Last year, unblinking mechanical sentries captured pictures of thousands of cars and trucks running red lights in Palm Bay and Cocoa Beach.

Based on those, private companies sent letters to the owners of the vehicles, complete with the pictures of the incident. Mail in a $158 civil penalty within 30 days, the letters said, or face a red-light traffic ticket and a heftier, $267 fine.

In most cases, the owners simply paid the penalty, and the matter was closed, according to Local 6 news partner Florida Today.

But about 300 times, people decided to fight the matter in court. Two-thirds of those cases were dismissed or the drivers were found not guilty. In almost all of the other cases, the vehicle owners ended up having “adjudication withheld,” meaning they paid a fine — sometimes a smaller one — or attended driving school instead, and they kept their driving records clean.

Judges, citing ethics rules, won’t comment on the reasons why people who challenge the citations have been so successful. Police departments are reticent to talk about the programs in detail but say they believe the cameras have improved public safety.

Lawyers, though, are happy to talk about the sucessful challenges they’ve made in court. They have argued that the photos are hearsay evidence that is not admissable in court.

Stephen Koons, a Melbourne attorney, isn’t sure exactly how many times he’s argued against such citations in court, saying it was at least “dozens.”

And, he said, every single case has been dismissed arguing against the use of the photos as evidence.

A police officer who issued a normal red-light ticket could be cross-examined in court about the circumstances of the incident, he explained. That can’t happen with a time-stamped photo.

“When you have writing on a piece of paper ... you can’t cross examine a piece of paper,” Koons said.

“You just can’t have evidence that drops out of the sky,” he added. “and that’s what this is, evidence that dropped out of the sky.”

Koons doesn’t specialize in traffic cases. But he became interested in the matter when he received a citation himself from the city of Cocoa Beach.

He defended himself and argued the time-stamped photos from the company that operates the camera shouldn’t be admitted as evidence. The judge agreed, and the case was dismissed.

“There’s no evidence as to who is driving the car. It could be a monkey driving the car. The city and their third-party vendor cannot comply with the Florida evidence code in proving the case,” he said.

The red-light cameras are owned and operated by the third-party vendors. When a car runs through a red-light, a camera snaps a picture of the car and the light. A separate camera captures a picture of the car’s license plate. A short video is also shot of the incident.

The vendors than send those to the local police departments, which review the photos and videos and decide whether or not to issue a violation notice. The vendors get a share of the fines.

Charles Territo is a spokesman for American Traffic Solutions,

the Arizona company that operates Cocoa Beach’s red-light cameras. He said Brevard County motorists who beat their citations represent a tiny percentage of red-light runners.

“The system is designed so that individuals who believe they were not guilty of the violation have an opportunity to challenge the violation in court. And I think that these numbers show that, for those that believe that they weren’t guilty of the violation in question, there is due process,” Territo said.

Last year, he said his company’s Cocoa Beach cameras captured more than 20,000 questionable events — and two-thirds of those were rejected by city police after review. All told, he said, 6,595 Cocoa Beach violation notices were issued last year. Drivers can also access 12-second online videos, he said.

“While many times individuals won’t remember the event, after reviewing the video it becomes very clear that traffic laws were broken,” Territo said.

In some cases, the police departments will simply drop the issue when it ends up in court

Last May, Jonathan Krauser received a violation notice from Palm Bay. Krauser believes the controversial cameras are an unconstitutional “money grab.” So he decided to challenge his citation in court.

He hired Melbourne lawyer Gary Sack, took a half-day off work and appeared in September before Brevard County Judge Judith Atkin in Viera. Much to his surprise, he said the ticket was tossed within about 10 minutes.

“Before anyone said anything, the police officer asked to withdraw the ticket. (The judge) said something — and that was it,” Krauser recalled.