Traffic tix

Hi, so I was in boy's car yesterday and they pulled us over (at 59th street ish) for a random "Safety check" of the vehicle. she checked boy's tinted windows and gave him a ticket saying that they were way too dark to be legal. We found this questionable, as boy's windows came from the dealer that degree tinted. Here's the deal. She said the laser-window-reader thingy said 29. This apparently means 29%. She says that means 29% of the light gets through the window. In New York, the maximum tinting you can have is such that 70% of the light gets through, or 30% tinted. Don't you think it's more likely that the 29 she was reading meant 29% opaque (i.e. just under the legal limit) rather than 29% of the light gets through? so Boy has a ticket that says "29% tinted" which does not even sound illegal the way the cop wrote it. Has this ever happened to anyone? We have never really thought about tinting before.
--M