Every Educator Should Fight Their Red-Light-Tickets

Well, at least if you live in Suffolk County, and not because you’re innocent.

Being a living, driving inhabitant of a densely populated suburb of a world-class city, I have received several red-light-tickets (RLTs) during the past five years. And I’ve always paid them over the internet, without complaint…except for the one that I got this August. The video was borderline, and I thought it would be a solid opportunity to see what the RLT “contesting” process looks like in Suffolk County. Which is what I did, this past Wednesday.

The purpose of this piece is not about the validity of my case (spoiler alert: I was liable) or my sentiments about RLTs (spoiler alert: I don’t think they work particularly well outside of their revenue ...). Instead, it’s about the judge who handles RLT cases in Suffolk County, and why he has a lesson or two for educators.

To get at what I’m saying, let’s recap my day to the point of his arrival in his courtroom. When I arrived at the traffic violations department, I signed in and put my name on a list. My decision to come early was rewarded with an early spot on the docket. I then went to a holding area where I sat until 9 AM. At 9 AM, all RLT cases were collected from the holding area and moved to a special courtroom just for RLT cases. We then sat there for another 40 minutes until the clerk read us a brief preamble and the judge entered.

And here’s where lesson 1 for educators comes in: It’s always possible to be a human being in an inhuman situation. I’m not going to say that I was psyched to have sat in two different rooms for almost an hour before the main event doing next-to-nothing, but I was probably among the better dispositioned in the crowd. There was a lot of audible grumbling behind me about “fairness” and “unconstitutionality” and the resentment of being expected to be on time while then being made to wait for the judge. This background disagreeability din only grew in volume as the time without judge increased. To the point that by the time he came in, several people were not shy about hiding their dislike. So the judge walked into a crowd that was probably as skeptical (if not more so) of him as any class of students that I’ve ever worked with were of me. And what did he do? He proceeded to treat everyone in the courtroom like a human being. He relayed the history of red-light laws and the traffic ordinances that govern his rulings. He answered a series of frequently asked questions. He gave everyone in the courtroom the chance to ask any questions that they had before he started proceedings for the day. He commiserated with a roomful of plaintiffs by explaining that he had just paid his own, ninth, RLT. He used humor wherever he could to soften the impact of the work he was about to do.

He treated everyone with humanity and respect.

He didn’t have to do this. A judge holding court is in a pretty powerful position. He could have simply launched into the docket, done the bare minimum of explanation that he was legally required to do, and allowed everyone who was coming before him to continue to feel like the system they were participating in was treating them like something other than humans. But he didn’t. He chose a different route, and I’ll suggest that the choice he made had a tangible effect on how his plaintiffs behaved.

But here is lesson 2: He controlled his courtroom. Almost immediately, he noticed someone was on their cellphone while he was talking, and he firmly handled it (side-note: Have you ever heard a gavel being really and truly gaveled in person? It’s shockingly loud). Not rudely, but firmly. And when the gentleman who was heard two spots before my turn decided to try his best Jack Nicholson impression, the judge shut it down as effectively as I’ve ever seen a student tantrum short-circuited by the actions of a teacher. All the while, the judge ran a meta-commentary about why he was doing what he was doing for the rest of us.

Which brings me to lesson 3: Strive to be a master of your craft. It was evident to me from watching the judge during the 45 minutes that I spent with him that he was a master at his job. Everything he did was deliberate and useful, but everything he did looked to the outside world like it was effortless. It wasn’t. What it was was so practiced as to be reflexive. I’d be surprised if the judge could even really explain why the things that he did in his court were as useful as they were. Masters are notorious for not being able to describe the roots of t.... But that doesn’t change the fact that he was impressively good at the job he was doing. Just like a master craftsman, or a master teacher, it was genuine fun to watch him do his job.

So it was that this past Wednesday, I found a lesson in education in a place where I wasn’t even looking for one. And while I’m sure that if he were ever to read this, the title would make him cringe, I’d be glad to watch this particular judge work again…as long as it didn’t cost me another $80.

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