Homeless in Arizona

In the article Mesa City Councilman Dennis Kavanaugh sounds like a tyrant who expects us serfs to dress up special for the royal government judge in the Mesa traffic court.

Mesa city court administrator Paul Thomas also seems to be a tyrant who assumes everyone is guilty and must prove their innocence with this statement: "Watching people try to wiggle out of traffic citations can be very entertaining at times" [Of course if you ask me watching cops commit perjury, or testilying as they call it to get convictions can also be very entertaining]

Source

Mesa may put traffic court on television

By Gary Nelson The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Nov 6, 2012 10:47 PM

Mesa is planning to televise traffic-court hearings as a way of educating people about how to behave not only on the streets, but in court.

But while city officials are pitching the potentially elucidating aspects of the broadcasts, they admit that there’s entertainment to be had as well.

During a recent discussion of the proposal, City Councilman Dennis Kavanaugh suggested the shows could include videos on “what not to wear in court.”

“Or, come dressed, period,” city court administrator Paul Thomas said.

“Sometimes ... there is a tendency for people not to dress appropriately for a courtroom setting,” Thomas said. “We try to take care of that at the front door as much as we can. ... We’re just trying to err on the side of modesty.” [Please what part of Arizona law allows you to force your modesty standards on us serfs???]

Problems include shirts with inappropriate messages and revealing outfits. Shirts that advertise beer, for example, don’t mesh well with traffic court. [So the First Amendment is null and void in Mesa traffic courts???]

Thomas said the court has no plans to impose a detailed dress code, but hopes the Channel 11 programs would help people know what proper courtroom attire looks like.

Kavanaugh said he has been talking with staffers about the idea for about a year. “We will probably be one of the first municipal courts in the country to do something like this,” he said.

Such broadcasts would not be entirely without precedent. Traffic-court shows have appeared on commercial TV, as far back as the 1950s when a network program called “Traffic Court” featured re-enactments of trials in Los Angeles.

Currently a program on truTV, “Speeders Fight Back,” broadcasts traffic-court trials from Oak Lawn, Ill. And for several years, the ABC-TV affiliate in Providence, R.I., aired highlights from that city’s traffic court in a TV show called “Caught in Providence.”

Thomas said he knows of no other city in the country broadcasting traffic court on its municipal cable channel.

“We run a traffic hearing every 15 minutes,” [If you are running hearings every 15 minutes, it's probably a kangaroo court designed to raise revenue, not dispense justice] Thomas told the City Council’s public-safety committee last month. “Every kind of traffic situation and challenge to the traffic laws that you can imagine occurs in that court.”

Watching people try to wiggle out of traffic citations, he said, “can be very entertaining at times, but I think the educational value is where we want to try to drive this.” [Sounds like the court assumes people are guilty until they prove themselves innocent! Of course traffic courts are usually just kangaroo courts designed to raise money]

There are no privacy concerns, he said, because court proceedings are open to the public. “The public has every right to come and sit in court proceedings as long as they don’t disrupt or challenge the process.”

Still, he said, defendants would be notified that their trials were being recorded for possible use on TV. [So what??? Can they cancel their trial and demand one that won't be televised??? Probably not!!!!]

The only drawback he could envision was the possibility of the public second-guessing decisions made by traffic-court judges. “It could be positive, it could be negative,” he said. “I can’t predict that.” [It should be pretty easy to second guess the judges - "guilty, now pay the fine", because the courts are all about revenue]

Kavanaugh said the educational aspect would be twofold.

First, “whether it’s red-light cameras or intersection issues, it creates an opportunity to explain here’s what the law is.”

Second, he said, it would teach people what to expect in court, with the possible side effect of some people deciding not to challenge their citations. [So I guess it IS about raising revenue - convince the public NOT to challenge their tickets. Hey the royal rulers of Mesa need your money!!!]

Not all hearings would be televised. They would all be taped, and then a Mesa Channel11 staffer would edit them for broadcast. [Great, and how much is that going to cost the taxpayers???]

Steve Wright, Mesa’s public-information director, said the editing could be done on a $55,000 piece of equipment that the city has yet to purchase. The money, he said, could come from private-sector Channel11 sponsors, perhaps aided by a grant from the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety.

He said he was skeptical of the idea until he sat in on some trials.

“I didn’t want to leave,” he said. “It was very interesting.”

In one case, he said, a woman successfully defended herself against a ticket because a process server had left the papers with an ex-boyfriend against whom she had a restraining order.

Wright said producing the shows would require about 40 to 50 hours a month, at an annual personnel cost of about $15,000. [Sounds like a waste of $15,000 a month of Mesa taxpayer money!!!]

Channel 11 doesn’t have the staff for that right now, Wright said, but the work could be done by freelancers or college-student interns. He expects the shows to begin sometime in 2013.

The plan would be to produce 12 shows a year. Each would boil about three days of hearings into a one-hour production, with each case being introduced by a narrator who would explain the law and procedures.

Wright said the city’s cable channel has a fairly broad audience, with about 40 percent of Mesa cable-TV viewers in a recent survey saying they watch at least once a week.

The channel has plenty of room on its schedule, Wright said, because there is not enough staff to produce a non-stop stream of original programming. Many programs are shown repeatedly.

He said the city would advertise the court show on its website and in fliers sent with utility bills.

Watching the trials, Wright said, “might make somebody a little more careful about how they drive.”