(static of walkie talkie)
- [Voiceover] Officer Rickey Antoine is known
around Port Arthur, Texas as the man
who gave his own mother a traffic ticket.
She was driving 42 miles an hour
in a 30 zone out by the high school football stadium.
She didn't cook him chicken dinner
for the next couple months.
(slow-paced electronic music)
Antoine wears sports sunglasses
and drives a fuel black Dodge Charger.
Cameras peer out from the top of the trunk,
their lenses scanning license plates
in search of drivers who haven't paid their traffic fines.
License plate recognition software
is often touted as a way to catch terrorists,
dangerous fugitives on the run, and stolen cars.
But Port Arthur and many other departments
around the country use it for a less extreme,
but more lucrative purpose, to pull over people
who owe debts to the city municipal court, demanding,
in many cases, that they either pay up or go to jail.
The brochure that reached Police Chief Blanton's desk
in 2008 displayed a picture of Manhattan's Chrysler Building
lit up against the night sky.
The software the brochure advertised was called
the Mobil Plate Hunter 900 Series.
And it could read up to 1,500 license plate images
per minute across four lanes of traffic
and alert officers within milliseconds
if a vehicle is suspect.
The technology could aid law enforcement
not just with homeland security,
but also with stolen cars, Amber Alerts,
and wanted or missing persons.
The pitch gave Blanton another idea:
Why not give the device to his traffic unit
to catch people who had arrest warrants
for their unpaid tickets?
Typically, the people who didn't pay the city
the money they owed would only
be held to account if officers caught them
on a different driving infraction.
The police plate readers would allow the officer
to pull people over without any other probable cause.
The number of Port Arthur debtors in the county jail
had already started to surge, but with the advent
of the license plate readers, it exploded.
The amount the city spent on locking people up
jumped 175%, but at the same time,
revenue from fines rose by more,
from $1.2 million to $2.1 million.
In Port Arthur, the impact is especially stark.
The city of 55,000 is one of the poorest in Texas.
For many residents already struggling
to meet their obligations, traffic tickets add
yet another burden that may tip them
into further financial ruin.
Many end up behind bars.
For low-income hourly workers,
time in jail can cost them a job
and even if they don't lose their job, they lose wages.
Missing a few days of work can make the difference
between staying afloat and drowning in debt.
Traffic safety is equally important
for poor people and for people with money,
but traffic fines, as they're typically imposed,
inflict far more pain on poor people.
A recent Buzzfeed news investigation
found that some judges across Texas
routinely ignore basic state and federal laws
meant to protect people from getting jailed
simply because they're too poor to pay their fines.
And that's not the case in Port Arthur.
Municipal Judge Kermit Morrison
tries to help people struggling with their fines,
offering them community service
or payment plans that can run as low
as five dollars per month.
"Port Arthur's attempt to work with people is helpful,"
said Judith Greene, director of the New York-based
nonprofit policy research group Justice Strategies.
But even community service places a hardship on people
who may have low-income jobs that consume much of their time
and may have children to look after.
And it's a hardship that the wealthy,
who simply pay their fines, don't have to face.
As a result, she said, "Poor people go to jail
"and rich people walk."
Port Arthur's traffic enforcement frenzy
has begun to level off.
Fine collection had risen to three times higher
than it was before the traffic unit,
but nowadays, it's back down to merely double.
Jailing has dropped in the past 18 months too.
That may be because three of the six
license plate reader cars stopped working
within the past two years and the city
has been slow to replace them.
Another factor is that Antoine is
more of a figurehead these days.
He teaches driver's safety classes,
writes a column in the Port Arthur News
called Ask a Cop, and cohosts a weekly radio show.
All this leaves less time for traffic stops.
Despite his zeal for writing tickets,
Antoine said he takes no joy from hauling people
in poverty to lockup.
"You have a heart and you feel for those people," he said.
"The judge could charge a dollar, I don't care."
(slow-paced electronic music) (static of walkie talkie)