Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Red-light cameras in rearview mirror
As of today, there are none in Palm Beach County
The beginning of the new year will mark the end of red light cameras in Palm Beach County.
The city of Boynton Beach, the final holdout, was to shut down its 15 cameras at seven intersections on Dec. 31 at 11:59 p.m. — after five tumultuous years of using them.
Several South Florida cities stopped their controversial red-light camera programs after an appellate court ruled in 2014 that Hollywood, and therefore other cities, could not delegate ticketwriting to a third-party vendor.
The program remains operating in four Broward County cities and 16 in Miami-Dade County.
Boynton Beach kept its program, which was different from Hollywood’s because an officer reviewed the $158 tickets before they were sent out.
Still, the city changed course when it came time to renew its contract with American Traffic Solutions. In August it agreed to extend the contract into 2021 — and then reversed that decision in September after public outcry.
People felt the cameras did more harm than good, Commissioner Christina Romelus said.
The motive of the program has been hotly debated since its inception in June 2011. Critics such as Ted Hollander at the Ticket Clinic said it’s just a money-grabber for the city that does little to address traffic safety.
The program has brought in approximately $5.37 million in revenue, according to police records.
Hollander cited a 2014-2015 Red Light Camera Summary Report by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles that showed angle crashes down by one, while rear-end crashes went up by 85 statewide.
“The benefits are far outweighed by the negatives,” he said. “Boynton Beach should be applauded for discontinuing the program.”
But Police Sgt. Phillip Hawkins, who oversees the city’s traffic unit, said his department found the cameras have helped reduce the number of crashes in Boynton intersections by 51 percent.
And, he said, an Insurance Institute for Highway Safety study stated fatal crashes from red light runners increased by 30 percent per capita after cities turned off their red-light camera programs.
In April 2015, the city stopped the cameras for three months after a judge dismissed nearly 200 of the tickets. At the time, Boca Raton, Delray Beach and Palm Beach County had all stopped their programs.
The city’s legal team amended its contract with American Traffic Solutions to address the court’s concerns, eventually reinstating the cameras and appealing the thrown-out tickets.
Last week, an appellate panel of Palm Beach County’s circuit judges upheld Boynton’s program, but the ruling will not overturn the commission’s September vote.
Commissioner Justin Katz, who supports the red-light camera program, said he doesn’t have plans to bring the issue back up. Instead, he hopes the commission will consider using the cameras in other policing efforts.
Mayor Steven Grant said he has discussed with American Traffic Solutions using the cameras for realtime streaming to dispatch operators as crimes are unfolding, on-demand recording and automated license plate readers.
Access to the cameras after a crime could help track the path of a car or give officers a clearer picture of what happened, he said.
“Let’s say for example somebody ran a red light and there was a collision. The officers could look up what exactly happened so they’re not relying on witnesses to write the police report,” he said.