Overland Park officers not the only ones writing fake seat belt tickets in KC area

This was maybe five years ago. In south Kansas City. Jo Anne Bloxham was driving east in a line of cars when an officer flagged them all to the side of the road — presumably for speeding, though she didn’t think they were.

But that’s when it got weird, she said.

The officer approached her window, “and he said, ‘Unbutton your seat belt,’ ” she recalled.

Perplexed, she did as she was told.

“Then he said, ‘I’m going to give you a break.’ ”

Next thing she knew, she was looking at a cheap ticket for not wearing a seat belt instead of an onerous speeding ticket.

She was one of many people across the Kansas City area in the past week reliving strange seat belt citations after Overland Park announced that three of its officers had resigned for writing seat belt tickets to people who had in fact been wearing them.

The Star reached out to several people among many on social media who described confusing seat belt violation encounters with law enforcement.

Their tales came from both sides of the State Line — such as Kansas City, Independence, Edwardsville, Overland Park, the Missouri Highway Patrol. Some recent. Some years ago.

And most of them were grateful.

“I wholeheartedly believe I was catching a break with the seat belt ticket versus a speeding ticket,” said Kevin Hicks of Blue Springs, who has been given that break more than once by different police departments.

Chelsea Evans of Kansas City said she “always” wears her seat belt, but sure appreciated the seat belt violation she received from an officer on Southwest Trafficway a few years back instead of a speeding ticket.

The seat belt tickets usually were $10 to $30, the cheapest on the books. Overland Park’s were $30.

But even someone like a woman named Tammy in Belton, who expressed deep support for police and wants peace officers to be respected, had to wonder over her stop a few years back while delivering her son to elementary school. She didn’t want to use her last name because she still lives in Belton and was worried about retribution from police.

She was new in town, doing the school drop-off for the first time, driving a Jeep with tinted windows. Perhaps the officer believed she was speeding. (She doesn’t think so.) Perhaps once the tinted window was down he saw a mom trying to get her son to school. Whatever, he told her he would just give her the $10 seat belt violation.

“I’m looking down at my chest,” she said. “I’m wearing it. But it’s better than a speeding-in-a-school-zone ticket, so I shut up.”

“But it makes you wonder,” she said. “What the heck is going on?”

That same question still perplexes officials at both the Missouri and Kansas state transportation agencies that oversee seat belt enforcement grants.

And Overland Park Police Chief Frank Donchez Wednesday told The Star he was likewise baffled a week after he announced the three officers’ resignations.

“We’re having a hard time wrapping our heads around it,” he said.

The state agencies administer federal grant dollars that provide law enforcement extra resources to step up enforcement of seat belt laws — usually by funding overtime pay to officers pulling extra duty.

The state agencies monitor activity reports and collect the time sheets recording the overtime accrued, but there are no quotas for tickets, said Chris Bortz, the traffic safety program manager at the Kansas Department of Transportation.

Overland Park received $45,000 in the recent fiscal year of the grant, which includes DUI programs as well as seat belts. It was the third largest grant awarded in the state behind the Kansas Highway Patrol and Wichita only because Overland Park is the third-largest police agency, Bortz said.

Why would officers fake seat belt tickets?

“I have no idea why,” Bortz said.

The same goes for Missouri, said Mike Stapp, the law enforcement grant coordinator for the Missouri Department of Transportation.

“There is no incentive” for issuing more tickets, he said.

Neither Kansas nor Missouri transportation officials said they were aware of any false-ticketing going on with the seat belt enforcement.

And if those officers who do so are truly just giving violators a break, then it makes sense that few drivers are complaining.

What troubles Donchez is that the three officers who resigned went as far as to turn down the audio of their dash cameras during some of the seat belt ticketing situations.

“It tells you something nefarious was going on,” he said.

The tip that something was amiss came internally, he said. No motorists with tickets complained.

Overland Park’s internal investigations unit began contacting the recipients of tickets as well as viewing camera footage. None of the ticketed drivers said the officers had received anything in return for writing the lesser ticket. Nothing suggested the officers were seeking or receiving any personal gain.

The investigation also back-checked other officers who were doing seat-belt enforcement under the grant and did not find cases of false tickets.

The officers resigned while the investigation was in progress, and the department did not get a chance to ask them about their motivation.

If the officers truly were just giving people a break, Donchez said, they could’ve simply issued warnings, rather than create a false, lesser charge. Officers have discretion in writing, or not writing, tickets.

“There is no limit on how many warnings you can give,” he said.

What officers can’t do, however, is issue a ticket for a violation that did not occur, he said. It’s a fireable offense.

“It’s wrong,” Donchez said. “It’s not factual. It’s disingenuous . . . We do not tolerate improper behavior and we will hold the members of our department accountable.”

With the resignations, and with no indications other officers were involved, Overland Park’s investigation is done, Donchez said, “unless someone comes forward with other information of some criminal activity.”

It’s been a strange week, Donchez admitted. Many people reacting to the resignations are sure there is something more behind the officers’ actions than goodwill. Others wonder why officers who were giving motorists “a break” would lose their jobs.

And still others describe in harsh terms Overland Park’s decision to investigate and then publicly announce its findings and the resignations.

“It seems no good deed goes unpunished,” Donchez said.

This story was originally published August 2, 2018 at 11:53 AM.