Traffic cameras are about money, not safety. Fact.
Today, Clive McFarlane jumped into the T&G private/public PR partnership with the city of Worcester and boy, does he sound silly. Here’s the thing, when the keystone to your premise is a quote from some guy which just happens to be a logical fallacy, the argument starts to look a little shaky.
As Blackstone Police Chief Ross A. Atstupenas said, “If people are abiding by the law, then you don’t have to worry about it.”
See Clive, the problem with that line of reasoning is People like Ross are in a position to constantly be changing the definition of what is and is not legal. Clearly Blackstone Police Chief Ross Atstupenas is not concerned with the rule of law, he himself has been found in violation of Massachusetts ethics code in his role as Chief. Is this really the guy we want deciding what we should and shouldn’t be worried about?
http://www.mass.gov/ethics/DA_Atstupenas.pdf
More to the point, the legal system in the US is not a series of either/or choices. This line of reasoning as presented by Ross assumes either you are guilty of something and therefore should be exposed or you are innocent and therefore have nothing to fear, simple logic demands we have at least a third component which is an expectation of privacy. This is when the Chiefs jump in and yell ‘but you’re in public and have no expectation of privacy’ and they’re mostly correct, however reasonable people agree that constant scrutiny is in fact an invasion of privacy. Would Chief Atstupenas or Worcester Police Chief Geme send one of their officers out to constantly follow a single resident, without cause, wait for that individual to do something illegal and haul them in? Would any of us put up with that sort of scrutiny? Would either Chief be comfortable with a resident following every action of one of their officers? How is this any different? The rule of law, in this country any way, demands all burden be placed on the accuser, not the accused. Any sort of constant surveillance without cause violates the spirit of our expectation of privacy, which is also the expectation to be free of constant scrutiny.
The simple fact is Law Enforcement is viewed by most municipalities as a viable source of revenue generation. There is no safety component to these minor motor vehicle violations. There is however a huge problem with the lack of engineering that goes into both the timing of lights and layouts of all Worcesters major intersections, but fixing that problem costs more and saves nothing. The sad thing is, even in the face of solid research showing traffic signals and signs cause more problems then they solve, Worcester is moving forward with this camera system on the false premise they make us safer. You’ve got nothing to hide, Worcester, so just OBEY. K?
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2 Responses to “Traffic cameras are about money, not safety. Fact.”
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Brendon you got it all wrong! Maybe you missed that article in the T+G last year about traffic tickets? Chief Gemme was pissed that about 90% of all contested traffic tickets in Worcester were thrown out because cops were fixing them for their friends! You know the “rent a cop program”! If you got a traffic ticket, a tenant or a neighbor you don’t like and you have a friend on the WPD or a friend who has a friend on the WPD they will fix your ticket so you don’t have to pay, harass your tenant or neighbor, threaten them with arrest till they leave, it’s a well known program in Worcester! So if you get cameras at red lights here in Worcester and you get a ticket never fear you can use the “rent a cop program” 90% of em will get fixed by “big shot cops” and the city will lose money for sure!
Ha! That’s a funny quote from the Blackstone Police Chief in light of his ethics violation for getting an officer’s brother out of a traffic ticket. Perhaps his quote should have been “If people are abiding by the law, or related to a police officer, then you don’t have to worry about it.”
And no traffic cameras at intersections without dedicated left turn lanes and arrows. I’d hate to get a red-light ticket for waiting to turn left until a light turns yellow when that’s the only option for the turn.
Camera red-light ticketing was struck down in Minneapolis because the ticketing offered fewer due process protections and created a new owner liability for red-light violations when the owner may not have committed the violation. That was based on MN state law, so not sure whether similar arguments could be made in Mass. or not.