Do Police Officers Get Tickets?

Undercover Brother

Yes!  Even on-duty and off-duty police officers in marked and unmarked patrol cars aren't getting out of paying the fines for red light camera tickets. Maryland police jurisdictions are holding their officers and other emergency workers personally liable for tickets they receive unless they can prove they were responding to legitimate emergencies at the time.

Four Montgomery County Maryland police officers sued their department over speeding tickets and lost before the state's highest court, in a decision issued late last month. The ruling from the Maryland Court of Appeals was on a technical issue — whether the county had given the officers enough time to contest the tickets — but the effect of the decision holds police throughout the state accountable for following what the judges called "the rules of the road" like any other licensed driver.

Police union leaders say that rules requiring lights and sirens when responding to emergencies aren't always practical, or prudent. For example, cops don't speed to bank robberies or burglary calls with lights flashing and siren wailing, to avoid alerting the criminals they're coming, but they still need to get there fast.

A former homicide detective recalls getting nailed by the cameras while responding to murder scenes in his unmarked Chevy Lumina, and going to court to plead his case. He said most officers simply pay the fines rather than risk an internal investigation and questions about driving techniques that if not illegal, don't always conform to the letter of departmental rules.

Read more on the Maryland Police "No Break for Cops Caught on Camera".