Hundreds of speeders off hook due to county police device problem

Poof. That is the sound made last week by 264 speeding tickets, every last one of them dropped because of an inspection glitch involving some of the gizmos Glynn County police employ to clock vehicle speeds, according to the county manager’s officer.

The county announced that this was the number of tickets that will be dismissed as a result of lapsed certifications on radar and LIDAR speed-checking devices used by county police. The lapse in required certification on these devices occurred from March 31 to June 2.

County police detected the lapse June 2 and notified Glynn County Solicitor General Maria Lugue that same day, Lugue said. Lugue is the four-term elected official who prosecutes traffic citations at the Glynn County Courthouse.

The county Police Department immediately removed all devices with lapsed certifications and began an audit of tickets issued based on information officers obtained from uncertified devices.

Lugue will dismiss all such citations that have yet to be resolved, the county manager said. Any fines already paid on the affected tickets will be refunded.

Lugue said the certification lapse also would negate any additional charges that followed a traffic stop based on speeds checked by an uncertified device. She used as an example a person cited for a suspended license after being stopped for excessive speeds clocked by an uncertified device.

“I would have to drop that charge too,” she said.

As a former U.S. marshal and deputy director at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, Glynn County Manager William Fallon made resolving this issue at the county Police Department a priority, county spokeswoman Katie Baasen said.

The dismissed fines could represent thousands of dollars in lost revenue.

“It is a high priority for Mr. Fallon and of the utmost importance,” Baasen said. “We’re definitely going to make sure we have some things in place to ensure that this does not happen again.”

Radar and LIDAR devices are required to be inspected on a regular basis to ensure they are operating at optimum efficiency when used by officers to detect driver speeds.

Once a device passes an annual inspection, it receives a compliance certification to authenticate its accuracy.

Radar devices detect speeds based on radio waves, whereas LIDAR devices detect speeds via light waves or laser.