NY issues 26,000 speeding tickets for $1.3 million. Now a judge says traffic court had it wrong

In the fall of 2024, the state of New York used an automatic speed camera system to ticket some 26,000 drivers on a stretch of Interstate 490 near Rochester in just 25 days. Of those operators, only 239 took their case to court. 40 of those 26,000 won their cases—but one individual might have opened up a window for plenty more to get the infraction expunged from the record, as in the process of fighting back, a judge threw out his tickets and ripped into the city traffic court at the same time.

According to WHEC News 10 NBC of Rochester, Kent Kroemer was one of the few amongst the 26,000 drivers to contest the tickets he accumulated from the automated speed camera at a work zone. That's right, tickets plural; he picked up not one, not two, but three, for a total of $275 in fines. When he went to the local traffic court to contest, he said something seemed odd: “It was almost like three-on-one, where the prosecutor, the judicial hearing officer, and the clerk were all against the defendant,” Kroemer said.

It turns out Monroe County Court Judge Doug Randall, who oversaw Kroemer's appeal, saw it similarly, writing that "the proceeding had little resemblance to a court proceeding” with “barely any evidence" in his ruling. That is apparently what Kroemer was hoping for. “I’m thinking about rules of evidence. I’m like, wait, the onus is on them,” Kroemer said. “I don’t have to prove anything.”

In case that wasn't enough to dismiss the tickets, the judge found other issues with the traffic court. At one point, the court clerk reportedly interrupted the proceeding to challenge Kroemer, state the law to him, and make a legal determination on the case. "This was clearly inappropriate," the judge wrote. He also called the judicial hearing officer out for "leading questioning of the defendant throughout most of the proceeding."

The ripple effect from this ruling could help other drivers. Those who plead guilty or no contest and paid their tickets are stuck, but the 239 who challenged their tickets might be allowed to appeal their cases after this latest ruling. Since the ruling itself happened on April 8, drivers have until May 8 to try again.