San Bernardino to dismiss tickets in light of traffic signal error

By Andrew Edwards
[BYSOURCE]Staff Writer
[BODY]SAN BERNARDINO -- Yoli Catalano paid nearly $450 after receiving a ticket based on photo evidence that she ran a red light.

Catalano's predicament may seem straightforward. Pay the ticket and move on. But there's a twist.

After paying her ticket, Catalano, a San Bernardino resident in her seventies, found out that the traffic signal at the crossing wasn't set up properly because the yellow light interval was off by a fraction of a second, meaning that she and other drivers had less time to react to by the time the red light gave the sigbal to stop.

"It was yellow, and immediately, when I went in to the intersection the flash was on," Catalano recalled. "I thought, 'Geez, that was fast. It couldn't have been for me.'"

But it was. Catalano's ticket claimed she ran a red light at the intersection of Ninth Street and Mount Vernon Avenue on Oct. 21.

San Bernardino Police spokesman Capt. Scott Paterson said authorities will not collect fines from people who received tickets while the yellow light's timing was off.

"While it's still a violation, in fairness to people, we need dismiss these tickets," Paterson said Wednesday. "When we're off, we're off. We need to fix it up."

In regards to people like Catalano, who have already paid, Paterson said there will be an avenue to seek refunds. He did not have access to specifics late Wednesday and pledged to supply details today.

Catalano said that after spending money on the fine and traffic school, her son told her about a television news report regarding the yellow light problem at the intersection where a red light camera took her picture.

San Bernardino Police confirmed in a Channel 9 (KCAL) new story aired Dec. 1 that the yellow light internal at Ninth and Mount Vernon was one-half second too short.

"It's a trap," Catalano said. "My son is a police officer in Huntington Beach and he said that's a trap. Those things are money makers."

Police told the TV station that the error was corrected on Nov. 18. That's nearly one month after Catalano was accused of running a red light at the intersection.

Los Angeles County faced a similar issue in 2003 when a red light camera system at an East Los Angeles intersection snapped photos of drivers when the light was still yellow.

A judge then reversed more than 2,000 convictions and ordered at least $500,000 in fines to be refunded, according to a 2003 article in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.