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EDITORIAL: Red-Light Cameras Worth a Rematch

Posted on: Saturday, 31 December 2005, 12:00 CST

By The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va., The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.

Dec. 31--Cameras can catch far more motorists running red lights than overburdened police officers can. And in the bargain they provide a credible deterrent to reckless drivers, and a real protection for the rest of us.

They also automate a relatively tedious law-enforcement function, freeing police officers to protect and serve in capacities that technology can never replace.

Now that red light cameras are banned from the commonwealth, jurisdictions that had them -- including Virginia Beach -- have seen a worrisome increase in folks running stoplights. According to Beach police Chief Jake Jacocks, the number of red-light runners more than doubled at four intersections after the cameras were switched off.

And so begins a race against time, in Virginia Beach and in Northern Virginia, to see whether the red-light cameras can be turned back on before the death toll mounts.

Legislation to reauthorize the cameras will be introduced in the General Assembly next month. Del. Bob Purkey, the Virginia Beach Republican who knows the issue from personal experience, has already decided to keep fighting for it.

But the bills, and there are likely to be at least a few, will face the determined and perhaps fatal opposition of the Republican leadership, including Del. H. Morgan Griffith, the Salem delegate who serves on the mighty Militia, Police and Public Safety Committee, where these bills usually go to die.

"I don't want big brother watching on every street corner," Griffith told the Richmond Times-Dispatch earlier this month.

The politics breaks as much along U.S. 29 as along party lines. The strongest opposition to photo red comes from western precincts where legislation to ban open containers in cars dies each year.

Police, traffic-safety advocates, victims, doctors and others all want to use cameras to enforce red-light laws. Many observers believe that if it came to a vote on the floor of the entire House of Delegates, photo red legislation would pass. But it first has to find its way out of committee.

Let's review the "logic" that kills the bills before they get a fair vote.

Opponents of photo red say it represents an invasion of privacy, that it represents "Big Brother," to employ Griffith's words. But this is the same legislature that allows an unconstitutional law governing private sexual behavior to remain on the books. In other words, Virginians should expect inviolate privacy while they're running a stoplight, but not in the bedroom.

Opponents argue that photo red turns the presumption of innocence on its head, forcing folks to prove that they weren't driving the offending car. But it makes defendants do that only because the evidence is so compelling. It's the equivalent of a court tossing out the videotape of a robbery because it makes the robber look too guilty.

The truth now is that this isn't about privacy, or a presumption of innocence. This is about a Republican leadership not wanting to lose a signal issue, and about rural Virginians trying to show that they still have clout.

It's about politics. Which is a game. Unfortunately, it's a game that will prove fatal for too many Virginians who didn't even know they were playing.

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Copyright (c) 2005, The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Virginian-Pilot

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