Speed camera officer clocking drivers while hidden in the woods: I-Team

PENINSULA, Ohio (WJW) – The FOX 8 I-Team has found police officers in one local town going to an extreme to clock drivers with speed cameras.

We obtained a picture of a Peninsula police officer hidden by trees in the woods, so we investigated.

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The photo of the officer with a speed camera behind a tree is also generating strong reaction from drivers.

Michael Pitzo once got a Peninsula speed camera ticket that should have gone to another driver. Now, he sees this.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. I would say they’re kind of like hunting instead of policing. That’s how I’d put it,” Pitzo said.

Newburgh Heights Mayor Trevor Elkins runs a private company overseeing the Peninsula speed camera program. We asked him about officers clocking traffic from the woods.

“Why is that appropriate to combat speeders?” the I-Team asked.

“The police officer is positioning himself where he can monitor the road most effectively,” Elkins said. “It is within the law in the state of  Ohio. It’s no different than when an officer pulls his car into a driveway where a motorist can’t see them.

In fact, we checked. We wondered if the state has any regulations on how officers hide themselves when clocking drivers. Either for traffic stops or speed camera tickets.

The Ohio Attorney General’s office and the Ohio State Highway Patrol did not know of any restrictions.

We also turned to Ohio Representative Tom Patton. He’s pushing for new laws to regulate speed cameras, even requiring them to be checked every month to make sure they’re accurate.

“That’s not law enforcement, that’s a cash grab,” Patton said.

Patton wants speeders stopped by police. Instead, drivers get speed camera tickets in the mail, sometimes weeks later.

“We should always have the focus on true, genuine law enforcement,” Patton said. “Not camera companies because right now in Ohio it’s spreading like a disease.”

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“Everything comes through the court,” Stow Municipal Court Administrator Rick Klinger said.

Stow Municipal Court recently ordered the village of Peninsula to start filing all speed camera tickets.

Just since June, Peninsula has filed more than 3,000 tickets. A judge will sort out complaints drivers have about tickets and how speed was clocked.

“If if its an issue that they want to have a hearing on, certainly, they’d file and we’d have a hearing,” Klinger added.

“Amazing they have to go through all this trouble to earn revenue,” Pitzo said.

Drivers we’ve met don’t support speeding, but they wonder how many people slow down after getting a ticket in the mail from an officer hidden by trees in the woods.

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