Speeding tickets issued in St. Albert aren’t likely to be tossed out of court due to a lack of radar or laser testing.
Operators using radar and laser here in St. Albert test their equipment every day.
Last month, the news broke that the Ontario Provincial Police and Regina Police Services have stopped testing radar units with tuning forks that have been especially calibrated for the purpose.
But those hoping that a new defence might be possible in the face of this city’s rigorous speed enforcement program, those speeders are out of luck.
St. Albertan speeders face potential tickets through the city’s municipal enforcement program and the local RCMP.
The city’s photo enforcement is actually done by laser, rather than radar. The RCMP uses both radar and laser equipment to check speed.
Stu Fraser, the peace officer program supervisor for the City of St. Albert, said municipal enforcement uses laser. So does Global Traffic Services, which provides photo speed enforcement for the city.
“With the change to Global as our service provider we ditched photo radar and we are now exclusively in our photo set ups photo laser,” Fraser said.
Regular maintenance is carried out, both to satisfy manufacturer’s specifications but also to satisfy the provincial Crown prosecutor’s office.
Testing is done daily, he said.
“They have to do it daily, in fact that’s one of the questions that the court has, did you test it before and at the end of the shift,” he said. While Fraser hasn’t been trained on using laser units, he said when he was doing radar, judges would dismiss the tickets if you hadn’t tested the unit with a tuning fork.
The tuning forks are calibrated and certified for court purposes, he said.
Cpl. Tim Gaultois, with the St. Albert RCMP Traffic Services Unit, said the RCMP here use both laser and radar units.
Those units are tested daily.
“Always, it’s always tested,” Gaultois said. “We always test our equipment. It’s tested before we use it and it’s tested after we finish using it every day, whether it be radar with tuning forks specifically designed for speeds on a K band … laser is tested by distance, so we go out with a tape measure.”
An RCMP officer would test the radar or laser unit they were planning on using that day at the beginning of their shift, he said. If at the end of the shift the unit isn’t working, any tickets from that day would be tossed out.
But don’t count on that happening, Gaultois said.
“That never happens because it’s always working, but we make sure it’s working,” he said.
