Archive for April, 2009

WTL iRANT FOR KIDS PROGRAM

Thursday, April 16th, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Join WTL's iRANT for Kids

Join WTL's iRANT for Kids

Calling ALL RANTer’s and radio stations: From April 5 til September 8 2009 WTL is forging alliances with local RANTer’s and radio stations across the country to promote its “iRant for Kids” radio contest.

If you hate (or love) traffic tickets, tell us about it - GIVE US YOUR RANT in the Comments section of the Rant Blog. We will forward your RANT to a partner radio station in your local area and you will be entered into a contest to win prize packages from sponsors working with your local WTL partner radio station. Your RANT could be read online and voted on by your community. If your RANT is chosen as the BEST RANT at the end of each month, you win! Listen to your local radio station to hear about the prize packages available in your area. If your station is not part of the iRANT for Kids program, call them and tell them they need to be. Radio stations can contact WTL’s media contact to set themselves up in the program.

WTL works with radio stations to identify a WTL supported “brain rehabilitation” related charity or something similar in the station’s local market. WTL donates 10% of all regular traffic citation revenue and up to 50% of all photo radar/red light camera citation revenue (if applicable within the jurisdiction) generated within each specific jurisdiction in which the station broadcasts to the selected beneficiary of the program.

PLEASE LIST YOUR CITY AND STATE/PROVINCE AT THE END OF YOUR RANT SO WE CAN SEND YOUR RANT TO YOUR LOCAL PARTNER RADIO STATION

Posted in RANT, WTL Charities

PLEASE HOLD MY BEER OFFICER………

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 | 4 Comments »

…..while I get my license for you. Have you ever had a thought like that? Lord knows I have from time to time. We all have a bad cop story to tell, one of your own perhaps, but most often something you heard from a friend about someone else’s friend etc., etc. Have you ever really put yourself in a police officer’s uniform and thought about what it’s really – really – all about? You may have given it a noble try but I guarantee you didn’t get close. As a former police officer and Founder, CEO/President of Web Traffic Law, I’ll tell you why I say that.

You know how you treasure your privacy, how important it is that no one looks over your shoulder while you’re working. And you know how agitated you get if an unwanted intrusion of your privacy comes along. Chances are you can get away from it or make it go away. And I’ll bet you’ve never walked into a room where no one was happy to see you. Uniform police officers make their living under those very adverse conditions every single day. When you see them driving around in their patrol cars and stare at them to see what they might be doing every other person who sees them is doing the same thing. That police car is a 4-wheeled fish bowl for all ten hours of their work day. Imagine everyone staring at you while stopped at a red light, while you walk anywhere (all the time), while you’re dealing with a motorist, even while you’re just cruising the neighborhood. Absolutely no privacy. In fact, severe scrutiny is the order of the day. Now add in all the calls you’re sent on where, at best, half the people are glad to see you and the other half are angry to see you. Or worse, everyone is unhappy to see you when you walk in, and they’re likely drunk or high to boot. That’s a normal day for uniform police.

Having personally experienced all of this and then some for 16 years as a police officer, I can tell you that circle-the-wagons mentality police officers have between themselves and the public is a well earned, but skewed, perspective. Web Traffic Law is committed to bridging that gap by educating its site visitors and clients about the realities of policing. You won’t find any wilful blindness or pandering to the cops here – if they’ve performed badly you and I will rant about it. And if they’ve performed well I will always offer a Beautiful Bouquet (my expression for praise). My vision is to evolve Web Traffic Law into North America’s premier resource for traffic court defenses and traffic enforcement knowledge. Your input – your rant – is an invaluable asset to all of us who seek justice in our legal system. So give it to me!!

Posted in Life in the Fish Bowl

CASH, COPS, AND COURTS

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 | 17 Comments »

Randy Hicks - CEO, Web Traffic LawSo here we are, one of the planet’s leading economies, with state of the art everything for our legal system. Ever wonder when you gave government the permission to place us under constant surveillance? Cameras transmit ethereal images of judges in the courtroom who mete out the law to criminals inside the jailhouse, cameras watch the main lobby in the courthouse where security screening is tougher than airports, cameras in the courtrooms watch us watching the judge, cameras watch us walking in the hallways and parking our cars – god I haven’t seen any in the bathrooms but I wonder if they watch me when I go pee?

As CEO and President of Web Traffic Law, it is my responsibility to watchdog traffic enforcement mandates. Recent additions to photo radar/red light camera enforcement mandates has led me to ponder the question of the ages: which egg or chicken came first? Cameras to keep us safe or cameras to make money from us? My answer is short and sweet – cash is king baby! High octane judicial photography, that you and I pay for by the way, descended upon us in 1990 for one reason - to rake in millions of bucks, dough, moolah, scratch, bread, loot, clams – CASH - generated by politicos’ who have come to see police services as their budgetary golden goose. I think the whole notion of pretending to use speed/red light cameras “in the name of the law”, as Dudley Doright would proclaim, is an insult to us and especially to the generations of men and women who built the foundations of our judicial system.

How do you feel when some police official tries to tell you the cameras are making the roads safer while he stuffs the record high enforcement stats in his back pocket? You believe him don’t you? He is a policeman because after all. Well guess what – the total number of traffic tickets issued has reached a record high every year for the past decade, and is about to increase exponentially with the red light cameras now issuing speeding tickets. If the cameras were so damn effective slowing us down and making the roads safer, how come there’s more speeding and more red light tickets than ever before? It sure isn’t because the motoring public is responding to the ever increasing presence of these infernal cameras. It’s because traffic enforcement mandates to the police service are demanding a record number of tickets be issued every year to fatten the police budget and leave city hall more cash for other branches.

By the way, when the province legislated a change in law enforcement revenue flow a few years ago, that is having it go straight to the municipality rather than to justice minister’s branch that dispersed it, I was on my soap box warning everyone to watch out for a dramatic increase in annual ticket production. The obvious temptation to political greed showed itself very quickly and here we are!

Our roads are no safer than before, speeding is about the same as always, drivers are now braking on green lights - wreaking havoc behind them – and our police service becomes ever more alienated from the people it serves as it takes the heat for someone else’s greed.

What to do? Send Web Traffic Law those tickets and watch our charitable donations convert government greed into community wellness.

Posted in "Big Brother" Cameras