Learning how to stop … going to River Forest
Dear fellow Oak Parkers:
What you’ve heard is true. The River Forest red light ticket process is a waste of your time. You will not be found innocent so just pay the ticket. That $100 will spare you a folksy homily from former Maybrook Judge Perry Gulbrandsen about the rigidity of Illinois traffic law. (He suggested I learn how to stop and also likened traffic enforcement to conception: You can’t be a little pregnant and you either fully stop or you don’t!) Paying the ticket will also spare you the silliness of participating in an artificial and rigged game. As Gulbrandsen told us, you can pay the fine or seek redress in the Cook County Courts — where it’ll cost $85 to file. Ha ha.
When I called to complain about the ticket last month, Village Administrator Eric Palm encouraged me to contest it. That’s why we have a process, he said. My wife and I received a pair of tickets within a two-week span at Lake and Harlem and we paid the first citation right off. No doubt we rolled through the stop.
But the second citation was way more questionable and, I thought, a bad ticket. I don’t think a human police officer would have issued it, and I thought a human adjudicator might agree.
Not so much. Gulbrandsen is there to earn his $300 fee per hearing, after all. And forget about the small army of village employees and police officers crowding the room. Who’s gonna pay them?
So save yourself the trip and the hassle and just cough up the dough. Render unto Caesar his car tax.
I know, however, that Eric Palm reads these letters because he mentioned one of them when we spoke. In fact, he indicated the woman who wrote it had listed her home and was leaving town, so her threats to avoid River Forest businesses were just so much hot air.
Ignoring his dismissal of a critical female letter writer (and for that matter Gulbrandsen’s little-bit-pregnant quip), I do wonder if Palm and other River Forest officials have considered the PR dimensions of their aggressive traffic enforcement regime. These are picayune tickets, the kind I would expect from banana republic ‘burbs like Stone Park or Melrose Park, and they really are going to make me rethink how much time and money I spend in the village.
As I told Gulbrandsen, I’ll consider learning how to stop but it likely won’t be in River Forest.
Brett McNeil
Oak Park
