August 22, 2024 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Hugh Eastwood and Bevis Schock are civil rights lawyers in St. Louis. They filed suit in three separate cases. All three cases were heard by the Missouri Supreme Court in one mammoth morning argument. Here they are to tell their story.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Red light camera
tickets came into being during the early two thousands. The
public was outraged and irritated because the cameras eliminated the
human element. And there are a bunch more reasons why
all of us as taxpayers were annoyed and irritated by
the red light camera ticket. You Eastwood and Beavis Shock
(00:33):
decided to do something about it. There are civil rights
lawyers in Saint Louis, and they filed three separate cases,
all three of which were heard by the Missouri Supreme
Court in one big morning argument. Here's Beavis Shock and
You Eastwood to tell their story.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I got into civil rights law twenty five years ago.
Early in my practice. I ended up working on a
civil rights case on a referral. I felt great about it.
I won my first civil rights trial, and I decided
that I would vastly focus on that in my practice,
which I have done.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
So. The red light camera tickets cranked up.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
And when they first started it was just a little
small program, and the aldermen, I don't think when they
passed it they had any idea what it would turn into.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
But in Saint Louis they were issuing these tickets left
and right.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
And I thought that this idea of giving people tickets
for running through a red light by a tenth of
a second, which a cop would have just ignored, shortening
the yellows, which they were doing to increase the revenue
early morning.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
People coming home from coffee or going to coffee. No
right on red.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
There's nobody within two miles right. The intersection is completely unattended.
So the person goes ahead and goes right on red
even though it's a no right on red, and here
comes a red light camera ticket. No officer would bother
with anybody, or if the officer did bother might pull
the person over and say.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Hey, you know you're not supposed to do that. I'm
not going to give you a ticket. There's nobody around.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
It took the human judgment part out of it, which
I didn't like.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
And then.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
What happened was a radio personality named Charlie Brennan got
one of these tickets, and he called me during a
break in the show and briefly explained, and I said,
I will do it on the condition that we do
the entire representation on the air, and he.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Said, okay. I stayed pulled over.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
We did the first interview right there, and every single
interview I did with Charlie started with the same question, Charlie,
you have a right to a confidential relationship with your attorney.
Would you like to waive that today because there are
hundreds of thousands of people listening. This is the number
one station, Saint Louis, the Mighty Mocks km O X,
(03:02):
the blowtorch of the Midwest. And and he said, yes,
I would be this, I'd like to give up my
right to confidentiality.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
And then we discussed right there like he was.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
He was a brand new client, and I agreed to
represent him in the case because I didn't like the
way it smelled.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
At the end of the day, it was my nose
that sold me this is wrong and it's bad.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
And then we ended up with three or four clients,
and we ended up with three cases at the Supreme
Court of Missouri and we won them all.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
After about four.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Years, I'd say that it struck me as fundamentally unfair.
And that was a sentiment I noticed a lot of
people having. When we would go on the radio with
our client, who was the radio host, the switchboard would
(03:57):
light up when this topic came up, and I think
it just struck a court that this was wrong, it
was unfair, and it offended a lot of our fundamental
notions of how the relationship between the community and the
police should be and also how our court system should work.
(04:19):
And remember, most people only interact with the court system
in municipal court.
Speaker 5 (04:24):
On a traffic ticket.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
I mean, most people aren't getting arrested for sure serious crimes,
which is a good thing. Most people aren't being hauled
into court and being sued on some complicated theory, which
again is a good thing. So most people don't have
much litigation in their life, and if they have a
negative interaction with the government, it's going to be for
something pretty minor. They're going to get a ticket and
have to go to municipal court. So it's really important
(04:48):
for the relationship between the government and the community for
that process to be seen as fair and also for
it to be seen as pursuing justice rather than for
profit motive. And so there's a phrase which is not mine,
which is taxation by citation, and that was what was
(05:11):
going on here. And we knew that this was a
revenue grab because one of the arguments the cities had
in these cases is that we need this money. And
that's what struck me as unfair. This wasn't about a
legitimate exercise of the police power to promote traffic safety.
In fact, if they was about traffic safety, they would
(05:33):
care about who the driver was after all.
Speaker 5 (05:36):
Here they didn't care. We're just going to go after
the owner.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
One of the things in the red light camera cases
was that people who were not driving were getting tickets
for running a red light.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
It was that it was the owner would get the ticket,
the owner of the car because it.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Was done by license plate, and then who owned that car.
That violates some basic principles of how our criminal law works.
Many of the criminal rights, but not all of them,
are in the Fifth and sixth Amendments. Your right to
remain silent, right to be informed of the nature and
(06:15):
cause of the accusation against you, the right to be
confronted with the witnesses against you.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
These are all.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
In those amendments. But interestingly, the right to be presumed
innocence is not in those amendments, but it's deeply ingrained
in our case law and our system of prudence from
the common law of England. We felt that one of
the effects of these cases was to help make those
(06:44):
rights further enshrid in the law.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
We had cases from different cities in our region too.
Of the cases we were in a defensive posture, right
defending someone who owned a car from a red light ticket,
or from us in Charlie Brennan's case, a speeding ticket
detective with the camera.
Speaker 5 (07:06):
The other case we were offensive.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
We were seeking to get an injunction to shut down
the City of Saint Louis camera program. And everyone showed up,
including the private camera company. They had their own lawyers,
very good lawyers, lawyers that I respect, very talented, skillful,
(07:28):
well paid lawyers.
Speaker 5 (07:30):
The debt collectors who were who were.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Trying to chase people down for these tickets, they had
their own lawyers. Everyone was there. There were there were
a lot of lawyers on the court. But yes, that
this was not about money for us. This was not
a class action. This was really shutting down a system,
and we were we.
Speaker 5 (07:50):
Were able to do that.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
I won't say in candor that we were a little
nervous because after this wonderful, unprecedented experience of having three
Missouri Supreme Court opinions issue in one day all in
your favor, we thought, I mean, but as good as
it gets, we had some nerves because we read a
(08:14):
kind of narrow path for these cities to come back
and have another bite at the apple with these red.
Speaker 5 (08:20):
Light camera programs, and so we kind of thought it.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
Might be like whack them mole, But so far in
the Saint Louis region that has not been the case.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Let me add that I think we knew when we
were going through those several years that if we won,
it would help our business, help our business more than
all the advertising in the world. In fact, being on
the Charlie Brennan Show, this radio show that has a
huge following, you really can't pay for advertising like that.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
No, you can't pay for publicity like that or advertising
like that. When we come back, more of this not
merely amusing piece because it's making us all smile listening
to it, but it gets you a bit angry too.
And this is where our great legal system comes into play,
and great lawyers like you Eastwood and Beavi's shock their
(09:13):
stories continue the red light traffic caper. Here on our
American stories, and we continue with our American stories and
(09:42):
the story of the two men who ended red light
traffic cameras in their state and took it to the
state's highest court. Their argument about why these red light
traffic tickets were against the law and an abuse of power.
Let's return to Beavish in You Eastwood for more of
(10:03):
their story.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
One good favorable article in the paper about a news
story about a win does more than all the buses
and all the billboards in the world, because it helps
not only get one's name in the public eye, so
people call for help, but when one walks into a
judge's courtroom and the judge knows, hey, this guy got.
Speaker 6 (10:27):
Me out of my red light camera ticket, that helps.
And it doesn't mean the judge isn't going to follow
the law and rule as he or she sees fit.
But it does mean that our papers will be read
with care.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
So we got something out of it.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
And to this day people walk up to me on
the street and say, aren't you Beavis.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Shock didn't you do that red black camera thing?
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yes, thank you so much. That's such a good thing
you did for this community. That's a big deal.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
And the problem with the whole system, of course, is
that usually the fines were around one hundred bucks sometimes
a little more. And the problem is it's just not
worth it for most people to fight to take time
off from their jobs or their lives over.
Speaker 5 (11:17):
One hundred dollars.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
That can be a lot of money to some people,
but it's not enough money to mount a serious legal defense.
And so there was this very clever thing that the
red light camera companies, which were for profit companies, were doing,
which was pitching these very cynical strategies to municipalities as
(11:39):
a way to raise money. And we knew these companies
were corrupt because one of the companies, called Redflex, had
executives go to prison. They also had officials in Chicago
and other places get investigated by the federal DOJ.
Speaker 5 (11:56):
And go to prison. So there was something that was
really offensive about this.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
The other thing is that it was really, I guess
what you could call a cross ideological sense of outrage.
Most people driving around living their lives thought that this
was unfair and that was wrong. And we know from
policing that when policing works, it's because the police have
(12:21):
trust with the community, and that usually involves old fashioned
things like going out and being a regular beat cop
in the community.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
It could be running traffic.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
I suspect people don't like getting speeding tickets or traffic tickets.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
But at the same time, if.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
This person is actually in the community and as someone
who is building trust with the community, that's policing that works.
And so there really wasn't any evidence that red light
cameras were having much of a traffic safety function a
lot or the only evidence was city officials saying, you
know what, yep, in our view, they promote traffic safety,
(13:00):
which we just thought was cynical. In one of these cases,
we actually went on to have a civil trial against
the city, and when the jury saw the revenue that
the city was making the spike and revenue in association
with in fact issuing warrants, they found in favor of
our client and gave her one hundred thousand dollars. So
(13:21):
I guess the final thing it was an opportunity to
go all the way to the Missouri Supreme Court, and
at the time, as a newer lawyer, this was a
great case to work on. And I also knew that
if I really just fouled this whole thing up and
really did a terrible job for my client, which was
not my goal. That at least the worst case, my
client would only be out one hundred dollars, so that
(13:44):
was about the limit of my malpracticed exposure as a
young lawyer.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
I would add that it was perverse that people who
were prying to be good citizens suffered more than scoff laws,
And the reason for that was that if people didn't pay,
all they got were a few letters saying pay.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Nothing happened to them.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
There was no warrant for their arrest, there was no
nothing on their driver's license, nothing happened. So most citizens.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Really believe in the rule of law.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
We all understand once that disappears, a lot of our
liberties will disappear. And good citizens therefore paid the one
hundred dollars, and the bad citizens didn't and nothing happened
to them, so bad conduct was rewarded, and the working
class person with good intentions who understands the importance of
(14:42):
the rule of law is dramatically affected, and the scoff
law schmuck neighbor gets the ticket and doesn't care, and
that contributes to a decay in our community's ability to
live together in a civil manner.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
And that was a part of it that really bothered me.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
I would also say, and we got into this in
our case involving the city of Saint Peter's this excerpt
of Saint Louis. The cynicism I think of the city's
arguments in favor for these programs was detected by the
(15:21):
jury and the city's arguments were rejected. So, for example,
the city said, well, this is how we pay.
Speaker 5 (15:29):
For seniors to have transportation, this.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
Idea being that if somehow you shut down this red
light camera program, you're gonna leave you know, impoverished grandmothers
on the side of the road, unable to travel.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
That was just polony.
Speaker 5 (15:44):
Guess what.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
Those programs existed beforeward, like cameras, and they exist today.
I suppose there's political support for them, and it provides
a service to members of the community, and that's a
legitimate government function. But the point is is, don't act
like we're attacking grandmothers. The cynicisms of the of the
arguments in favor of these programs, I think is what
(16:08):
helped doom them. There really was not political support for
these It was taxation by citation, which is an improper
use of the police power. We should not be writing
tickets to people or issuing fines to generate revenue. And
(16:29):
so what that judgment does is force not just Saint
Louis County, but cities and counties throughout the state of
Missouri and perhaps nationally because it's applying the First Amendment.
First Amendment doesn't change, but you cross the state line.
What it does is force them to go through their books,
(16:50):
examine their laws, and rewrite that. And I know that
Babis knows firsthand from a conversation he had with a
lawyer who practiced.
Speaker 5 (17:01):
On the government side, that's exactly what they're doing. And
that's a good thing.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
I mean, the idea that you'd ever mix for profit
business and criminal law enforcement or traffic enforcement is nuts, right,
because the incentives are all perverse.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
An interesting question is what will happen in other states.
Does this radio broadcast affect any decisions by lawyers to
do this attack these systems. One of the things that
might happen is people might listen to this and some lawyer,
and it needs to be a lawyer with some experience
and appellate work, who's argued at the Supreme Court of
(17:41):
the state before, who's ready to go.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
It's got to be somebody and the big.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Law firms will never do it right because they are
part of the establishment. They love that money coming into
the government because they've got government contracts to write up
the law on bond deals for.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Municipal buildings and things.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
So it takes a certain level of craziness to want
to do something like this. When we think about America,
John Maynard Casey said, we're all dead in the long run. Well,
my kids aren't going to be dead, and their kids
aren't going to be dead, and their kids' kids aren't
going to be dead.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
They're going to be alive.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
And what a raw deal would we give to our
descendants if we let America go, if we let the
delicate balances of the Constitution and the principles of the
Declaration be set aside because they're not convenient right now,
or because people fail to recognize how well they work
(18:41):
and what they mean. And I understand that the war
never ends, but to be able to work on a
case like the red light camera cases is an opportunity
to live in to those beliefs that we have a
duty to our descendants who we don't know yet, and
both my own Jean Pool, my own kids and their kids,
(19:04):
but everybody else's kids too. George Washington didn't have any kids.
That didn't matter to him. It doesn't matter whether you
do or not. We're part of of a larger community here.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
And great job on that piece by Greg Hengler, and
a special thanks to you Eastwood and to Beavis Shock.
What a great story. Those two guys are both civil
rights lawyers in Saint Louis, and look they're right. I mean,
in the end, the country is formed because of those
general warrants and rits of assistance that allowed British troops
to just come in and search away in American homes.
(19:35):
It was literally the founding reason and the impetus for
the Declaration and for everything else that happened in the Constitution.
And this was, as the lawyer said, taxation by citation.
Government is here to serve us, We're not here to
serve the government. Great work by both you Eastwood and
Beavis Shock. For all the lawyer jokes that you've heard,
(19:58):
this is a nation of laws, and when you you
need one, you want a good lawyer to defend your
civil rights. A great story about the rule of law
and so much more here on our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories. Red light camera
tickets came into being during the early two thousands. The
public was outraged and irritated because the cameras eliminated the
human element. And there are a bunch more reasons why
all of us as taxpayers were annoyed and irritated by
the red light camera ticket. You Eastwood and Beavis Shock
(00:33):
decided to do something about it. There are civil rights
lawyers in Saint Louis, and they filed three separate cases,
all three of which were heard by the Missouri Supreme
Court in one big morning argument. Here's Beavis Shock and
You Eastwood to tell their story.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I got into civil rights law twenty five years ago.
Early in my practice. I ended up working on a
civil rights case on a referral. I felt great about it.
I won my first civil rights trial, and I decided
that I would vastly focus on that in my practice,
which I have done.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
So. The red light camera tickets cranked up.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
And when they first started it was just a little
small program, and the aldermen, I don't think when they
passed it they had any idea what it would turn into.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
But in Saint Louis they were issuing these tickets left
and right.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
And I thought that this idea of giving people tickets
for running through a red light by a tenth of
a second, which a cop would have just ignored, shortening
the yellows, which they were doing to increase the revenue
early morning.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
People coming home from coffee or going to coffee. No
right on red.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
There's nobody within two miles right. The intersection is completely unattended.
So the person goes ahead and goes right on red
even though it's a no right on red, and here
comes a red light camera ticket. No officer would bother
with anybody, or if the officer did bother might pull
the person over and say.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Hey, you know you're not supposed to do that. I'm
not going to give you a ticket. There's nobody around.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
It took the human judgment part out of it, which
I didn't like.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
And then.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
What happened was a radio personality named Charlie Brennan got
one of these tickets, and he called me during a
break in the show and briefly explained, and I said,
I will do it on the condition that we do
the entire representation on the air, and he.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Said, okay. I stayed pulled over.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
We did the first interview right there, and every single
interview I did with Charlie started with the same question, Charlie,
you have a right to a confidential relationship with your attorney.
Would you like to waive that today because there are
hundreds of thousands of people listening. This is the number
one station, Saint Louis, the Mighty Mocks km O X,
(03:02):
the blowtorch of the Midwest. And and he said, yes,
I would be this, I'd like to give up my
right to confidentiality.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
And then we discussed right there like he was.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
He was a brand new client, and I agreed to
represent him in the case because I didn't like the
way it smelled.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
At the end of the day, it was my nose
that sold me this is wrong and it's bad.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
And then we ended up with three or four clients,
and we ended up with three cases at the Supreme
Court of Missouri and we won them all.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
After about four.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Years, I'd say that it struck me as fundamentally unfair.
And that was a sentiment I noticed a lot of
people having. When we would go on the radio with
our client, who was the radio host, the switchboard would
(03:57):
light up when this topic came up, and I think
it just struck a court that this was wrong, it
was unfair, and it offended a lot of our fundamental
notions of how the relationship between the community and the
police should be and also how our court system should work.
(04:19):
And remember, most people only interact with the court system
in municipal court.
Speaker 5 (04:24):
On a traffic ticket.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
I mean, most people aren't getting arrested for sure serious crimes,
which is a good thing. Most people aren't being hauled
into court and being sued on some complicated theory, which
again is a good thing. So most people don't have
much litigation in their life, and if they have a
negative interaction with the government, it's going to be for
something pretty minor. They're going to get a ticket and
have to go to municipal court. So it's really important
(04:48):
for the relationship between the government and the community for
that process to be seen as fair and also for
it to be seen as pursuing justice rather than for
profit motive. And so there's a phrase which is not mine,
which is taxation by citation, and that was what was
(05:11):
going on here. And we knew that this was a
revenue grab because one of the arguments the cities had
in these cases is that we need this money. And
that's what struck me as unfair. This wasn't about a
legitimate exercise of the police power to promote traffic safety.
In fact, if they was about traffic safety, they would
(05:33):
care about who the driver was after all.
Speaker 5 (05:36):
Here they didn't care. We're just going to go after
the owner.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
One of the things in the red light camera cases
was that people who were not driving were getting tickets
for running a red light.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
It was that it was the owner would get the ticket,
the owner of the car because it.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Was done by license plate, and then who owned that car.
That violates some basic principles of how our criminal law works.
Many of the criminal rights, but not all of them,
are in the Fifth and sixth Amendments. Your right to
remain silent, right to be informed of the nature and
(06:15):
cause of the accusation against you, the right to be
confronted with the witnesses against you.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
These are all.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
In those amendments. But interestingly, the right to be presumed
innocence is not in those amendments, but it's deeply ingrained
in our case law and our system of prudence from
the common law of England. We felt that one of
the effects of these cases was to help make those
(06:44):
rights further enshrid in the law.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
We had cases from different cities in our region too.
Of the cases we were in a defensive posture, right
defending someone who owned a car from a red light ticket,
or from us in Charlie Brennan's case, a speeding ticket
detective with the camera.
Speaker 5 (07:06):
The other case we were offensive.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
We were seeking to get an injunction to shut down
the City of Saint Louis camera program. And everyone showed up,
including the private camera company. They had their own lawyers,
very good lawyers, lawyers that I respect, very talented, skillful,
(07:28):
well paid lawyers.
Speaker 5 (07:30):
The debt collectors who were who were.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Trying to chase people down for these tickets, they had
their own lawyers. Everyone was there. There were there were
a lot of lawyers on the court. But yes, that
this was not about money for us. This was not
a class action. This was really shutting down a system,
and we were we.
Speaker 5 (07:50):
Were able to do that.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
I won't say in candor that we were a little
nervous because after this wonderful, unprecedented experience of having three
Missouri Supreme Court opinions issue in one day all in
your favor, we thought, I mean, but as good as
it gets, we had some nerves because we read a
(08:14):
kind of narrow path for these cities to come back
and have another bite at the apple with these red.
Speaker 5 (08:20):
Light camera programs, and so we kind of thought it.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
Might be like whack them mole, But so far in
the Saint Louis region that has not been the case.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Let me add that I think we knew when we
were going through those several years that if we won,
it would help our business, help our business more than
all the advertising in the world. In fact, being on
the Charlie Brennan Show, this radio show that has a
huge following, you really can't pay for advertising like that.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
No, you can't pay for publicity like that or advertising
like that. When we come back, more of this not
merely amusing piece because it's making us all smile listening
to it, but it gets you a bit angry too.
And this is where our great legal system comes into play,
and great lawyers like you Eastwood and Beavi's shock their
(09:13):
stories continue the red light traffic caper. Here on our
American stories, and we continue with our American stories and
(09:42):
the story of the two men who ended red light
traffic cameras in their state and took it to the
state's highest court. Their argument about why these red light
traffic tickets were against the law and an abuse of power.
Let's return to Beavish in You Eastwood for more of
(10:03):
their story.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
One good favorable article in the paper about a news
story about a win does more than all the buses
and all the billboards in the world, because it helps
not only get one's name in the public eye, so
people call for help, but when one walks into a
judge's courtroom and the judge knows, hey, this guy got.
Speaker 6 (10:27):
Me out of my red light camera ticket, that helps.
And it doesn't mean the judge isn't going to follow
the law and rule as he or she sees fit.
But it does mean that our papers will be read
with care.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
So we got something out of it.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
And to this day people walk up to me on
the street and say, aren't you Beavis.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Shock didn't you do that red black camera thing?
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yes, thank you so much. That's such a good thing
you did for this community. That's a big deal.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
And the problem with the whole system, of course, is
that usually the fines were around one hundred bucks sometimes
a little more. And the problem is it's just not
worth it for most people to fight to take time
off from their jobs or their lives over.
Speaker 5 (11:17):
One hundred dollars.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
That can be a lot of money to some people,
but it's not enough money to mount a serious legal defense.
And so there was this very clever thing that the
red light camera companies, which were for profit companies, were doing,
which was pitching these very cynical strategies to municipalities as
(11:39):
a way to raise money. And we knew these companies
were corrupt because one of the companies, called Redflex, had
executives go to prison. They also had officials in Chicago
and other places get investigated by the federal DOJ.
Speaker 5 (11:56):
And go to prison. So there was something that was
really offensive about this.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
The other thing is that it was really, I guess
what you could call a cross ideological sense of outrage.
Most people driving around living their lives thought that this
was unfair and that was wrong. And we know from
policing that when policing works, it's because the police have
(12:21):
trust with the community, and that usually involves old fashioned
things like going out and being a regular beat cop
in the community.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
It could be running traffic.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
I suspect people don't like getting speeding tickets or traffic tickets.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
But at the same time, if.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
This person is actually in the community and as someone
who is building trust with the community, that's policing that works.
And so there really wasn't any evidence that red light
cameras were having much of a traffic safety function a
lot or the only evidence was city officials saying, you
know what, yep, in our view, they promote traffic safety,
(13:00):
which we just thought was cynical. In one of these cases,
we actually went on to have a civil trial against
the city, and when the jury saw the revenue that
the city was making the spike and revenue in association
with in fact issuing warrants, they found in favor of
our client and gave her one hundred thousand dollars. So
(13:21):
I guess the final thing it was an opportunity to
go all the way to the Missouri Supreme Court, and
at the time, as a newer lawyer, this was a
great case to work on. And I also knew that
if I really just fouled this whole thing up and
really did a terrible job for my client, which was
not my goal. That at least the worst case, my
client would only be out one hundred dollars, so that
(13:44):
was about the limit of my malpracticed exposure as a
young lawyer.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
I would add that it was perverse that people who
were prying to be good citizens suffered more than scoff laws,
And the reason for that was that if people didn't pay,
all they got were a few letters saying pay.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Nothing happened to them.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
There was no warrant for their arrest, there was no
nothing on their driver's license, nothing happened. So most citizens.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Really believe in the rule of law.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
We all understand once that disappears, a lot of our
liberties will disappear. And good citizens therefore paid the one
hundred dollars, and the bad citizens didn't and nothing happened
to them, so bad conduct was rewarded, and the working
class person with good intentions who understands the importance of
(14:42):
the rule of law is dramatically affected, and the scoff
law schmuck neighbor gets the ticket and doesn't care, and
that contributes to a decay in our community's ability to
live together in a civil manner.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
And that was a part of it that really bothered me.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
I would also say, and we got into this in
our case involving the city of Saint Peter's this excerpt
of Saint Louis. The cynicism I think of the city's
arguments in favor for these programs was detected by the
(15:21):
jury and the city's arguments were rejected. So, for example,
the city said, well, this is how we pay.
Speaker 5 (15:29):
For seniors to have transportation, this.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
Idea being that if somehow you shut down this red
light camera program, you're gonna leave you know, impoverished grandmothers
on the side of the road, unable to travel.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
That was just polony.
Speaker 5 (15:44):
Guess what.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
Those programs existed beforeward, like cameras, and they exist today.
I suppose there's political support for them, and it provides
a service to members of the community, and that's a
legitimate government function. But the point is is, don't act
like we're attacking grandmothers. The cynicisms of the of the
arguments in favor of these programs, I think is what
(16:08):
helped doom them. There really was not political support for
these It was taxation by citation, which is an improper
use of the police power. We should not be writing
tickets to people or issuing fines to generate revenue. And
(16:29):
so what that judgment does is force not just Saint
Louis County, but cities and counties throughout the state of
Missouri and perhaps nationally because it's applying the First Amendment.
First Amendment doesn't change, but you cross the state line.
What it does is force them to go through their books,
(16:50):
examine their laws, and rewrite that. And I know that
Babis knows firsthand from a conversation he had with a
lawyer who practiced.
Speaker 5 (17:01):
On the government side, that's exactly what they're doing. And
that's a good thing.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
I mean, the idea that you'd ever mix for profit
business and criminal law enforcement or traffic enforcement is nuts, right,
because the incentives are all perverse.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
An interesting question is what will happen in other states.
Does this radio broadcast affect any decisions by lawyers to
do this attack these systems. One of the things that
might happen is people might listen to this and some lawyer,
and it needs to be a lawyer with some experience
and appellate work, who's argued at the Supreme Court of
(17:41):
the state before, who's ready to go.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
It's got to be somebody and the big.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Law firms will never do it right because they are
part of the establishment. They love that money coming into
the government because they've got government contracts to write up
the law on bond deals for.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Municipal buildings and things.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
So it takes a certain level of craziness to want
to do something like this. When we think about America,
John Maynard Casey said, we're all dead in the long run. Well,
my kids aren't going to be dead, and their kids
aren't going to be dead, and their kids' kids aren't
going to be dead.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
They're going to be alive.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
And what a raw deal would we give to our
descendants if we let America go, if we let the
delicate balances of the Constitution and the principles of the
Declaration be set aside because they're not convenient right now,
or because people fail to recognize how well they work
(18:41):
and what they mean. And I understand that the war
never ends, but to be able to work on a
case like the red light camera cases is an opportunity
to live in to those beliefs that we have a
duty to our descendants who we don't know yet, and
both my own Jean Pool, my own kids and their kids,
(19:04):
but everybody else's kids too. George Washington didn't have any kids.
That didn't matter to him. It doesn't matter whether you
do or not. We're part of of a larger community here.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
And great job on that piece by Greg Hengler, and
a special thanks to you Eastwood and to Beavis Shock.
What a great story. Those two guys are both civil
rights lawyers in Saint Louis, and look they're right. I mean,
in the end, the country is formed because of those
general warrants and rits of assistance that allowed British troops
to just come in and search away in American homes.
(19:35):
It was literally the founding reason and the impetus for
the Declaration and for everything else that happened in the Constitution.
And this was, as the lawyer said, taxation by citation.
Government is here to serve us, We're not here to
serve the government. Great work by both you Eastwood and
Beavis Shock. For all the lawyer jokes that you've heard,
(19:58):
this is a nation of laws, and when you you
need one, you want a good lawyer to defend your
civil rights. A great story about the rule of law
and so much more here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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