Third in a series. 

Re: “4 Ways Red-Light Camera Officer Goofed”

“When I caught wind of what had happened,” Police Chief Scott Bixby said of the recent embarrassing Case of Mistaken Identity in a red-light camera violation, “and I saw the story in the Los Angeles Times, I started looking into it.”

Mr. Bixby may be the easiest-going member of the Culver City department.

So upset was he about the photo enforcement officer lazily and wrongly identifying an actor instead of the real driver, sources said, that it was difficult to be around the chief for the first 48 hours.

Due to a series of sheerly slipshod errors of raw carelessness by the veteran photo enforcement officer, the actor Steve Tom was wrongly tagged recently with a red-light camera violation.

The chief apologized to Mr. Tom.

Critics of the camera catcher have seen this as one more example of clearly avoidable public humiliation for police when the national and regional environments already are heavily poisoned with anti-police sentiment.

The Culver City method for accurately identifying red-light offenders is so imperfect that tickets are issued in only about 60 percent of cases, which is further fodder for critics of the camera system.

Mr. Bixby said he took “the appropriate action” against the guilty veteran cop.

“We have things in place that this will not happen again,” the chief said.