Privacy Blog April Archive

Money Pit CCTV Surveillance

I found this shocking tidbit: Red Light Cameras

In past newsletters I have heard from many of you about the need to bring red-light camera's back. This year, the General Assembly passed a law to allow us to do that. For this budget, we are reviewing options to re-install red-light cameras in Alexandria. To install three cameras in the City would cost about seven hundred thousand dollars. City staff believes that we would need at least three cameras to enable the program to break-even over time. While the cameras should eventually break even, they are not revenue generators. The General Assembly specifically set this program up so it would have a difficult time breaking even. The objective of these cameras is to enhance traffic and pedestrian safety, not to generate revenues. In a tight budget year, we may not be able to get this program started, but it is something we are evaluating.

Someone is wasting way too much money on overpriced technology directed at sneaking in a police state. Now, I am not a fan of police, but why not hire 10 policemen and pay them $70,000/yr to patrol the red lights. The objective here would be to help the local economy by paying those salaries to local residents and not for absurd technology.

Reality check! The General Assembly members need to spend some time in other countries where they don't have this obsession with a policeman on every corner, red light cameras or the like. They might even find that society and traffic can function quite well without this police state obession on traffic enforcement (revenue generation, regardless of what they say).