In a warning shot aimed at both truckers and Chester County township police forces, the state Auditor General warned on Monday that police laxity toward overweight freight trucks jeopardized public safety and cost Chester County townships and the state close to $1 million in lost revenue, writes Justine McDaniel for Philly.com.

Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said that East Whiteland Township police considerably lowered fees and fines for drivers by allowing them to plead guilty to a non-traffic local ordinance infraction instead of the state overweight vehicle violation warranted by the offense.

“Weight limits on roads and bridges are there for everyone’s safety, and the fines are high for a reason,” said DePasquale in his statement. “It is unfair to all taxpayers to allow overweight vehicles to tear up our roads without paying the fines that could help offset the repair costs.”

The highlighted instances occurred from 2010 to 2013 in three district courts in Chester County, with the majority of them being handled by the court on Paoli Pike in East Goshen Township, where Judge Chester F. Darlington presided. Unrelated to the issue of ticket fixing, the Paoli Pike court closed in January 2014 due to mandated redistricting and the Auditor General was alerted to the practice by Darlington when he left his position.

In the period in question, 160 citations were issued resulting in $220,157 in fines, when the actual number should have been around $1.2 million. That sum would have then been split evenly between the East Whiteland Township and the state.

According to the Auditor General, by reducing the offense to a local citation, the township did not have to share the revenue with the state. As the auditor’s reports state, the citations were issued by police to overweight trucks driving on a local road near the Great Valley Corporate Industrial Park. However, once issued with the citation, the driver was then advised by the police to plead not guilty and request a hearing.

This would ensure that they would be charged with the lower violation, reducing their fine significantly.  This practice also came to the attention of a new justice who reported it to the Chester County presiding judge at Exton district court.

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