, an active opponent of photo enforcement, dismissed Mecum's case. Then Pat adds his two cents' worth:

 

No surprise here: Anti-photo-enforcement Judge John Keegan has dismissed the speed camera case against Arizona Republican Party Director Brett Mecum.

Keegan, justice of the peace for the Arrowhead Justice Court, has tossed hundreds of photo-enforcement cases because he believes the system is unconstitutional. The Department of Public Safety sends cases to the courts nearest the location of the alleged violation, so Mecum could hardly have picked a better location to get caught speeding With his rocket ride, though, next time he oughta try Firebird Raceway. 

 

New Times' Valley Fever blog strives to give readers the best possible information about how the photo enforcement system works, from the first strobe of the flash to last minute of your Traffic Survival School (which, if you're willing to exercise your rights and get lucky, you won't have to sit through).

Here are a few more mentionable comments and questions from readers on our popular "Arizona Photo Enforcement Ticket: How to Beat It" article from back in December:

(FYI: Earlier questions were examined in January's "How to Beat It Mailbag" post. You should also read our article on an important development in Scottsdale, where city judges are allowing process servers to post citations to the doors of some tough-to-find motorists).

 

Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas (right) has decided it's okay to prosecute "super-speeders" caught by freeway speed cameras, reversing a decision he made in March. 

And leadfoot state Republican Party director Brett Mecum (see police mugshot below) is one of the first to be charged.

Thomas stated two months ago that he believed the law didn't support charging people when the only evidence was photo enforcement data. Despite his opinion, the state Department of Public Safety, which runs the freeway program, continued to arrest motorists in the Phoenix area who were caught on camera doing more than 100 mph.

But something changed a few weeks ago, says DPS. Thomas sent a letter to the agency outlining the criteria he'd use to charge the photographed "super-speeders."

The Department of Public Safety released details on the arrests of who the agency calls "super speeders" -- motorists caught by photo enforcement cameras on Valley freeways.

Coincidentally, New Times called DPS last night about the issue, and wrote about it this morning.

But get this -- it turns out one of the "super speeders" was only going 89 in a 65 and got arrested in her home. Whoa, that's harsh -- especially when DPS knows she won't be prosecuted. Sounds like the troopers are going to be arresting people who get flashed by the cameras going more than 20 over now -- criminal speed. If that's not a deterrent, we don't know what is.

UPDATE: Turns out the woman really got arrested for going 103, not 89, DPS says on Friday. That makes more sense. The news release below should have contained that info, says the agency. Charlene Lupe Ocampo (below) did get flashed going 89, too -- by another speed camera as she was slowing down. BTW, we changed the headline on this blog post to reflect the new info.

 

Scroll down for the Thursday news release from DPS:

Speed cameras are blossoming all over the country, the Wall Street Journal has discovered in an overview article today that covers revenues, counter-methods and the anger felt by some ticket getters.

Those subjects are nothing new for readers of New Times, but it's refreshing to see another take from one of the country's most respected newspapers. Arizona's unique and expansive photo enforcement system gets a lot of play, as does the antics of pickax-wielder Travis Townsend and the Santa Clauses who gift-wrapped cameras in Tempe. Overall, the article seems to have a negative bent, concluding with a short section on the unknown effectiveness of speed cameras.

We also enjoyed the WSJ's graphic of camera locations, reprinted below:

One last word on photo enforcement this morning (unless it isn't):

A reader recently sent us a few pages of info obtained from a Phoenix company called "City Photo Radar Information LLC," which explains how to avoid the process servers who are sometimes dispatched when motorists blow off speed camera tickets. The information is good, but our kind reader informed us these paltry, photocopied few pages cost a whopping $58.

Other companies, like Angel Enterprises, have raked in a few bucks on over-priced products like this. They get the names of people cited for photo enforcement violations and cast a net of mailers, hoping to land some suckers.

You can get better information from New Times about photo enforcement, and it's free:

A commenter on our recent post about process servers who fib plugged a computerized speed-camera-finding unit called GPS Angel, claiming it "knows where all the speed cameras and red light cameras are..."

We assume "Todd Gerson" works for GPS Angel or its PR firm, since he left the same basic comment on several national Web site articles about photo enforcement. A bit of extra Googling found a recent review of the product -- and no surprises.

As one would assume, the GPS Angel apparently did not live up to expecations during a test run in the Phoenix metro area: