Red Light Camera News Brown shutters red-light camera bid
http://www.buffalonews.com/city/article520936.ece
Brown shutters red-light camera bid
Mayor shifts focus to surveillance devices
By Brian Meyer
News Staff Reporter
Published: August 12, 2011, 10:23 PM
Mayor Byron W. Brown is abandoning his push to install cameras at traffic signals, saying he will focus instead on expanding Buffalo's network of police surveillance cameras.
Brown acknowledged in an interview with The Buffalo News that he is ending his second attempt in three years to introduce the devices to nab motorists running red lights at many of the city's busiest intersections.
With the city's "limited resources" and the controversy surrounding the proposal, Brown said he has decided to concentrate on surveillance cameras.
"Our major focus is on reducing crime," Brown said. "We think it makes more sense to expand the great success we've seen with our crime surveillance cameras. We're trying to spread the limited financial resources we have in ways that they will be most effective for the public."
The mayor acknowledged the hurdles that the traffic-signal cameras faced in the Common Council. Some lawmakers worried about studies showing that the devices cause sharp increases in rear-end collisions. Others questioned the plan to fine the registered owners of the vehicle no matter who was driving at the time of the violation.
"It's a very positive reversal in policy," South Council Member Michael P. Kearns said of Brown's about-face. "I'm glad that we're not going to make the same mistake that many other communities made."
Two weeks ago, Los Angeles became the latest city to move against the cameras, with the City Council voting unanimously to remove the devices, in part because of enforcement difficulties.
"There are still a lot of questions about these cameras, and they've shown to be failures in other places," said Niagara Council Member David A. Rivera, a staunch opponent of the program.
The American Civil Liberties Union had warned that the cameras could become tools for "mission creep" that might encourage police to use them for more than traffic infractions. Critics argued that nothing would stop police from using the cameras to film people during public protests.
John A. Curr III, regional director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said Friday that he believes the police surveillance cameras pose many of the same problems as the traffic-signal cameras. The city has yet to disclose any policies established to protect people's civil liberties, he said.
City officials, he added, have an obligation to let the public know who has access to the video data, what controls have been placed on the information to avoid abuse and how long the data is stored.
"Doesn't it make more sense to just hire more police officers?" Curr said in response to the mayor's push to increase the number of surveillance cameras.
A Council member who supports traffic-signal cameras called on the mayor Friday to propose alternatives to improve safety at the city's most dangerous intersections.
"If he isn't going to pursue red-light cameras, then the city has to increase [police] enforcement or come up with some engineering solutions" Delaware Council Member Michael J. LoCurto said.
Increasing the number of officers assigned to the traffic division would be a start, LoCurto added.
Since Brown launched his first attempt in 2009 to install the cameras at 50 of the city's most accident-prone intersections, critics have branded it a "money grab."
Administration officials denied the claim, insisting that they were pursuing the idea to protect the public. Supporters cited their own studies showing that the cameras lead to a decline in front-to-side accidents, known as T-boning, which have high injury rates. The $3 million in projected revenues that the program could have produced annually would be a spinoff benefit, supporters insisted. Brown even vowed to use some of the money to hire 20 additional police officers.
Last spring, in his latest's push for the devices, the mayor offered a carrot to try to win over skeptics: using $300,000 from the resulting traffic fines to help dozens of ailing arts groups.
But city lawmakers weren't biting. Brown's detractors called the offer a "political gimmick." Some said the issue should be decided in a public referendum, while others prodded public works experts to study engineering solutions for dangerous intersections.
Some, for example, have argued that extending the duration of amber lights can help reduce accidents. During budget deliberations, some lawmakers were visibly annoyed when they were told that engineers had not yet evaluated such alternatives.
Brown, meanwhile, insisted that the cameras would help make streets safer. He cited data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety that found that camera enforcement in 14 large cities reduced fatal crashes from drivers running red lights by 24 percent over five years.
But Brown's proposal continued to face setbacks.
But during budget deliberations in May, the mayor informed lawmakers that a state control board overseeing city finances instructed him to remove $500,000 in projected revenues from fines from his spending plan. His finance chief insisted that a staffer had made an "honest mistake" by including the money.
While Brown still says such traffic cameras would improve safety, he adds that expanding the number of police surveillance cameras in neighborhoods throughout the city makes sense.
The city now has 125 surveillance cameras, which Brown described as "very popular with the public."
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