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Santarlas believes the program isn’t being fairly enforced by Hillsborough County and the sheriff’s office
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County and sheriff’s office officials accuse Santarlas of being partial, yet have kept him serving as a magistrate over red light camera appeals
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Until his reassignment in February, Santarlas was the only magistrate over traffic camera appeals in Hillsborough County for the last decade
\nMore Watchdog Stories<\/a><\/p>\n
Every time a vehicle drives by a school zone speed camera, a picture and video are taken and your speed is calculated. If deputies determine you were speeding anytime during the day, you could be on the hook for a ticket.<\/p>\n
After a notice of violation comes in the mail, drivers have two choices: pay the $100 fine or schedule an appeals hearing.<\/p>\n
Our investigation revealed 73,000 violations spotted by the cameras during the fall 2025 semester<\/a>. Of those, the sheriff\u2019s office dropped more than 5,400.<\/p>\n Last summer, Special Magistrate Thomas Santarlas said he began raising issues with the county and sheriff\u2019s office about how the school cameras were being enforced. But, he says, that fell on deaf ears until December, when the magistrate dismissed a number of cases. Now he has been reassigned\u00a0and is sharing his experience.<\/p>\n \u201cThe school zone speed camera program is a very good program on paper. Unfortunately, it\u2019s not being properly operated by the sheriff\u2019s office,\u201d Santarlas said to Spectrum Bay News 9\u2019s Andy Cole.<\/p>\n Santarlas\u2019 issue is with tickets issued during reduced speed times, often indicated by a blinking yellow light. All the video shows is the back of a vehicle and the pavement, not the location or that blinking light.<\/p>\n Special Magistrate Thomas Santarlas hears a case. (Spectrum News)<\/p>\n Florida law doesn\u2019t require that the tickets show those details, but Santarlas believes that without it, he can\u2019t fairly rule on tickets.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a problem Santarlas says he has brought up for months, to no avail, until his December hearing. Spectrum Bay News 9 was there.<\/p>\n \u201cConsidering the totality of the circumstances, I believe that this program is not being managed properly. It\u2019s confusing to drivers and lacks fundamental fairness in application. For these reasons, I cannot continue to uphold these cases against our fellow citizens. Now that doesn\u2019t apply to radar-enforced violations,\u201d said Santarlas at a December appeals hearing.<\/p>\n That day, Santarlas dismissed nine tickets and upheld another eight. When he threw one out, he made\u00a0it\u00a0clear why.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t have any evidence that the beacon light was there at the time. I go back to my same statement, with the red light cameras we see the lights, we see the intersection, we see everything around that area, and with this particular program for some reason all I\u2019m seeing is a car and pavement,\u201d Santarlas said in December.<\/p>\n After that December hearing, Santarlas says the county canceled the next in January.<\/p>\n This is a screenshot of one of the upheld traffic violations.<\/p>\n In early February, Santarlas got a letter and phone\u00a0call\u00a0from a county official telling him he had been reassigned.<\/p>\n \u201cI do not have the authority to remove you. Only the Board of County Commissioners (BOCC), as the appointing authority, can remove you.\u00a0However, as the director of Citizen Boards Support, I do assign workloads and cases based on the need of the organization,\u201d Frank Strom, a county official, wrote to Santarlas.<\/p>\n Santarlas says he was reassigned because he ruled against the county.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think it is acceptable for the sheriff\u2019s office, for the Hillsborough County attorney\u2019s office to remove a sitting magistrate or a judge simply because they don\u2019t like the rulings that he or she is providing,\u201d said Santarlas, in an interview with Bay News 9.<\/p>\n We asked Hillsborough County six direct questions about why and how this reassignment happened.<\/p>\n On four, county spokespeople referred to the letter written by Strom, whose day-to-day job\u00a0is to\u00a0run the county\u2019s veteran community services department. He also oversees the appeal hearings.<\/p>\n Strom denied the magistrate was reassigned because of his refusal to, \u201cRubber stamp the adjudications,\u201d but said, \u201cYou can understand how expressing these concerns during public proceedings may be perceived as inconsistent with the impartial and neutral role expected of a special magistrate.\u201d<\/p>\n The Hillsborough County Sheriff\u2019s Office echoed that saying. \u201cWhen strong positions are publicly articulated on matters that may come before the court, it raises significant questions about neutrality and the fairness of the proceedings over which he presides,\u201d the office said.<\/p>\n Former Miami-Dade County Court Judge Jeffrey Swartz says impartiality isn\u2019t his concern here.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst thing is, this guy has taken his job seriously, and he\u2019s applied the law to the facts that he\u2019s been given and said, \u2018This is not enough, I\u2019m dismissing the case,\u2019\u201d said Swartz, who also serves as professor emeritus at Tampa\u2019s Cooley Law School.<\/p>\n \u201cThe second thing that\u2019s happening here is that you now have a sheriff and a board who appoint this person saying, \u2018We don\u2019t like your rulings, you\u2019re fired \u2014 or you\u2019re reassigned.\u2019 They know they can\u2019t fire him for doing his job, so they took him out of the job he was doing and put him in another job,\u201d Swartz said.<\/p>\n The sheriff\u2019s office maintains they had nothing to do with Santarlas\u2019 reassignment. Hillsborough County confirms Santarlas will no longer preside over school zone speed camera appeals.<\/p>\n He will, however, continue to serve as magistrate over red-light camera appeals.<\/p>\n \u201cThink about this, in their letter from the county, they said I have, \u2018personally attended\u2019 your red light camera hearings and found you to be professional, fair and balanced, but in the same breath, they\u2019re saying the opposite for the school zone camera program. How can that be?\u201d Santarlas said in an interview with Spectrum Bay News 9.<\/p>\n We\u00a0uncovered past letters of recommendation for\u00a0Santarlas.<\/p>\n A senior assistant county attorney wrote that, \u201cDr. Santarlas has always displayed the highest standards in his adherence to the law and the ethical requirements.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Commission Chair Ken Hagan wrote that Santarlas\u2019s, \u201cExperience and wisdom,\u201d Have been, \u201cInvaluable to [his] fellow board members and improved their decision making.\u201d<\/p>\n What\u2019s changed now? Santarlas is left wondering.<\/p>\n \u201cRight is right and wrong is wrong; there is no in between especially in this particular situation. It is wrong for the sheriff\u2019s office to continue to pursue cases against my fellow citizens when they know that they\u2019re mismanaging this program,\u201d Santarlas said. \u201cWhen the magistrate from the fourth-largest county in Florida goes on the record and says this is problematic, they should take notice.\u201d<\/p>\n Spectrum Bay News 9 reached out to all the county commissioners through email and phone, and state representatives Traci Koster and Susan Valdez, who helped write the bill that authorized school zone speed cameras in 2023, but none of them wanted to speak on camera.<\/p>\n Brian Lorentzen, the new magistrate brought in to replace Santarlas, hasn\u2019t responded to our many requests for comment. We went to Lorentzen\u2019s office Friday to talk with him and waited for more than two and a half hours, but were told by office staff that he was too busy.<\/p>\n For now, the program will continue as it has been. HCSO says they didn\u2019t design the program or deviate from what the legislature has authorized, but should Tallahassee make any changes, they say they will conform with those.<\/p>\n Do you have something worth investigating? Reach out to Watchdog Investigator Andy Cole at andy.cole@charter.com<\/a>, or you can send tips here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014\u00a0A special magistrate over school zone speed camera appeals in Hillsborough County says the program, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[4323,2967,63156,276,115,277,135,137,136,63157],"class_list":{"0":"post-167535","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa","8":"tag-andy-cole","9":"tag-app-public-safety","10":"tag-app-watchdog-investigations","11":"tag-hillsborough-county","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-public-safety","14":"tag-tampa","15":"tag-tampa-headlines","16":"tag-tampa-news","17":"tag-watchdog"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Special](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/0224_bn9_traffic_camera_story_1.jpeg\")
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