SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Spanish tourist protesting that she was ordered to pay a traffic ticket immediately sparked an investigation by Utah authorities that found local police targeted foreigners visiting Zion National Park to settle their driving infractions in cash.
The practice is illegal, Utah state auditors said in a report issued Monday. They said 138 traffic citations Springdale police issued from a larger book of tickets last year are missing together with an unknown amount of cash.
The Spanish tourist “was pulled over and told she had to pay on-the-spot” for a traffic violation last year, Utah State Auditor Auston G. Johnson said Monday. “She didn’t ask what would happen if she didn’t pay the fine. She just paid it.”
Springdale, about 250 miles south of Salt Lake City, is a gateway to Zion just outside the park’s main entrance.
The town police chief, Kurt Wright, issued a statement Monday saying his officers “no longer accept cash payments from foreign violators.”
Wright insisted his officers always gave tourists the option of paying a fine by mail. He said he believed his department had authority to collect on-the-spot cash from willing motorists who were “happy” to avoid the hassle of dealing with a ticket later. Wright said it was “extremely difficult” to collect fines from foreigners after the tourists return home, so officers took their money.
Johnson said the police department had no authority from court officials to collect any fines and failed to share the revenue with the state, courts or Washington County. The police chief is promising to make restitution for that omission, Johnson said.
The practice went on for years and violated the Utah constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the laws, Johnson said.
State auditors were unable to find 138 traffic citations in police or court records but know they are missing from a numerical sequence. Johnson said those tickets were marked from a special “L” series that Springdale police used for people who pay fines immediately.
Auditors did find records for 285 of the special tickets issued last year and traced the $11,640 in fine money to a town account — it should have been sent to the courts for redistribution.
In all, auditors believe Springdale police collected fines on 423 traffic tickets from the special series used for people who paid immediately. Johnson said 138 of the citations are considered missing because no carbon copies can be found in police or court records, yet the ticket numbers appear to have been used.
Johnson said his office has no way of determining how much cash is missing from the 138 tickets.
“They should be somewhere. They weren’t voided — they weren’t anywhere to be found, and we don’t know how much money they represented,” Johnson said.
Auditors can’t prove that any officers pocketed fine money, he said.
“That is one assumption you could make,” he said. “The other is they were used as warning tickets or lost. There is no explanation, and that is frustrating.”
Johnson added, “We’ll turn it over to the Washington County prosecutors, but I don’t know if they’ll have anything to prosecute.”
Wright didn’t return a phone message Monday from The Associated Press. He responded with a news release Monday and with an explanation incorporated in the auditor’s report.
The chief said he turned oversight of ticket books to an administrative assistant.
“We feel confident no criminal activity occurred,” Wright said.
