>>49933322Mayor: 'We Want to Make Sure the Road is Safe'
Her report caused a ruckus in Warren. Recently elected Mayor Jim Fouts, who promised reform if elected, called the ticketing "an unacceptable double standard."
"Citizens have to be treated fairly, and obviously police officers have to understand that they represent the law and they can't be above the law," Fouts told ABC News.
"We're here to enforce the law," he said. "We want to make sure the road is safe for the citizens. But we're not going to engage in trivial pursuit or technical 'gotchas' in order to make revenue."
Fouts hired William Dwyer, a veteran police official, as the city's new police commissioner. Dwyer had been on the job for five weeks when he told me the cops who didn't stop may have been going to the aid of another officer.
"It's not uncommon for an officer to hear a call for service to come out on a disturbance or family trouble. ... That's very common in law enforcement."
"Wouldn't they have their lights on?" I asked.
"Not necessarily. They would go as a backup," Dwyer said. "They don't necessarily have to have their lights and sirens on."
"But the tape showed cars doing it on the way back to the police station. Was there an emergency at the station?"
"I certainly can't justify officers going through a stop sign coming back to the station," Dwyer admitted. "Did some officers make mistakes? Perhaps so."
I also asked Dwyer about the thousands of tickets written by Kanapsky. "Doesn't that make it seem like this is just a moneymaking scam?"
Dwyer said no.
"When you are a traffic officer, that's your primary responsibility, to enforce the traffic code of the state," he said. "So it's not unusual for a traffic officer anywhere, in any department, to write 10 to 20 traffic violations a day, if not more."
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