Police fees: you wreck; you pay

CINCINNATI - You get into an accident. The police show up. Months later, so does a bill for their services, a new charge one Hamilton County community now is levying on nonresidents who wreck within their boundaries.

It’s a controversial tack one Northern Kentucky community tried and discontinued after complaints from neighboring cities. Some fire and EMS departments have been doing this for years but police departments have shied away.

The theory behind the new charge is that local taxpayers shouldn't pay for their police officers’ time servicing non-taxpayers who cause accidents, no matter how minor.

Bob Reiff says he was “astounded" when he got a bill after causing a fender bender in Amberley Village. Reiff drives deliveries to supplement his social security income. One day, a car pulled up close enough behind him that he didn’t see it in the truck’s mirrors. He backed up and hit the car. Even ‘though both vehicles drove away, they first called an Amberley Village officer who wrote the report.

Four months later Reiff got a bill for $279 "payable to the Amberley Village Police Dept." It itemized the costs, Reiff says. "You had to rent the police car, and you had to rent the police man, and then you had to rent the police station that he worked out of."

The bill rankles Reiff, who says he already pays taxes for police service. "I'll hand it to them; it's original. Bill the poor sucker twice."

Amberley Department of Public Safety Lt. Rich Wallace says he can understand Reiff’s viewpoint but that his department gets paid by, and is responsible above all to, the citizens of Amberley Village. No offense to someone like Reiff, who lives in Mason, but "when there is an accident involving a nonresident, we are actually taking away from the residents that are actually paying our salaries. They're paying their tax dollars to have their officers out there and available to them."

Reiff says he feels communities should cover for each other. “I'm sure people who come from Amberley Village to Mason and have an accident don't pay (an extra fee for police service) either."

Regina Moore runs the company that sent Reiff that bill. Cost Recovery Corporation, based in Dayton, Ohio, came up with this concept of police departments charging "at-fault" drivers if they live in other communities. "When you really look at it, currently the way the system is set up is that you have innocent taxpayers that are subsidizing for services that they receive no benefit."

Moore has been taking her message to communities across the nation, guiding councils to pass the ordinances that make the charges legal. Cost Recovery Corp. handles the billing and keeps a percentage of the take.

Moore says police departments can’t cover for each other equally. "You can't compare apples to oranges… You have completely different tax bases from community to community." While Reiff says most people consider police coverage of accidents a “taxpayer-supported function of government", Moore says that’s old thinking that departments can no longer afford.

"An enormous amount of (police accident) reporting is strictly for insurance adjudication. There's a small amount that the state actually needs," she says. In her view, it's only fair for insurance companies to pay the bill as part of their drivers' policies because all that police work saves them from having to hire investigators to fill out the paperwork. She says officers end up working for insurance companies instead of their communities.

But Moore admits almost half of insurance companies are balking at paying the bill. When that happens, Cost Recovery Corp. then bills the driver. Amberley Village has chosen a “soft billing” system of sending three, increasingly urgent letters. The last one says in bold letters: “You are responsible for this bill.” “Before we take any action… contact your insurance agent.” But the Village takes no action if the driver ignores the letters and fails to pay. Lt. Wallace says “It would never go to collections.”

Moore says some communities with whom her company contracts take a tougher stance and turn over drivers to collections and credit bureaus. She says for strapped police budgets, it's a matter of shifting public tax dollars to private insurance premiums.

Bob Reiff has another word for it. He calls it “financial entrapment.” He didn’t pay the bill he received. He worries if more communities adopt this stance, it could raise insurance rates for everyone. Moore counters that your rates will only go up if you’re at fault in an accident.