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Crown admits photo-radar defeat

By: Aldo Santin

Posted: 02/11/2011 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

David MacKay

A senior justice official has ruled out appealing a photo-radar ticket case that was successfully challenged in court last fall.

Michael Mahon, the assistant deputy attorney general, said the government stood no chance of winning an appeal. His interpretation is that the case was lost because the Crown's main witness -- the mobile camera operator -- didn't know where an area school was located.

Mahon doesn't believe the case sets a precedent, but the man who won his case last fall disagrees.

The hearing in October involved a $216 speeding ticket given to David MacKay, who was accused of speeding through a school zone on north Henderson Highway.

He argued he wasn't speeding and he didn't know there was a school in the area. The mobile camera operator testified he didn't know where it was, either.

School zones are one of the areas where mobile photo-radar cameras can be legally set up.

John G. Stewart School is part of the Knowles Centre complex for troubled children and young teens. The building complex is located at the end of a long, winding roadway in the heart of a 10-acre wooded lot off Henderson Highway, between Bonner and Knowles avenues.

Mahon said all mobile camera operators have since been instructed on where the school is located. He doesn't expect any other tickets to be tossed for similar reasons.

However, MacKay believes Mahon has misread the hearing magistrate's statements.

"Not knowing where the school was located wasn't the key issue," MacKay said. "The judge said the real issue was that the school wasn't near the school zone and that's why I won."

In a transcript of the October hearing, justice of the peace Weldon Klassen states: "I find it's not properly a school zone, based on the fact that the school is not adjacent to the signage.

"You simply can't put a school zone sign up there if the school's not adjacent to the sign... now having said that, then the (camera operator) wasn't properly deployed in the area, so I do have to dismiss the charge."

MacKay said he's working with the anti-radar camera lobby, Wiseupwinnipeg, and they're helping another motorist who has a Feb. 15 hearing for a speeding ticket in that same north Henderson location.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 11, 2011 B3

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