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The town of Brentwood will refund the fees of all drivers who received citations from the town's speed cameras between the dates of June 24 and July 13.

Marcos Sirota, president of Sigma Space Corporation, which owns Optotraffic, said the source of the error appeared to be that the officer issuing the tickets was not officially a police officer during those three weeks. Brentwood Police Chief David Risik's contract expired just before the amnesty period began, and was reinstated the day after it finished.

The cameras, installed in January and June, issue $40 tickets. The posted speed limit is 25 mph, but drivers must travel faster than 37 mph to trigger the cameras.

When the error was noticed in mid-June, the town put notices on Facebook and a citizen-run listserv asking drivers seeking a refund to send an e-mail with the citation number to Brentwood Police Chief David Risik.

Now, "they don't have to notify us. They will be sent a refund," said Mayor Xzavier Montgomery-Wright. "Everyone that has received a citation during those dates will be reimbursed."

Automatically refunding all citations allows the town to reach every driver, not just those who find out about the amnesty through the internet or word-of-mouth, Montgomery-Wright said.

Brentwood has two speed cameras, one located on the 38th Avenue and one on Rhode Island Avenue.

Montgomery-Wright said that the citations were sent out due to an "internal clerical error," and that the town alone, and not the camera vendor, Optotraffic, was responsible.

"The contractor is not involved in the clerical error. It is the town of Brentwood's error," Wright said.

Sirota said the company only sends information to the town and does not actually issue the tickets.

Montgomery-Wright would not elaborate on the nature of the clerical error, but said the problem had been solved.

"We have taken care of it," Montgomery-Wright said. "We have put processes into place to make sure the error does not happen again."

A final tally was still pending, but Montgomery-Wright said more than 3,500 tickets would be voided, but only some of those had been paid and would be refunded.

"Reimbursement will come from the speed camera enforcement program fund," Montgomery-Wright said. "The refund money is not coming from Brentwood citizen's taxes."

Drivers who received the citations can expect their refunds within 60 to 90 days, Montgomery-Wright said.