Union Fights Back For 4 Cops Caught Up In Ticket Writing Scam
No surprise here.
The Fraternal Order of Police, the union which represents Chicago police officers is strongly backing its four members who’ve been implicated and recommended for termination for their alleged involvement in the Mark Geinosky ticket writing scam says the Chicago Tribune.
Geinosky is the man from the South Suburbs who kept on getting parking tickets for places he had never been. Geinosky got 24 tickets in all and beat every last one, but media scrutiny from the Tribune’s Problem Solver column and Geinosky’s law suit has put the jobs of several cops at risk.
Three of the four cops have hearing dates on December 9th. The fourth one is fighting in Afghanistan and won’t have his hearing until he returns stateside.
Here’s the Tribune’s update on the case, “Problem Solver: Ticket case keeps on ticking.”
Links are not working Mike
This issue wouldn’t have happened in the first place if the CPD were Required to Carry Autocites like 95% of the rest of the Ticket writers in this city.
It would also help stop CPD from issuing tickets on Stolen Vehicles.
In this day and age…Handwriting Tickets for parking violations is archaic and obsolete.
This may be a first, but I 100% agree with DoR Employee.
Thanks DoR!
Links fixed.
Dozens of tickets, a majority at the same time, what coincidence…
CPD officers would gladly use the automated/electronic ticket writers if we were given them. And I absolutely could not agree more that it is absurd that any citation or report is still written on antiquated carbon copies. However, the equipment provided to us by the Department and the City are absolutely substandard. Like so much other City property and infrastructure, our equipment is provided by companies with lucrative city contracts. These companies care less about the quality and durability of their products than they do about cashing the city’s checks. CPD’s cars are broken and well beyond work-out, our computers and printers are broken in every station, the stations’ ceilings leak & the basements flood, the computers in the car are basically paperweights, HVAC systems in the stations are not maintained and our radio communications are changed little from the 1980s.
Ultimately, your average traffic and/or parking violator stands to receive nothing but advantage from a system that still relies on handwritten citations and manual input of them.
Police officers have a lot of gear to keep track of. Obviously car with car keys, beat tag (ask someone else), radio, star, name tag, equipment on their belt, the car computer, etc. Not too mention, there is a safey issue because you may need both hands in case of the unexpected.
Mike…while I agree that Officer Safety is the most important thing…most of the time a Cop writes a Parking Ticket…they are safe inside their vehicle with the engine on and the doors closed.
And another good thing about the Autocites is the simple fact that the Officer that uses it can NOT change the Date or Time stamp.
No ‘early’ street cleaning tickets.
And you can’t ‘lose’ the carbon copy…it hits the Server the after you process the citation….and is viewable online within 3 days.
Now…I’m not saying the Coppers should Photograph everything like we do at Revenue….but a Picture helps prove that the vehicle was actually present with the ticket was written.
DoR-
It is my recollection that AutoCITEs cost somewhere in the vicinity of $6000 (maybe more).
From a cost standpoint, I don’t see how outfitting every single police officer with one of these makes fiscal sense when the city already has a half billion dollar operating budget deficit.
3k actually Mike.
And we do not have 9k+ Police officers on the street doing nothing but looking for parking tickets to write.
Probably have around 500 Cops on the Medical just this month alone…plus probably about 400 Coppers that have House Mouse positions inside the stations that never cause them to work outside in a squad car….unless they are running to get the LT/Capt/DC/CO’s dry cleaning….then there are the Tactical Units that are busy doing buy and busts or other HIDTA type jobs….and the Detective units that actually are only out on Specific Jobs…or the Sgt’s and LT’s and Capt’s and Inspectors that are actually looking at Cops to write up for various reasons.
They could have 50 to 60 per district…..Sgt or Lt grabs anyone that ‘requests’ a parking ticket book and issues them the Autocite from its charger/download station…with spare paper and envelopes.
They want to do street cleaning or rush hour or city sticker tickets?
They want to wander around the Gold Coast or the Loop and write parking tickets? Autocite…not handwritten.
They want to do Movers or ANOV’s? Different Ticket book.
DoR-
Now that you explain the logistics–about having communal AutoCITEs which would be checked out for cops doing traffic enforcement duties–I am on my way to being convinced of your concept.
But shouldn’t cops have ticket books on them just in case they need to write a ticket? Or is ticket writing so far and few between that its really not done by most cops anymore?
Mike….
Police Officers writing parking/compliance tickets is actually a rare occurrence in most areas of the city.
Districts like 20 and 17 and 24…where there is really No Violent crime to speak of….the cops write tickets every day to keep from being bored.
Districts like 16 or 23 or 19….are more hit or miss….Street Cleaning and Rush Hour not withstanding.
I was in 016 last week…not only do the Cop’s up there not write tickets…I discovered that the Cops in that district also don’t know some of the restrictions that the City Enforces and ended up getting a ticket for them.