Weeks before reports of bogus tickets issued by a Baltimore City traffic agent were made public, Department of Transportation officials brushed aside an internal report recommending the accused agent be fired.
Sources inside the DOT confirmed an internal report was prepared by former safety chief Kenneth Strong in late September of 2007. The report allegedly identified dozens of bogus tickets written by an agent identified only as H. West ? and recommended the agent be terminated.
The report was given to top DOT officials, including Chief Alfred Foxx, but went unheeded ? with West put on administrative duties. The agent allegedly denied writing any fake tickets.
DOT officials did not return phone calls or e-mail requests for comments by press time. Strong has since left the agency and could not be reached for comment.
But the report?s timing makes clear that city officials failed to act quickly on claims of fake tickets. Only after stories began appearing in The Examiner on Oct. 15, 2007 ? following complaints from residents ? did Mayor Sheila Dixon ask Inspector General Hilton Green to investigate.
After a preliminary probe, Greene suspended the agent without pay last November, claiming at the time “more action” would be taken.
However, the inspector general?s investigation is ongoing, according to officials at his office.
The claim that an internal probe had failed to prompt DOT officials to act jibes with allegations made to The Examiner by a former agent that key officials were aware of errant ticket writing before the scandal became public.
After DOT officials acknowledged the fake tickets, another former agent, Sherrell Keene-el, told The Examiner she had filed a “95 report” with the department in 2005 accusing a colleague of writing tickets for legally parked vehicles.
“She was walking down the street, jotting down numbers, writing the tickets and throwing the tickets away even though the vehicles weren?t in violation,” Keene-el said in November.
However, city officials denied the report existed.
Former Baltimore resident Patricia Lee, who moved to Jacksonville, Fla., in 1997, received a $1,100 bill for a ticket issued to her expired Maryland plates in 2002. In March, however, an e-mail from investigator Al Perrine in the inspector general?s office told Lee that “the rightful owner of the parking citation” had been found, and that her fines and fees were null and void.
“At least I?m off the hook,” Lee said in phone interview Tuesday, “but I still think they need to help others.”
