PLANE CRAZY

Senior Staff Reporter

At approximately 3:22 p.m. on October 26, 2023, Tom Strokes* was on a flight preparing to depart from Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay, St James, destined for the United States. The businessman’s birthday was the following day and he had plans for a special celebration with his fiancée.

Less than 10 minutes later, while he was in the air, four traffic tickets were issued in his name more than 60 miles away in St Mary.

A police constable issued the tickets, which included Strokes’ vehicle details and unique taxpayer registration number (TRN), accusing him of speeding, driving without a seatbelt, failing to obey a constable’s command, and not complying with other traffic signals, according to the Court Administration Division (CAD) and copies of the tickets seen by The Sunday Gleaner.

The violations occurred along the Tower Isle main road about 3:31 p.m. on October 26, 2023, and carried fines totalling $28,000 if he opted not to challenge them, the documents show.

Eleven days before that – on October 15, 2023 – along the same roadway, four tickets with the same traffic offences were issued in the name of Phillip Johnson, a pastor and justice of the peace based in St Catherine, The Sunday Gleaner reported last month.

The tickets also had Johnson’s vehicle information and TRN.

But the founding pastor of Fingers from the Heart Ministries was able to prove that he had just delivered a live-streamed sermon at his Spanish Town-based church and was driving his vehicle along the Old Harbour main road, also in St Catherine, at the time the tickets were issued.

Strokes, like Johnson, was stunned when, months after he returned to Jamaica, he was contacted by cops who said they had a warrant for his arrest. The warrant was related to the outstanding traffic tickets.

“He had to go to PICA and get all the information – details of his travel, including the time and date, to prove that he was on a plane on October 26, 2023,” said a family member, making reference to the Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency.

The tickets that were issued in Strokes’ name were dismissed in the St Mary Parish Court on September 25 last year, a spokesperson for the CAD confirmed in response to questions submitted by The Sunday Gleaner.

“The matter was withdrawn by the Crown. Defendant produced travel history from PICA to indicate that he travelled from Montego Bay airport at 3:22 p.m. The tickets were issued at 3:31 p.m.,” a CAD spokesperson explained.

Stokes said the ordeal felt like an abuse of power by the police.

“I felt violated,” he said during a Sunday Gleaner interview last Wednesday.

The tickets issued in Johnson’s name were also “withdrawn by the prosecution” in the St Mary Parish Court on December 10 last year, the CAD previously confirmed.

“The investigating officer (policeman who issued the tickets) noted that he did not recall the matter,” the agency said last December, explaining the reason they were withdrawn.

But the pastor and justice of the peace said there has been no “substantial” explanation from authorities for the mix-up. And according to him, a recent traffic stop revealed that the tickets remain in the police database.

His last check of the database on January 2 this year revealed that “the matter is in court”, he told The Sunday Gleaner last Thursday.

“Thoughts that another motorist experienced such a similar incident within days of mine are extremely frightening,” he commented after hearing of Strokes’ case.

A total of 541,656 traffic tickets were issued nationally by cops last year, including 78,392 for excessive speeding, according to official police statistics.

The vast majority were issued via the nearly two-year-old electronic traffic ticketing system that came into operation in February 2023 when the revamped Road Traffic Act came into effect.

Cops executed 5,280 arrest warrants last year for traffic-related offences, the highest in five years and an increase of more than 100 per cent over the 2,189 warrants issued in 2023, according to the police data.

‘NO SYSTEM IS PERFECT’

Assistant Commissioner of Police Gary McKenzie, who heads the Public Safety and Traffic Enforcement Branch, said the incidents involving Strokes and Johnson are being investigated to determine what transpired.

He acknowledged, too, that this was not the first time the police have had to investigate complaints about the electronic ticketing system.

“I am not able to say why [the mix-up happened] because there are a number of things that happen when you issue an electronic ticket. Still, they are being investigated to see what the systematic glitch could have been,” McKenzie said.

“No system is perfect. The incidents that have come to the fore so far are very, very few … and for a system that is not yet three years old, it is a continued work in progress. What I can say also is that over 95 per cent of what the system has done has been good,” he added.

But data privacy and protection experts fear both incidents expose a much bigger problem.

The incidents described by Strokes and Johnson likely violated one of eight data standards that data controllers are required to comply with in the Data Protection Act, the Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC) and attorney Chuck Cameron opined.

The OIC is the body mandated to police the law, which took effect on December 1, 2023, and seeks to safeguard the handling of citizens’ personal information held in physical or electronic form.

The act’s fourth standard stipulates that personal data must be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date.

“I can say, from my vantage point that, it would be a contravention of the fourth standard,” Khadeja Bryan, public education officer at the OIC, asserted, making reference to the complaints by Strokes and Johnson.

A breach can only be confirmed after an investigation, she noted.

“It is a standard for a reason because if inaccurate data is collected and processed, of course, that could have far-reaching implications for the data subject,” Shaw emphasised.

Cameron, a data privacy expert, said the complaints by the two motorists are examples of what the law “specifically guards against”.

“It doesn’t matter whether it was intentional or by mistake, one of the data standards is that you must process accurate information and you must have systems to ensure that the information you process is accurate,” he said, warning that it could have “dire consequences” for citizens.

“If they could not represent themselves before the court system, they could have been lost in the jail system,” he added.

Cameron emphasised that authorities should have conducted a data protection impact assessment before implementing the new electronic ticketing system to mitigate the risks of such errors.

“Did you address your mind to the harm that you could expose Jamaican citizens to by implementing this new technology? And if you did, how did you mitigate that risk?” he questioned, acknowledging that “mistakes and technical glitches happen”.

The OIC public education officer acknowledged that Section 4 of the Data Protection Act, which deals with offences such as impact assessment and data privacy, is among several provisions that are not yet in operation.

“So, while the act has been in operation since December 1, 2023, there are certain sections that are still not yet in operation,” Bryan noted, adding that there is no indication of when that will change.

*Name changed on request to protect identity.

livern.barrett@gleanerjm.com