Board backs local police radar use
MONTGOMERY TWP — Should local police departments be allowed to use radar to track speeding drivers, a tool that’s currently only legal for state police to use in Pennsylvania?
Police chiefs throughout Pennsylvania are making a push to change that law, and Montgomery Township police Chief Scott Bendig and state Rep. Todd Stephens (R-151st) have enlisted Montgomery’s supervisors in that effort.
“The concept is something that is receiving more attention in Harrisburg, and it seems like more of the leadership are warming up to the idea” of allowing local departments to use radar, Stephens said.
Recent changes in the leadership of the state House of Representatives have removed lawmakers opposed to allowing local radar, Stephens told the board, and with new members percolating up into leadership positions, the upcoming legislative season could let lawmakers revisit the concerns that originally led to the ban: the worry that small towns would use radar devices as revenue generators.
“What they’re concerned about is a small borough saying, ‘ Hey, we can hire a part-time (officer) at rush hour, and see a lot of revenue by parking him with a radar gun getting everybody who’s going through town,” Stephens said.
Several similar bills are currently in development, Stephens told the board, but there are ways to remove that concern: revenue generated by speeding tickets could be sent elsewhere to remove the incentive for excessive enforcement, or the state could allow only departments with certain accreditations such as that offered by the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association — of which Montgomery Township is one — to be able to use radar.
“We can put those protections in place and safeguard drivers, to know that police departments won’t be using it as a revenue generator,” Stephens said.
“Right now there’s no concrete proposal, we’re just really talking in gen- eral about the idea of providing local municipalities the option to use this tool,” he said.
Bendig told the board his department has identified several locations where “we can’t always (position) drivers — somewhere it would have a traffic impact, toward a curve, or where we can’t get a line of sight, and we have to utilize some other speed limiting equipment. That’s where it would be beneficial to us.”
At certain sites the department has even used officers on bicycles to monitor speeding, so having the ability to use radar “would really be very helpful, to say the least,” he said.
A model ordinance drafted by the chiefs’ association states that Pennsylvania is the only state in the country that prohibits local use of police radar and notes that the state has “the third highest number of speed-related vehicle fatalities and the second highest percentage of speed-related vehicle fatalities” in the country.
The current legislative session has only about a dozen voting days left, Stephens said, but starting next year the political environment may be more conducive to a new push to revisit that law, in order to address “the biggest complaint I hear” from residents in Montgomery and neighboring townships.
“I don’t have any illusions, I don’t think it’s going to happen in the near future, but I do think it’s something in the not-toodistant future where we might see some changes,” he said.
“I hear it all the time, in every neighborhood, in every municipality. Everybody brings up the idea of speeding,” Stephens said, and backing bills to allow for radar enforcement “is an easy ‘yes’ for me.”
Montgomery’s supervisors voted unanimously to back the model resolution proposed by Bendig that encourages lawmakers to authorizes the use of radar by local police. Montgomery’s supervisors next meet at 8 p.m. on July 28 at the township administration building, 1001 Stump Road; for more information or meeting agendas and materials, visit www.MontgomeryTwp.org or follow @Monttwp on Twitter.