Those anti-traffic camera folks have just about as bad a luck
Police in Scottsdale, Arizona are continuing to crack down on those who disagree with the city’s photo enforcement policies. Jason Shelton, 36, was arrested yesterday at around 6pm while videotaping more than a dozen activists who peacefully stood on the red light camera-equipped street corner of Shea Boulevard waving signs. The signs described automated ticketing machines as “scameras” and urged passing motorists to visit CameraFraud.com, the group responsible for organizing the event.
“Bring your favorite sign expressing your views on the fraudulent cameras, or use one of ours,” the announcement for Thursday’s protest stated. “Be ready to have some fun with some passionate citizens who care.”
Scottsdale Police cared enough to send four undercover officers in a pair of unmarked white GMC vans to monitor and videotape the event. According to eyewitness accounts provided to TheNewspaper, Shelton at one point walked over to the vans assuming they were driven by employees of Redflex, the private Australian company that operates speed camera vans for the state. As soon as Shelton got near with his camera, irate officers wearing jeans and military-style ballistic vests leaped from the vans to arrest Shelton who was armed only with a cardboard sign and a camera.
Last month, Scottsdale Police arrested Shelton on the charge of “obstructing of government operations” because he videotaped a similar protest involving a Redflex speed camera van.
Scottsdale PD is now saying that they went to the protest specifically to arrest Mr. Shelton because of an eBay scam. Anyone want to bet he was selling photo radar defeating items?
Washington State fired up their photo radar machines along I-5, between Chehalis/Centralia and the city of Vancouver, just across the river from Portland, OR. No stats are out yet, but I figure the DOT/WSP will be out bragging about the number of tickets issued and/or the amount of “revenue” generated around Thanksgiving time.
All Washingtonians need to be keeping an eye on their mail from now on. Some jurisdictions are treating pictures which only give them a partial plate number as the lottery and sending tickets out to any vehicle with similar numbers/letters in the hope that someone would pay the fine.
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In other Washington State transportation news, those in charge of public transportation in the tri-county area will lie to you. Repeatedly.
The Washington Policy Center blog has analyzed to recent press releases from Sound Transit and found both of them stretched the truth more than just a bit.
Sound Transit claimed that Proposition 1 on this November’s ballot will reduce CO2 emissions somewhere between 0.71% and 1.11%.
Unfortunately, they failed to factor in the emissions put out by the buses and trains in the ST fleet.
The next lie was when ST claimed to have 10 million riders.
Maybe it is because they don’t have a statistician on staff, but their terminology is incorrect and misleading: They had 10 million trips.
As the WPC blog points out: Trips do not equal Riders.
And no, I don’t want them to go off and hire a proper statistician. Firstly, because it dumb mistake like this give me blogging material, and secondly, because I don’t want my money wasted on yet another bean-counter for a very self-promoting agency.
I’m torn on this. I hate the fact that all of the Phoenix Metro area seems to be jumping on the bandwagon of Cameras, Cameras, Cameras… but at the same time, I’ve never lived in a place where red lights are literally treated as a “guideline” instead of an “order”. Just this weekend I watched three different cars, at three different intersections, run red lights that had been red for at LEAST a solid two or three seconds.
I’ve seen them traffic Cameras ’round here in NC, too.
ours seem to have an awful lot of holes in ’em, though. Don’t pretend to know how THAT’s supposed to work…