A Ticket or a Warning? Why It’s Often a Judgment Call

A comment by a California Highway Patrol officer in a recent column that he might not issue a ticket when he could, depending on the circumstance, drew some angry response.

“I think it’s outrageous,” one caller complained, “that whether you get cited depends on which officer sees you.”

But Officer Rich Obregon said discretion is an important part of CHP work and absolutely necessary to getting the job done.

“We’re all trained the same at the academy,” he said, “but an officer has a lot of leeway in the field.”

Although every officer will cite a driver for speeding down the freeway at 90 mph, personal judgment comes into play when they’re dealing with, say, a rolling stop at an intersection.

“If there’s never been an accident in the area, there’s not much traffic and the person isn’t being inattentive,” Obregon said, “I’d probably just give a warning because the activity isn’t going to be a safety hazard. If, on the other hand, it’s an intersection that kids cross to go to school, well, that’s going to be an important violation.”

Individual judgments, he said, are sometimes affected by such factors as whether the setting is urban or rural and the importance of a specific incident compared to things demanding the officer’s attention.

“Sometimes writing a citation will take time that could prevent the officer from responding to other calls that are real hazards,” Obregon said.

But he adamantly denied what he described as two common misconceptions: Younger, less experienced officers don’t necessarily issue more citations, he said, and, no, officers do not have quotas.

“We joke about that one,” he said. “Like, who’s going to win the microwave this month?”

*

Another CHP officer, Bruce Lian in San Juan Capistrano, recently called to issue a plea. When traffic lights at an intersection go out, as some did during recent rains, he said, please stop anyway before entering the intersection.

“We’re having a lot of problems when we have blacked-out intersections,” Lian said. “The law requires people to stop when signals are out, just like they were stopping at a four-way traffic sign. We’ve had some officers almost getting killed” while directing traffic.

Since 1972, according to state statistics, 50 CHP officers have been killed in the line of duty. That’s an astonishing number, but only a third of the number of Caltrans workers killed during the same period: 145.

“They’re on the freeways outside their vehicles,” CHP spokeswoman Margaret Magner said of both groups. “It’s a significant problem.”

*

And, finally, this from Roberta Webb of Anaheim, who felt moved to write after seeing an item in this column about the 75-cent toll for a one-mile stretch of the Foothill Corridor. The amount of the toll was set through “value pricing.”

Under that system, the toll is determined not by the length of a route but by how much time a driver saves in taking it.

“This question and your answer reminded me of a TV advertisement about salsa that was made in New York City instead of the salsa made in the West,” Webb wrote. “One of the characters said of the N.Y. stuff, ‘Get a rope.’

“I say, ‘Get a rope.’ I have paid, for decades, to improve highways, streets, freeways, etc. Where has that money gone to? It will be a cold day in, uh, Southern California before I pay a fee, of any amount, to use a street, highway or freeway. . . . P.T. Barnum would be proud of the guys that established toll roads.”