Fighting Crime From Above?

After subjecting the DC lab rats citizens to years of Red Light Camera (RLC) experiments that more than doubled accidents by 2005, DC police chief Cathy Lanier lashed out at citizens with iPhone RLC location apps calling these users "cowardly".

Hayley Peterson from the Washington Examinor reports:

Area drivers looking to outwit police speed traps and traffic cameras are using an iPhone application and other global positioning system devices that pinpoint the location of the cameras.

That has irked D.C. police chief Cathy Lanier, who promised her officers would pick up their game to counteract the devices, which can also help drivers dodge sobriety checkpoints.

"I think that's the whole point of this program," she told The Examiner. "It's designed to circumvent law enforcement — law enforcement that is designed specifically to save lives."

The new technology streams to iPhones and global positioning system devices, sounding off an alarm as drivers approach speed or red-light cameras.

Lanier said the technology is a "cowardly tactic" and "people who overly rely on those and break the law anyway are going to get caught" in one way or another.

Photo radar tickets generated nearly $1 billion in revenues for D.C. during fiscal years 2005 to 2008.

In the current fiscal year, Montgomery County expects to make $29 million from its red light and speed cameras. Lanier said efforts to outlaw the software would be too difficult.

Lanier said the cameras have decreased traffic deaths.

It's easy to make claims that the DC RLC system is effective when the city has lined their pockets with $1 billion in fine monies.  While I agree the potential may be there to reduce deaths, I have not seen any report stating this to be true. I'm going to chalk this up to just another politician claiming success.

I'm also wondering if police chief Lanier is aware that DC already publishes the location of their red light cameras on-line? If she wasn't aware, someone could go so far as to call her "ignorant", but that would be name calling.

I guess the big RLC experiment has worked exactly as planned.  When your city's accident reduction strategy is fundamentally flawed, things just aren't going to work out in the long run.