Pine Lake, a town of about 800 residents some 10 miles east of downtown Atlanta, was the epitome of the age-old Southern ticket trap. However, it used computer technology to track its prey. The city raised 78 percent of its $1.1 million budget last year from traffic tickets - or put another way, the city pulled in a dollar from traffic tickets for every dime paid by residents in property taxes.
Pine Lake is not the only city in Georgia where traffic fines provide key revenue, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution study of city and county budget records. Statewide, there were 18 police departments that have operated in the black consistently since 1989, and several other metro Atlanta jurisdictions ranked high as vigorous traffic-enforcement towns.
But Georgia's undisputed traffic-ticket champion was Pine Lake, where enforcement on just one 1,500-foot section of road last year generated $860,000 worth of fines and fees. And a strong majority of the tickets were issued to African-Americans traveling through the predominantly white town.
City residents don't complain: the aggressive ticketing equates to low taxes and plush services. Residents don't even have to bag their leaves; a truck rolls by to vacuum them from the curb.
Drivers protest
Although residents love the arrangement, many motorists who pass through the town take offense. A protest encampment has attached itself to the traffic court. The district attorney was asked by black residents to investigate alleged racial inequities in the ticketing. And legislators have threatened to go after the city's charter.
The investigative package launched by the AJC into the Pine Lake ticketing situation is a perfect example of combining database research with traditional reporting to increase a story's impact and push for changes.
A state legislator offered the tip after introducing me to three citizen-activists who had set up a semi-permanent protest against Pine Lake officials for what they termed as predatory policing. At first glance, the 1998 city budget numbers that the protesters provided (and the city verified) were startling and the story was a natural. I wrote about the protest to get it on the record and started on a longer news-feature.
After the first report, I heard that our computer-assisted reporting editor, David Milliron, was digging into numbers concerning ticket traps throughout Georgia. We quickly married our efforts. Milliron's computer-based package provided the numbers I needed for authority and a yardstick for comparison's sake.
A strong majority of the tickets were issued to African-Americans traveling through the predominantly white town.
Milliron had been compiling data collected by Georgia's Department of Community Affairs. (Georgia has been tarnished in the past by ticket traps and the state compiles data on fines, forfeitures and court fees to keep tabs on those towns and counties that may be overzealous.)
With the records, we went back 10 years to show year-by-year statistical aberrations. Pine Lake turned out to be the poster child for aggressive, ticket-happy policing in Georgia.
Dicing the numbers
There were several ways to slice and dice the numbers - fines based on a per capita basis, fines as compared to a percentage of the police department's overall budget, fines as compared to the entire government budget, and so on. But no matter how we sliced the numbers, Pine Lake always came out on top.
The analysis gave us a benchmark: It showed the state average in per-capita fines was $35. Twenty-five cities collected twice that amount. But Pine Lake collected a whopping $1,055 per capita in 1998.
Originally Police Chief Mac McGlamery played down the issue of ticketing, saying his force was aggressive, but fair. When presented those figures, he kept saying "Are you sure? No. 1? In the state?"
Negotiating for data
To go deeper on the story, Milliron also negotiated for computerized ticket data from a number of police agencies. In Pine Lake's case, none of the police or city officials had the technical know-how to retrieve the data from their new computer system. The police chief said the agency had nothing to hide, and that Milliron could have the data if he could figure out how to get them out of the computer system.
So Milliron worked with the city's software vendor in South Carolina, who sent him a software upgrade necessary to write a report on the system, then export the data to diskette. Milliron performed the necessary software upgrades and collected all of the data in one afternoon at the police department. (He even showed the chief's secretary and court clerk how they could do the same for future requests.)
Now came the final data analysis. State records made it nearly impossible to break down who was being ticketed and for what offense. That's where the raw ticket data from the city of Pine Lake proved helpful. That data included the usual ticketing demographics such as age, sex, race, offense, date, time, fine amounts, issuing officer and even final disposition.
No tickets issued
It also showed that almost no tickets were issued for moving violations. That was too messy in court, the chief said. In fact, the department hasn't issued a speeding ticket since McGlamery took office in 1997. Instead, the 10-officer department targeted yes/no offenses like out-of-date license plates, no insurance, and no driver's license. And the fines meted out in the small municipal traffic court were much larger than fines for similar offenses in the neighboring cities and counties.
To aggravate matters, Pine Lake is predominately white, but 87 percent of those ticketed were black. That, however, may not be as sinister as it sounds, as the town is surrounded by almost an entirely African American population and a statistical count of cars found a 4-to-1 ratio of black drivers to white.
Also, the court disposition data - included in the department's ticket database - showed that blacks and whites fared similarly in court when facing similar charges.
Public responds
The articles drew an avalanche of e-mail and telephone calls. The city responded by saying it would try to be kinder and gentler but still firm - in how it deals with driving infractions.
The investigative package launched into the Pine Lake ticketing situation is a perfect example of combining database research with traditional reporting to increase a story's impact.
But there were more than just promises. The city also cut its police force in half and has replaced its white municipal court judge with a black woman. Also, the city has overhauled its fine structure and is vowing to sell the new expanded police department building.
The changes did not totally stop the controversy swirling around the tiny city. Protesters still seek the ouster of the city's police chief and demand that the city stop writing tickets on the busy street running on the city's southern edge. The city has refused to do that.
But as time has rolled by, the protests are less frequent.
Bill Torpy can be reached by e-mail at btorpy@ajc.com