PIERRE, S.D. (AP) - An Iowa border city hasn’t been deterred from issuing tickets to South Dakota drivers caught on speed cameras despite being blocked from accessing some driver information in a South Dakota database, Sioux City’s legal department said Thursday.
In what has become something of an inter-state chess match over access to driver information, Gov. Dennis Daugaard’s administration in January shut off the Sioux City Police Department’s access to South Dakota residents’ addresses in a database city police had been using.
But the move doesn’t seem to have discouraged ticketing from photo enforcement cameras. About 280 tickets were issued to vehicles registered in South Dakota in January and February 2016, compared to 267 during roughly the same period in 2015, according to the latest information provided by the city attorney’s office.
Daugaard’s office wants people to follow the speed limit, and the move was meant to bar Sioux City from accessing details in the state’s system, said Matt Konenkamp, a policy adviser to the governor.
“The goal is to get South Dakota out of the process,” he said. “We don’t like the process that they’ve created, we don’t think it’s constitutionally sound, and we don’t want to be a partner in it by readily sharing our data with them.”
Sioux City police have continued to issue citations without slowing down, Assistant City Attorney Justin Vondrak said. Police have other ways of researching driver information with “just a little bit of work,” he said, adding that he likely can’t reveal those methods.
“The intent of the governor of South Dakota was to prevent us obviously from issuing any citations for individuals who break laws within the city limits,” Vondrak told The Associated Press. “The city has taken steps to make sure that it is able to enforce the traffic laws within its jurisdiction by anyone who violates those laws. South Dakota drivers are not exempt from obeying the city’s traffic laws.”
South Dakota law is supposed to prevent other states or local governments from accessing residents’ driver information for the purposes of issuing such tickets. But Sioux City police last year said they were still able to get the necessary details from South Dakota, which doesn’t have red light or speed cameras.
South Dakota previously blocked Arizona-based Redflex Traffic Systems, which Sioux City contracts with for the cameras, from accessing information on the state’s residents. But Sioux City police Chief Douglas Young said in August that his department was still able to get the information because it is a law enforcement agency.
Though the Daugaard administration limited the information Sioux City police could access in January, the department could still access a driver’s name and information about their vehicle in the South Dakota system, Konenkamp said at the time.
If an officer in Sioux City - the redaction only targeted that department - is involved in a criminal stop, they could reach out to South Dakota’s dispatch center to get more information on a driver, Konenkamp said then.
Vondrak said the move is creating longer stops for South Dakota residents who are pulled over because officers have to call in every license plate. It may also create a safety issue in the future, he said.
“That’s why we’ve given them 24-hour, 7-day access to our dispatch center, and I would encourage them to use that in any situation,” Konenkamp said.
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