As Connecticut municipalities look for ways to promote safe driving, some are turning to speed cameras. However, some advocacy groups have privacy concerns.
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Emilia Otte to discuss her article, “As CT speed cameras bring in millions and more towns sign up, concerns linger,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read Emilia’s story here.
WSHU: Hello Emilia. Last July, Middletown, Connecticut became one of the first towns in the state to install speed cameras at some strategic locations. It raked in about $1.8 million in fines in six months. Is that what prompted you to do a deep dive into this?
EO: Yes, it was. I pass that speed camera on Route 66 on a regular basis, and slow down on my way.
WSHU: So basically, could you just tell us how the speed camera works?
EO: Essentially, towns have requested to place them in certain strategic locations where people tend to speed, and the cameras will capture when someone goes over 10 miles per hour, over the speed limit, or if they run a red light. And once the cameras have done that, a citation will go out to the person whose car has run the light or sped and then there's a process for contesting that citation if the person feels they were unfairly given it, or they can simply pay the fine.
WSHU: Yes, for instance, in the situation with Middletown, it was $1.8 million collected, but they charged $2.8 million and this was just in six months.
EO: Yes, it's true. It does take a little bit of time. There's a delay between how long it takes to actually collect the fines versus when the citations go out.
WSHU: Okay, now you say that other towns are now looking into this. Initially, some people, especially the ACLU, expressed significant concern about privacy. How has that worked out now that cameras have been installed in certain towns?
EO: So the concerns about privacy, particularly with the ACLU, a lot of that came out of concerns about a particular company called Flock, which there was some concern about data sharing from license plate readers, which are sometimes in towns used by police departments. And there was some concern about that data being shared with federal law enforcement and then being used, particularly around immigration enforcement. That is different from speed or traffic cameras, but the ACLU is still concerned about the use of speed and traffic cameras just for privacy. I will say that Connecticut's law is extremely strict regarding how the data from speed and red light cameras can be used. It can only be kept for 30 days. So even if say that the camera captures a crime being committed, that data cannot be used as evidence for that. So Connecticut's law is very strict about how that can be done.
WSHU: Now you say other towns are now looking into setting up their own speed cameras. Which towns are looking at this? And is there a difference between urban communities and rural communities?
EO: There is a large mix of towns looking into this. 11 have been approved by the state so far, because the state has to approve any plan that a municipality makes. So far, I believe Beacon Falls, Fairfield, Stratford, Milford, Greenwich and New Haven have been just approved. Stamford was just approved. So it's a real mix of small and large towns, and Hartford is still waiting on approval. But towns all over the state are looking into this. Many of them want the traffic cameras in areas around schools.
WSHU: Okay. And there's also a situation here where you talk to some people in Litchfield County and how it's working out over there. Could you just give us a little bit of what's going on there? And they're not bringing in as much money, but they feel very happy with the way it's worked out, right?
EO: Yes, the first town to install traffic cameras was a little town called Washington in Litchfield County. They have three cameras. They brought in, you know, $662,000 they issued in fines. That's pretty good for it's a small town, but what is really key, they're saying, is that people are actually slowing down, which was the only thing the first selectman told me that actually worked to get people to slow down.
WSHU: And a large city that's looking at this right now is Bridgeport, but there's still some hesitancy, right?
EO: So Bridgeport is in its very, very early stages. I went to a meeting of their public safety committee, where they were really just starting to discuss what would happen if we put some cameras in. And yes, there's some concern in Bridgeport about, is this the place we want to put our money? Should we be investing in more policing rather than this? There are so many things we need. Why should we be doing this? And I think also in Bridgeport, there has been some concern, because they recently installed traffic cameras on school buses to monitor when cars do not stop for school buses. There's also been a big controversy over the use of drones to alert emergency responders. So I think in Bridgeport, there's a bigger context around the use of technology in general and whether or not that's a good thing and whether or not it really works.
WSHU: But overall, it seems as if we're going to have a lot more speed cameras in a lot more communities going forward.
EO: Indeed.
