See who got traffic and parking tickets in Wichita in 2020 & what they were cited for
Speeding continued to be a problem in Wichita last year, with more than 22,000 tickets handed out to motorists driving too fast on the city’s streets.
The total number of tickets that had at least one charge related to speeding accounted for more than half of the traffic and parking citations handed out by Wichita police officers and other city employees in 2020, according to an Eagle analysis of traffic ticket data provided by Wichita Municipal Court via the city’s open data portal.
The top 10 areas where motorists were cited most often for speeding were:
And this year could shape up similarly, if drivers don’t slow down.
In an interview with The Eagle this spring, Wichita police Sgt. Keith Fort said speeding motorists remain an issue in the city. Kellogg is one problem thoroughfare that Wichita officers have focused on especially narrowly, using a number of early morning enforcement assignments that target drivers ignoring posted speed limits, he said.
At the time of Fort’s interview, the highest speed clocked on Kellogg for the year was 119 mph.
Another driver got caught doing 102 mph during daytime traffic, he said.
“At that type of speed, it puts everyone at risk,” he said.
Each year, The Eagle asks for a full list of the citations from Wichita Municipal Court and looks at the data to identify trends in traffic enforcement and problem spots. Below, you’ll find some basic facts about the moving violations and parking tickets handed out in Wichita in 2020 as well as demographic information about the people who received them.
You also can do your own research using The Eagle’s latest searchable traffic ticket database. It includes information on individual tickets including the defendant names, violation locations, charges and how the cases resolved.
Here’s a summary of what happened last year on the city’s streets:
Tickets by the numbers: Wichita police officers and other city employees wrote more than 42,100 tickets last year, citing motorists, pedestrians and others moving about the city for just over 290 different crimes. The tickets were written for a total of 52,193 violations.
Most of the citations were written for one violation. The rest had two or more. The individual ticket with the most charges on it last year — seven — was given to a 24-year-old Wichita man driving a white Cadillac on a Wednesday night in mid-January outside of a Mexican bakery in the 2200 block of South Seneca. He was intoxicated and speeding, records show.
People were ticketed most often for: Speed-related violations, with 22,406 citations handed out. The overwhelming majority were written to people who were driving faster than the posted speed limit, but 16 motorists got ticketed for going slow enough to interfere with traffic flow.
Kellogg and its frontage roads and ramps accounted for about 28% of the speeding citations written last year (6,288). Other problem locations in the city include the stretch of 21st Street North between Ridge and Tyler where there are several churches (2,333 tickets) and 4500 E. 13th St. N. near MacDonald Golf Course and park (348 tickets).
The next most-common crimes people were cited for were no proof of insurance (3,248 violations); driving on a suspended, revoked, canceled or fraudulent license (3,200 violations); not having a valid driver’s license in their possession (2,270 violations); for a meter violation on a lot (1,812 violations); and for a meter violation on a street (1,508 violations). Police issued 186 tickets for texting while driving and 81 to people who had cracked windshields.
Under one of the least used ordinances last year, two men in their twenties were ticketed for taking a late night skateboard ride on a city-owed parking area at 600 E. Douglas on April 7, 2020.
Busiest ticket-writing day: Wednesday and Thursday were pretty closely matched, with more than 9,000 citations issued each day (just over 21% of the year’s total). Sunday drivers received the fewest citations — 1,656, or 3.9% of all tickets.
Who gets ticketed most? People in their twenties, who ended up with 31.6% of the tickets written in cases where an age was provided. People in their thirties were the second most-ticketed group (22.3%) followed by forty-somethings (13.7%). Teens received about 11% of the tickets, records shows.
The oldest person, 105, was cited for driving carelessly in his white Lincoln Continental at Broadway and Orme on June 11, according to the data
Men were ticketed more often than women — 49.8% to 35.7%, respectively — while 14.4% of citations went to people whose genders were unknown to police.
In terms of racial make up, defendants were 66.9% white, 14.8% Black, 2.2% Asian and .25% Native of Alaskan. Race was unknown or unlisted in 15.8% of cases.
Which city employee wrote the most tickets? A parking ambassador who works for the transit department. He cited motorists 5,609 times, mostly in the city’s core business and entertainment districts. All but one of those tickets were for parking.
This story was originally published July 3, 2021 at 2:53 PM.
