Losers on the Road

In the Denver suburb of Greenwood Village (pop. 600), a grand jury has indicted two top officials for running what may be the most brazen traffic-fine racket in the U.S. For six years, charged the jury, Greenwood Village used the public highways as a "personal toll road" that raked in $100,000 for the town by means of "a court scheme that was a sham, a mockery, a fraud and simply a system to exact tribute from unsuspecting motorists."

According to the indictment, Harold Tousignaut not only held three town jobs (police chief, building inspector, road supervisor) paying $600 a month, but also netted $8,000 a year by leasing police cars to the village. Chief Tousignaut ordered each of his four policemen to drive 100 miles a day at 10-c- a mile, payable to himself. As for duties, the cops had only one--writing enough tickets to pay their salaries plus the town's other expenses. Any charge would do, including violation of nonexistent town ordinances.

Colorado requires local police to file state reports on all drunken drivers. To avoid that technicality, Greenwood's cops allegedly ordered motorists to get out of their cars, then charged them with being "drunk in a public place," a tactic yielding fines of up to $300 without the state's being the wiser. Couples found necking or simply talking in parked cars were also ticketed for being "nude above the waist" or "nude below the waist"--noncrimes that earned speedy payoffs from embarrassed victims.

Greenwood Village had no judge, but the grand jury says that Town Attorney C. Charles Buchler solved that problem easily: he billed himself as the "city magistrate" and held "court" in his private law office, where he meted out fines and kept 25% to 33% for himself, even though a local ordinance sets the town attorney's top fee as $10 per case. Buchler allegedly pocketed $30,000.

All this violated the constitutional rights of hundreds of persons, charged the grand jury. Indeed, 300 mulcted motorists filed complaints last week. Unable to find "language or words severe enough to criticize this kind of operation," the jury says it also failed to find fitting felony charges for Buchler and Tousignaut, though it searched law books going back to 1606. Both men will be arraigned on relatively minor misdemeanor charges ranging from simulating judicial process to conspiracy to illegally exercise office. Maximum sentences if convicted: 13 months in jail and $1,100 in fines, plus an additional $200 fine for "Magistrate" Buchler for actually exercising office illegally.

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