4 ms·

Creepy municipal surveillance cameras are everywhere in my city, ostensibly for our security. If they were used for the enforcement you describe, my opinion of

• throwaway894345 5y ago
  Yeah, in Chicago the police don’t care much for these kinds of minor offenses, so I don’t think camera footage would help. I regularly see people blow hard red lights in front of a sitting squad car and nothing happens. You call 911 because someone is getting the shit beaten out of them in broad daylight and a squad car might roll out in 20 minutes or it might not show up at all. (To be clear, I’m not anti-cop and I doubt this has anything to do with individual officers rather than explicit or implicit policing policy, but it really sucks) And when the city tries to solve traffic problems with automation, some politician always figures out how to weaponized it against the citizenry—for example, the speeding cameras which are only supposed to be placed near parks and schools get placed near cemeteries and random patches of grass (especially in poorer neighborhoods) and you don’t get your warning or tickets for a month or more (giving you lots of time to accrue more offenses and defeating the purpose altogether). And the cherry on top is the “appeals process” policy is to deny all appeals. Ultimately, bike infrastructure may be the only thing Chicago does passably. :’)