A Florida woman made a really troubling discovery when she was sent a red light camera ticket in the mail. Under her race, a small initial left her flabbergasted. It was the letter “N,” and I don’t have to tell you why that would be troubling to find on a black woman’s ticket.
Christine Hall’s granddaughter was driving her car when she was caught on a red light camera, but the car was in Hall’s name, so she got the ticket from the Miami Beach Police Department. It immediately made her think about horrible stories she had been told by older family members. Sure, it could have been a typo, but Hall asserts that police can look at her driver’s license and see her face – making her feel that it was intentional.
She reached out to one of those “Help Me” consumer advocacy teams at a local news station – WSVN 7 in Miami – to get to the bottom of the issue. They contacted the Miami Beach PD who wanted to talk with them to clear up what had happened.
Here’s what WSVN’s Help Me Howard team learned:
It turns out no-one was using the n-word.
[…]
Alan Chin handles red light camera violations for the department.
He showed us what happens when he writes NA for “not applicable” under race.
Alan Chin: “It prints a single digit. So, instead of “NA,” it will read “N”. When I put gender, obviously it’s ‘M’ for male, ‘F’ for female.”
A company in Colorado prints the tickets changing “NA” to “N,” and Chris wanted to make sure the department knew how much that computer printing one letter affected her.
Police chief Wayne Jones – a black man – says the issue “hurt me bad” and he spoke with his staff about fixing the glaring oversight. He added, “We don’t want to have this happen again. We don’t want anybody to feel what you felt.”
To remedy the issue, the department will now type “UK” for unknown, and it’ll show up as “U” under both race and sex in place of “N,” according to WSVN. Hall said she is satisfied with the explanation and solution.
I understand that this was almost certainly an oversight, but in today’s day and age, folks really need to be more careful about stuff like this. Nobody wants to feel the way Hall felt when she opened that ticket.
