Elmwood Place Speed Cameras are Illegal: Scott Sloan and Mike Allen do Cincinnati justice as The Enquirer lays off 97 workers
“Elmwood Place is engaged in nothing more than a high-tech game of Three-card Monty,” Common Pleas Court Judge Robert Ruehlman wrote in his recent decision on speed cameras in that small Cincinnati village. “It is a scam the motorist cannot win.” With that court decision Judge Ruehlman invalidated the legality of speed camera usage in his village of 2000 residents. The speed cameras were simply money-making schemes created as yet another way to raise taxes on people who already pay too much—and Ruehlman did what he should have, which is remarkable in its rarity. But leading up to the judge’s decision was Scott Sloan and Michael K. Allen both of 700 WLW who covered this story for many months and applied pressure so that the review of the speed cameras would be addressed, because without their involvement as media personalities, Elmwood Place would still be engaged in the corrupt practice. For more elaboration, listen to the broadcasts from WLW below and grab a snack. They make for some good radio. Also, be sure to watch the news clips below for much more background information
Here is the case as it has appeared in USA Today:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/08/speed-camera-ruling/1974369/
For a radio host, it is difficult to show up for work in the morning coffee in hand and resist reading out of the newspaper. Making news and obtaining original sources is much more difficult than just providing analysis on what other reporters have obtained. In Cincinnati for Scott Sloan at 700 WLW his job is going to become much more difficult as The Cincinnati Enquirer has just let go of 97 of their workers, 1/3rd of their entire workforce, due to their poor numbers and lack of ability to change with the new media that is beginning to insert itself into the political scene. In that new media blogs like this one are doing the reporting newspapers used to be known for leaving special interests unable to sit on reporters to contain stories or tilt them in their favor. Independent reporters in new media are usually doing the task of journalism without any financial compensation so they are driven by passion which is very dangerous for the mechanisms of power that have made vast amounts of money off public scams. Since The Enquirer did not meet the challenges of new media and instead held on to their empire with a stubborn refusal to adjust, they are finding themselves on the verge of extinction. Scott Sloan who is part of the old media, but also the new, has gained a reputation for doing his own research and breaking stories without being tipped off first from the papers of Cincinnati. It is because of this tendency that the Elmwood Place story evolved into the ruling by Judge Ruehlman.
When I first wrote my book Tail of the Dragon which contains as one of its themes the tendency of law enforcement to unjustly pull over motorists for the sole purpose of issuing traffic citations my editor had some deep concerns about my statements in the novel. She found it appalling that Tennessee police for the Highway Patrol had quotas they were expected to achieve each month in order to be ranked as good officers deserving pay rates. The quotas traffic cops were expected to achieve were for the purpose of raising revenue off motorists using safety as an excuse, and that ruffled the feathers of my editor’s East Coast sensibilities. After I provided article after article from all over The United States about the police practice being wide-spread, she accepted my position reluctantly and by the end of the manuscript edit had turned into quite a rebel herself. The first run through the manuscript had nearly as much opposition as I received from education opponents when I first purposed locally that something was wrong with the salary structure of teaching positions and was the cause of the constant need for tax levies for school districts. Ironically, it was Scott Sloan who originally listened to me and broke that story which took on a life of its own and forced changes that otherwise would never have occurred. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. But my novel took a hard shot at the legal system behind revenue enhancement that most people just did not feel comfortable talking about just two years ago during the editing process. By the time the book was released in the fall of 2012, the political climate had changed and law enforcement had become even more arrogant in their grabs for more streams of revenue. It was around the time of my novel’s release that Elmwood Place and New Miami put up speed cameras to take pictures of unsuspecting vehicles and mail the tickets to violating motorists without even using a police officer in the traditional sense. Police had become so arrogant that they dropped the mask of justice completely in favor of cameras to do the work of revenue generation.
The questions my editor posed to me were due to the fact she had accepted law enforcement was always on the side of honesty and created laws on behalf of safety for all people. My position in Tail of the Dragon was that governments were using the revenue from speeding citations behind a mask of safety to create a hidden tax. This seemed unfathomable to her Massachusetts eyes until I provided a lot of testimony defending my position, the kind of information I obtained while researching the novel which ended up directly in the story. But the clarity of abuse which many have long suspected was never more apparent than when Judge Ruehlman delivered his scathing rebuke of the Elmwood Place traffic cameras. In the wake of his ruling the revenue collected thus far will now have to be returned putting the village in an even more embarrassing situation than what Arlington Heights had to endure when Scott Sloan and Brendan Keefe of Channel 9 News recently exposed the citation racket there as well.
My aim in writing Tail of the Dragon was that readers would begin to question the nature behind traffic citations as not being implemented for safety, but the cozy relationships behind insurance companies and government looking to pay for their inflated budgets at the expense of the motorist. The laws created are not for safety, but for the opportunity to create another revenue stream as lawmakers know that the laws are so ridiculous that nobody will obey, making citations easy to issue. So I am more than happy to see that Mike Allen and Scott Sloan have found traction on this issue and created lasting legal changes. And I am even more pleased to learn that there is a Judge in Robert Ruehlman who wasn’t afraid to put colorful language into his scathing rebuke, applying pressure to towns and villages all over Ohio to amend their scams against motorists with hidden taxation. As for the fate of The Enquirer, after the hit piece they did on me almost one year ago to the day, I will admit to a bit of joy in knowing that the paper is failing. I hate to see anybody lose their job, but when word came back to me at how Michael Clark was hailed as a hero for how he framed his article about me to the whims of school levy protestors, and many of those same 97 people now losing their jobs at the printing press laughed and giggled at my expense in their break room—I can promise that I won’t lose any sleep now that those same people will be on the unemployment line. Good riddance to your failed newspaper and the policies that put you there. Life goes on for the rest of us. Scott Sloan is making his own stories and is doing what media members should be without taking direction from The Cincinnati Enquirer. Mike Allen is continuing to show his resilience as a legal crusader much to the benefit of the public. And I am enjoying the sales from my new book that has been sold out at Amazon for over three weeks now. (YES IT’S AVAILABLE ELSEWHERE—TRY BARNES AND NOBEL IF AMAZON IS SOLD OUT—CLICK HERE) But Michael Clark, who wrote the hit piece on me one year ago, who once told me at a school board meeting that I should bring stories to him first instead of WLW because all they did was read on the air what he wrote in the paper—well, the results speak for themselves. Those 97 people probably wouldn’t have lost their job if you had done your job better Clark, and not been a lap dog for school systems. There are a lot of stories that need to be reported like the Elmwood Place story, and Scott Sloan is doing the work among others in new media. If The Enquirer had done its job and not leaned so far to the political left in a very conservative town, the paper might be adding jobs, instead of taking them away.
Have a listen to what Darryl Parks of 700 WLW said about “new media” and the tragedy at The Cincinnati Enquirer. He’s had his share of hit pieces done against him from that paper as well. Gotta watch who you piss on while climbing to the top. Because you’ll see them on the way back down.
Rich Hoffman
“If they attack first………..blast em’!”
