Ticket Demon : LAPD’s Traffic Citation Champ Doesn’t Rest on Laurels, or Anything Else

The officer who issues more speeding tickets than any other in the Los Angeles Police Department is so much into the job that he doesn’t take coffee breaks.

Last year, Motorcycle Officer Kelly S. (Clickety) Klatt even shelled out $950 for his own high-tech radar gun.

“I am probably the hazardous motorist’s worst dream,” said Klatt 34, who works out of San Pedro but covers virtually all of southern Los Angeles. “I’ve got my own radar equipment, I personally believe in the importance of speed enforcement and I’m a workaholic.”

Los Angeles police administrators recently tallied traffic citations issued citywide during one 19-day work period and discovered that Klatt had ticketed 435 violators--a record. Last September, he and his partner established another Police Department benchmark: in a six-hour period near the USC campus, they each handed out 61 jaywalking tickets.

The Police Department’s 320 motorcycle officers traditionally write more tickets than other members of the 7,000-member force. But on any given day, while most “motor cops” pick off between eight and 10 errant drivers or pedestrians, the department’s own Baron von Richthofen will shoot down more than 20.

Often as not, the good-natured Klatt, a one-time motor home salesman, leaves them willing to accept their punishment.

Klatt, who earned his nickname because of the taps he wears on his boot soles, usually cites only excessive speeders and other flagrant violators, then patiently explains to them the reasons why they have been ticketed. If they are passingly courteous, or if they don’t hold to some silly excuse, such as “I was in a hurry to get to the gas station because I’m running out of gas,” he often avoids ticketing them for additional minor offenses. Take Aaron A. Sam, 18, of San Pedro. On Thursday morning, Klatt pulled him over on John S. Gibson Boulevard near Los Angeles Harbor for allegedly doing 55 m.p.h. in a 40 m.p.h. zone. Sam, who was on his way to have his car’s smog device checked, took the speeding ticket in silence; Klatt decided not to cite him for failure to wear his seat belt.

Was Sam impressed at having been stopped by the Police Department’s ace ticket writer, a veritable, sometimes benevolent, celebrity in black leather?

“Oh, sure,” Sam said, before driving away.

Other motorists have actually talked their way out of Klatt tickets.

“I stopped a guy on a motorcycle not too long ago on Harbor Boulevard for being 11 (m.p.h.) over the limit. He had the ‘Harley’ jacket, the beard, the long hair--the kind of guy you’d think a motor cop would love to cite,” Klatt said. “He tells me he’s a longshoreman and he’s on his way home because his 6-year-old kid is hurt. I told him to be careful, and then I let him go. I have kids, and I’d probably be in a hurry too. He was so stunned that I think he was still scratching his head as he was leaving.”

Working with the department’s preeminent ticket writer is, in itself, a challenge, according to Klatt’s partner since 1985, tobacco-chewing John Nichols. Beyond the fact that Klatt never takes a break (“I haven’t been to Winchell’s in two years,” Nichols, 34, lamented), there is the fact that Klatt is a perfectionist.

Check out Klatt’s leather boots and holster, Nichols suggests--buffed each day to a dull gloss. Notice the britches--you could cut paper with those creases. And what about that badge, Clickety? Must you polish it to the point that your partner has to wear sunglasses just to glance in your direction?

And do you really have to write out your speeding tickets with a Cross pen?

“The guy’s like this off duty, too,” Nichols said, teasing his partner. “It’s unbelievable.”

Klatt grew up in Bellflower and studied to become a pharmacist for two years in college before dropping out to help his former father-in-law sell motor homes and heavy trucks. But after starting his own motor home rental agency, Klatt grew bored. He joined the LAPD in 1976 and won a highly coveted spot as a motor officer in December, 1982.

Less than six months later, as he was driving his police motorcycle down Pacific Coast Highway, a truck pushed Klatt into a parked car. He suffered leg injuries and needed more than 100 stitches to sew up his chin. A jagged scar remains.

But the accident and another one that occurred more recently has hardly deterred Klatt from his mission to write tickets, Nichols and other officers said.

“If you believe in what you do,” Klatt said, “it’s hardly work. It’s mostly fun.”