Statistics provided by the DPS show that commercial-vehicle crashes of all types — fatal, injury, and property damage — declined from 2006 to 2009.
Then, in 2010, while fatal crashes went down from 39 in 2009 to 32 in 2010, fatals jumped to 42 last year.
Above: The shot of Jack Hegarty (left) and Tim Mason at a D-backs game that sparked the investigation. Behind Hegarty is Karen Rasmussen of the Arizona Trucking Association. Below: Hegarty's check for the tickets wasn't cashed until after he was told he'd be investigated.
Robert Halliday, director of the Arizona Department of Public Safety.
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Injury and property-damage crashes went up in 2010 and 2011. Crashes so far this year closely mimic the 2011 numbers.
Crashes for all vehicles went up in 2010 and 2011, state figures show, which could be a result of more vehicles on the road because the state's economy improved.
But the fact remains that when the policy went into effect, critics predicted less enforcement would mean more crashes.
True, inspections are up— but that's mainly because federal funding allowed the DPS to transfer more officers into the commercial-vehicle bureau, beefing up the bureau's force of dedicated commercial-vehicle inspectors from 511 in 2009 to 605 the following year.
Hegarty tells New Times he believed the decision to end most random stops would make the commercial-vehicle inspection process more efficient overall — and that the trucking association opposed the move.
He says truckers prefer to be pulled over for no reason because a clean inspection is good for their records. However, Hegarty also says that two out of three truck inspections reveal violations, making his argument that truckers would want random inspections hard to believe.
Others make the more likely argument that the trucking industry welcomed the change. The important question here, of course, is whether the industry's favors to DPS management contributed to the policy change.
Gary Doyle, a Phoenix lawyer who represents truckers and other transportation interests, says he'd heard industry representatives complaining about the random stops before the prohibition.
"The problem with purely random stops is that they're extremely inefficient," Doyle says. "They'd pull someone over and wouldn't find a violation."
Well, not a major violation, he says. Once an officer takes the time to pull over a vehicle, he or she usually manages to find something wrong, either in the driver's logbook or on the vehicle itself, he says.
Doyle says he doesn't believe the change had any effect on road safety, mainly because Arizona DPS officers earn their reputation as some of the toughest in the country on truckers committing violations.
But Shaun Kildare, research director for the Washington-based Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, says Arizonans should be concerned about the change.
Most states allow troopers to conduct random stops, which the institute sees as important to road safety, Kildare says. Although the average motorist might recoil at the thought of a random, suspicion-less stop, Kildare says, the belief by experts is that stopping commercial vehicles is no different from having a health inspector conduct a surprise visit at a restaurant.
Without random stops, trucks and other commercial vehicles are directed to regular highway inspection sites. Though most operators are law-abiding, those "prone to disobey" the rules could take advantage of the new policy by steering clear of the sites.
"It's a little bit harder to avoid a stop if you don't know where it's going to occur," Kildare says.
As Kildare describes it, good truckers might think the new policy is good because they face fewer potential hassles.
But bad truckers think it's great.
Robert Halliday, through his spokesman, says it's more important than ever for law enforcement to work with the commercial-trucking industry, because more trucks are on the road than ever. He vows to continue an "ongoing dialogue" with the industry.
That's understandable. It's when the DPS and the trucking industry exchange more than dialogue that problems begin — something Halliday seems to have learned only recently, following the Hegarty incident.
Halliday "disagrees" with Hegarty's statements in the 204-page report, his spokesman writes on behalf of the DPS boss.
Though the DPS typically doesn't comment on internal investigations, Halliday says he's making an exception in this case:
As he told Phoenix police, he maintains that he had "no idea" the tickets for the baseball game he attended as DPS director came from the ATA.
"Had he known that, he would have not attended," the spokesman says.
Sounds like the ATA may be lonely at D-backs games next season without Halliday and his crew.
