The candidates vying for a seat on the Tucson City Council in the Nov. 5 election are split when it comes to cameras that nab speeders and red-light runners.
The Democrats support photo-radar enforcement, while the Republicans generally oppose it.
The cameras, are a controversial law enforcement tool. The city uses them in two ways: The Tucson Police Department has two vans that move around the city to bust speeders and has installed cameras at eight intersections that detect both speeders and red-light runners.
Statistics show that accidents have dipped at most intersections where the cameras have been installed, according to a city audit of the program. For example, there were 40 collisions at the intersection of Grant and Tanque Verde roads in 2006 and 2007. Last year, that number had dropped to 12. Overall, the number of collisions at the monitored intersections has decreased from 188 in 2006 to 74 in 2012.
At the same time, the city has collected millions of dollars in revenue with the cameras, which are operated in conjunction with the private company American Traffic Solutions. The audit showed that over the life of the program, the city had brought in just under $6 million in net revenue, including more than $1.1 million in fiscal year 2012.
Ward 5 Councilman Richard Fimbres, a Democrat who ran the Arizona Governor’s Office of Highway Safety before joining the Tucson City Council, said the cameras have helped reduce accidents on city streets.
“This is a measure meant to save lives and prevent injuries,” Fimbres said. “I don’t believe this was ever meant to be a money-making tool. This was a tool to help slow down drivers, because people are too distracted and not paying enough attention to their driving.”
Republican Mike Polak, who hopes to unseat Fimbres, said that the cameras should go.
“I think we should get rid of them,” Polak said.
He feared the cameras might improperly cite motorists.
“How do you know it didn’t malfunction?” Polak asked. “They do malfunction, because our roads are in such poor condition here.”
Polak, who moved to Tucson to work on a Boeing contract to build an electronic “virtual fence” along the border, said that a private company was “completely profiting from this.”
Polak added that he would prefer facing the judgment of a police officer over a Robocop.
“If I’m gonna get a ticket, I’d rather get it from a cop,” Polak said.
Ward 3 Councilwoman Karin Uhlich, a Democrat, called the cameras “a wise investment in technology.”
The two-term incumbent said that her review of the data showed that crashes were down at the intersections where the cameras had been installed.
“Safety matters,” Uhlich said. “I believe we have saved lives.”
She added that the police department had asked for the cameras.
“They need us to support them when they identify technology that increase resources,” Uhlich said. “We can have fewer police officers assigned to traffic so they can get to burglaries sooner. We can’t have it both ways.”
Her Republican opponent, Ben Buehler-Garcia, has a nuanced approach: He wants to get rid of the cameras at the intersections, but keep the photo-radar vans that move around the city.
Buehler said the “data is inconclusive” regarding the cameras at intersections and suggested that they could be dangerous because drivers could be distracted by them and change their normal driving behavior.
But he said the roaming vans are an effective law-enforcement tool because speeders don’t know their location, so they are less likely to lower their speed as they approach the vans and then speed up once they are past them.
“They’re more cost-efficient and they’re mobile,” Buehler-Garcia said. “Folks don’t know where they’re going to be.”
Buehler-Garcia said the revenue from the cameras could be replaced if police would crack down on pedestrians near University Medical Center.
“I’d like to post an officer just a little down the road on Campbell Avenue and let’s start ticketing the people who are jaywalking at UMC,” he said.
Ward 6 Councilman Steve Kozachik, who is unopposed in his reelection campaign, didn’t like the sound of Buehler-Garcia’s proposal.
“Lay off the jaywalkers,” Kozachik said after hearing the idea at a forum last week. “I do it every morning when I’m out running. You’ll end up balancing the budget on my morning run.”
This article appears in Oct 24-30, 2013.
“We can have fewer police officers assigned to traffic so they can get to burglaries sooner. We can’t have it both ways” This is a myth they like to perpetuate. Ask the Tucson PD how many officers have been removed from traffic duty because of the cameras. The answer should be ZERO. Officers can be pulled from traffic duty to respond to crimes-in-progress if needed. Many crimes are discovered when people are pulled over that can’t be when the car owners are mailed a ticket weeks later.
Garcia is pathetic in how he brags about being a jaywalker. Just what the city needs is someone who flouts the laws that are there for his safety.
Naturally Fimbres supports the cameras. The camera companies are known to support the campaigns of city council members in order to buy them off. You can’t trust anything they say.
Politicians will always disagree, especially when they are influenced by camera company lobbyists. The issues regarding cameras installed to monitor the public on public owned property should be DECIDED ONLY BY THE VOTES OF THE PUBLIC. Get these issues on the ballot or dismantle the whole camera program and refund the taxpayers for the expense incurred.
My objection to the cameras is that they are managed by a private company that rakes in millions. Anytime you outsource something to private industry you get less than what you pay for as they are in the business to make money, not promote safety.
How’s this for a novel idea? Add a person or two to the IT staff of the city and install and run the cameras yourself. You get to keep all of the money except for the meager salaries you pay the IT staff and you can say it is for safety.
Win-win, you add more jobs and get to keep more of the money.
Photoradarscam: That “pathetic” jaywalking candidate is Steve K.
Read the original story: “Lay off the jaywalkers,” Kozachik said after hearing the idea at a forum last week. “I do it every morning when I’m out running. You’ll end up balancing the budget on my morning run.”
Ben Buehler-Garcia wants TPD to ticket the jaywalkers. Kozachik needs to get a ticket whenever HE jaywalks. Or maybe use one of the City parks for his jogging pleasure.
Photoradarscam was off target indeed since it was the Koz who made the remark.
Photoradarscam is also off the mark on donations to campaigns, especially Richard Fimbres since he had supported the cameras as Highway Safety Director for the State of Arizona.
Also, check the financial reports, no contributions given by the camera companies to any of the candidates.
Love how someone throws something against the wall to see if it would stick, as was the first post, and for which it doesn’t.
“You will end up balancing the budget on my morning run”…Thanks Steve…
The public, generically, had decided that it was ok to run red lights and speed. For some of the really large intersections around town, that ended up in many collisions, often with injuries, some fatal. Bottom line, red light and speeding enforcement HAS saved lives. Leaving the fate of these cameras to the voters is to go back to the way things were, and that’s just dumb.
This discussion reminds me of a terrible experience we had a few years ago with the robocop cameras when our daughter was dying and my wife was on her way to the ICU at TMC at 2am and fined $300 for making a right hand turn without first coming to a complete stop (no other cars were around). We wrote the judge about the experience and received no response. There are some good things about those cameras, but the political discussion around them has been mediocre and no one has figured out ways to address very reasonable concerns about them. At court we were informed that there are no appeals available. No real live officer would have written that ticket; a real human could see that public safety is not compromised by a 2am right hand turn at 12 mph.
Every ticket, no matter how it is served, is intended to result in revenue. More disingenuous BS. Stop reading at that point.
Leave K alone. The one genuine comment in the story should be noted as such.
News flash:
Jay walking, or not, requires walking. All of ya’ll get off your fat asses and out of your cars and walk to a salad which you so desperately need.
Take one look at yourself.
I was stuck in an intersection on Swan, with 2 other cars, a city road crew suddenly stop and blocked us from clearing the intersection. The light changed and I got a ticket, but I could not move until the road crew moved. The camera pictures clearly show the scene, but it didn’t change the decision. A traffic cop would have seen what happen and ignored or dismissed it. So I believe it is about revenue.
I have never seen a traffic camera pull over an intoxicated driver, rescue a civilian, or exercise human judgement. While not all officers are perfect, our revenues are much better spent on officers than any camera. If only we could get the wasted camera money back and recall the politicians that profited from the venture that caused infringement of privacy rights and weakening of our law enforcement.