Citations send drivers to faraway courts

Some judges are more likely to impose heftier traffic fines.

BY CARA ROBERTS MUREZ

Karl Van Zandt is still stewing about what happened to him a few weeks ago when he was pulled over by a Marion County sheriff's deputy. Van Zandt was cited after he sped past an erratic driver on Highway 22 between Stayton and Salem. He thought he deserved a warning for the traffic violation. He is less happy about being ordered to appear in Woodburn Justice Court, about 20 miles north of Salem on Interstate 5. There are two courtrooms of the East Marion County Justice Court that are much closer to his home in Salem and closer to where he received the traffic ticket. They are on Lancaster Drive in Salem and in Stayton. Faced with driving to Woodburn and losing valuable work time, the self-employed environmental consultant wrote a check and gave up the chance to defend himself in court. "I always treat people fairly in my dealings," Van Zandt said. "I thought I was treated unfairly." Van Zandt was ticketed last month during a two-weekend saturation patrol involving the Marion County Sheriff's Office traffic team and other deputies and agencies. The areas involved were on Highway 22, Lancaster Drive and Silverton Road. Marion County deputies referred all of their citations to the Woodburn Justice Court. In the past several years, it has been common for deputies to send alleged violators to court in Woodburn, regardless of where drivers lived or where they were cited. Marion County statistics show that the judge at Woodburn Justice Court, Jan Zyryanoff, is more likely to impose the full traffic fine. Her counterpart, Judge Steve Summers of the East Marion Justice Court, is more likely to reduce fines or dismiss them. The Marion County Sheriff's Office traffic team gets some of its operating money from the fines generated by traffic citations. Some drivers, such as Van Zandt, think that creates the potential incentive for deputies to send cited motorists to a court where a heftier fine is more likely. Marion County Sheriff Raul Ramirez disputes that, saying the issue is about drivers' accountability, not money.

"For a citation to just be dismissed, what message is that sending to the individual," Ramirez asked. "Our focus is traffic safety, reducing motor vehicle accidents, slowing people down, reducing fatalities." Summers said he fines motorists for many driving offenses but routinely dismisses some fines if drivers are in compliance by the time they appearance in court. Justices can only reduce fines slightly when convicting someone of a violation. So Summers dismisses them altogether when he thinks drivers don't deserve the minimum penalty. "I don't think I should take $178 from someone if they forgot to put the proof of insurance in the jockey box," Summers said, or because they were too nervous to find the paperwork when stopped. Summers dismissed or reduced 43 percent of traffic team citations in his Stayton courtroom and 45 percent in his Lancaster courtroom between Dec. 1, 2002, and Nov. 30, 2003, according to county's statistics. Zyryanoff dismissed 22 percent during that same period. Ramirez said it came to his attention several years ago that citations were more frequently dismissed by Summers. Some deputies began sending people to Woodburn instead of the Stayton and Lancaster courtrooms, where Summers presides. Deputies can send cited drivers to any court in the county. Ramirez said he has left it up to their discretion. In the year between Dec. 1, 2002, and Nov. 30, 2003, traffic team deputies sent 1,016 violators to the East Marion branches. During the same period, they sent 2,221 people to the Woodburn court. Dismissing citations tells violators that they can just get away with it, Ramirez said. He thinks that all law enforcers need to send the same message to violators. He's had conversations with Summers about it but knows it's up to the judge to make his own decisions. Summers, the East Marion judge for 16 years, said he strongly believes law enforcement should send drivers to the closest magistrate. Because he also gets the citations from the city of Stayton to fill out his caseload, Summers said, he didn't realize the majority of sheriff's office traffic team citations were being sent to Woodburn. He handles about 1,000 tickets per month. Justice court judges mostly hear traffic cases, but they aren't the only courts with traffic jurisdiction in Marion County. Summers said he does what he thinks is right. "The penalty should not be based on revenue," Summers said. "It should be based on the offense, a person's driving record and other factors." He used to send people to seat-belt class instead of fining them. He stopped that practice because of changes in the law last year.

"Most people, the only contact they're going to have with the criminal justice system is the traffic court," Summers said. "I think it's important they feel that they got a fair shake." Since the traffic team was formed a decade ago, the deputies' primary job has been to patrol the county, citing people who violate traffic laws. The sheriff's office is considering expanding its threeperson traffic team to eight in the next few years. Ramirez thinks that the traffic team has made a difference but that it is still understaffed. "The traffic team could go away tomorrow," Ramirez said. "Do you think motor vehicle accidents would decrease? No. They would increase." Summers and Zyryanoff have no quibble with each other about their differing philosophies. Zyryanoff said she doesn't compare notes with Summers or discuss fines with the sheriff's office. She nearly always imposes a fine if someone enters a no-contest or guilty plea but often reduces the amount of the fine. She dismisses citations for failure to carry proof of insurance if the cited person brings that proof to court. She will not dismiss citations for failure to carry vehicle registration. She deals with about the same number of citations as Summers - 800 to 1,200 per month. "I don't think there's any two judges who do anything the same," she said. Despite any tendency by other members of the traffic team, Deputy Steve Polanski said he sends people to the court that's closest to a person's residence and rarely to the Woodburn court. Team officers don't often give warnings, Polanski said. They each write about 10 to 15 tickets per day. There is no way to track the dismissals individually, he said, because they don't become part of a driver's record. That means a person continually cited for equipment problems might never have to pay a fine. Polanski said he would rather see a reduction in the fine for the first-time offender so that the citation becomes part of the record. He points to the effect of crashes, in both fiscal and emotional terms, as a reason to hold people accountable. In 2002 in the Marion County patrol area, 14 people died, 35 suffered serious injury and 451 sustained property loss to motor-vehicle crashes. That directly cost people and government more than $19 million, according to a county traffic team study. Where the county's traffic team sends ticketed drivers to court has been a hot topic in a recent meeting of the Board of Law Enforcement Services. County commissioners, the sheriff and the judges discussed the practice, traffic team revenue and the issues of fairness and consistency for county residents. Commissioner Janet Carlson was at three board meetings that had the subject on the agenda. She said she thinks laws should be enforced consistently throughout the county and state.

"Once people are cited for something, it's not fair that some people pay and some people run off and don't pay," Carlson said. Commissioner Sam Brentano said he understands the perspective of both judges. He supports any proposal that gets more police cars on the road but doesn't think the size of a fine or the number of citations should be the concern of the deputy. "I want them to be there," Brentano said. "I don't want their concern to be financing their viability rather than protecting the public." By the February meeting, the sheriff independently decided to direct his staff to cite people to the nearest court. Ramirez said he didn't know why that didn't happen in recent saturation patrols. Van Zandt, 43, is in favor of deputies having a continued presence to deter traffic violations. But he opposes saturation patrols because he thinks it takes away an officer's ability to make independent decisions about who should be cited. He thinks the sheriff's office is stacking the deck in its favor to increase revenue to fund positions. He hopes that in the future, deputies will give out more warnings and cite people to the nearest court. "Afford them the opportunity to make their case or statement against what they're accused of. You're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty," Van Zandt said. "When they have you appear in a court far away, economics come into play."