After giving up the fight for a few years, a couple of months ago I decided to start digging into the GHS Radar Gun Scandal again. It’s a real problem that I believe all Pennsylvania residents deserve to know about, but nobody seems to care cause it’s all about money…much like the natural gas drilling destruction that’s going on in Northeastern Pennsylvania and throughout the state. I made some Right-To-Know-Law requests and got my hands on some interesting material they refused to send me in previous requests, prior to the Right-To-Know-Law being changed to force the burden of proof on the institution or agency instead of the requester. This is the first part of a series of new information I plan on posting.

To start off, part of my RTKL request was for all of the traffic citations and calibration/testing certificates for one specific GHS Radar gun (GHS2730 to be exact). No particular reason why I chose that specific GHS Radar Gun, other than that I just wanted to do a small controlled study on a single radar unit to see if I could identify any odd patterns with either the citations or calibration tests. Well here are my short initial findings (just got the documents today).

Calibration testing history for GHS2730:

Bold is my own emphasis. Now when I first reviewed some of the citations given with GHS2730, I thought I saw a glaring problem, however, I was mistaken. In 2009, a House Bill was passed and according to Pennsylvania’s Vehicle Code, Title 75, Subsection 3368(d), radar units only need to be calibrated yearly. Previously they needed to be calibrated every 60 days. Why do you think this was done? Quick way to make money and create less possibilities for lapses in calibration and create less court challenges? A February 2004 staff study completed by Sergeant Martin L. Henry III of the Pennsylvania State Police, which I’ll be posting at a later date, even states that “this legislation would affect current Department operations and require changes to existing regulations. This may also have an effect on maintenance. Common maintenance issues detected during routine calibration may not be observed in a timely manner, resulting in more costly repairs.”

As you can see, the table shows some slight lapses. One point of interest is the testing on July 11 and July 16 of 2008. The calibration charts looked nearly identical, so perhaps this particular unit had field problems reported after the first calibration. I have no other explanation for why it would be tested again so soon and I can’t verify if any tickets were given out in that time frame because all of those citations are hand written and did not copy well.

Not only is there a greater time frame for these radar devices to become uncalibrated and start presenting problems, but many of the troopers using them do not have the proper training to identify problems.  Most troopers are completely unaware of the reported problems with GHS radar guns and have no knowledge on what will cause false readings, relying on the output 100%. This is not proper use of a radar gun and you can use this lack of knowledge as ammo in court. Keep fighting!