Red light cameras may be coming back to St. Louis city.
The past year has seen outrage over the pedestrians and cyclists killed and injured by drivers in all parts of the city. Calls for local elected leaders to do something about the traffic violence have grown louder and louder online, at public meetings and even through protests in the form of public art.
Over the weekend, in response to a tweet about cars on South Broadway speeding in the bike and turning lanes, President of the Board of Alderman Megan Green wrote that legislation intended to make streets safer would be introduced in September.
"We’d hoped to get it done this spring but legal issues have been more complicated than we initially anticipated. It is a top priority and in the works," she wrote.
When pressed about what the legislation would entail, Green listed "red light and speed cameras" first among several other initiatives, including enhanced drivers’ education.
In March, after four young people were killed in a crash near Saint Louis University, Mayor Tishaura Jones said her legal team was exploring ways to bring the cameras back.
Red light cameras, which automatically issue a ticket to drivers who run a red light, were common in the metro region until a 2015 Missouri Supreme Court decision ruled them unconstitutional. (The third such ruling in as many years by the state’s highest court, the decision rested on due process concerns, since the city presumed the owner of the car was its driver.)
Even prior to the ruling, libertarian attorney Bevis Schock was advising people who got the tickets not to pay them. He says that the work he and fellow attorney Hugh Eastwood did to have the cameras declared unconstitutional was "a feather in the cap of our careers."
Schock tells the RFT if the cameras come back, so too will his efforts to make them go away.
"The public hates red light camera tickets," Schock says.
He also doubts how effective they would be. "Half of the people running red lights don't have license plates on their cars," he says.
Others disagree. Long before he was the chief trial officer for the St. Louis Circuit Attorney's Office, Marvin Teer was a municipal judge in the city who ran the red light camera docket. (According to a Bill McClellan column, Teer's courtroom was an entertaining one, run "like a game show.")
About the possibility of the camera's return, Teer says, "Having an eye in the sky on public thoroughfares can be good for a lot of reasons." However, he doesn't think it's wise for cities to become like London or Beijing, completely awash in surveillance.
Daneshyar says the legislation now in the works would has been drafted with recent court decisions in mind. The bill introduced in September will include "provisions that address privacy concerns, prioritize safety and not revenue, and follow Missouri Supreme Court opinions which provide guidance on how automated enforcement programs should be administered," he says.
Last year, pedestrian deaths in Missouri increased by 7.5 percent, the tenth-biggest spike seen in the country. Mostly due to their penchant for speed and driving under the influence, St. Louis drivers were recently named the fifth worst in the U.S.
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