Youngstown cameras aimed at interstates drive accidents down, police revenue up

By David Skolnick | skolnick@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

The city’s speeding-citation program has brought in nearly $1 million to the Youngstown Police Department since its implementation 18 months ago.

But police officials say the bigger number is zero – as in no traffic fatalities on interstates in the city.

Before the program started Aug. 18, 2015, up to three fatal accidents and several serious accidents occurred on city highways yearly, said police Chief Robin Lees and Lt. William Ross, head of the department’s traffic unit, which operates the program.

Overall accidents on interstates in Youngstown dropped 25 percent from 174 between July 24, 2014, and July 23, 2015, compared with 130 between July 24, 2015 – shortly after a one-month warning period for the citations started – and July 23, 2016, Ross said.

Police focus on school zones and highways, concentrating on Interstate 680 between South Avenue and Meridian Road, where the speed limit is 50 mph.

“We’ve never seen results with a speed program as we have like this,” Lees said. “People were saying they didn’t want to get on 680 because it’s a racetrack. But this has slowed down traffic. The results speak for themselves.”

Ross added: “Before that, we had several serious accidents, and the only thing that’s changed is the speed cameras.”

Since the program started, 17,505 citations have been issued with 11,363 people paying the civil fines. That’s a collection rate of 65 percent.

Total fines paid to date are $1,416,863, with the city receiving $920,961 of that total. The city keeps 65 percent of those fees. Optotraffic, the Maryland company that provided the speed cameras and processes and mails the citations, gets 35 percent.

Unpaid citations are turned over to a collection agency, Lees said.

The penalties range from $100 to $150 depending on the speed.

Speeders face civil penalties of $100 for driving up to 12 mph over the speed limit, $125 for 14 to 19 mph over the limit, and $150 for those driving at least 20 mph over the limit.

Citations are given only to motorists caught on cameras going at least 12 mph over the limit on highways, except in construction zones where it declines to at least 10 mph over the limit.

In school zones, citations are issued to those driving at least 10 mph over the limit.

Police officers operate the speed cameras. The department has three and typically uses one or two at a time. The process issues civil citations by mail rather than stop speeders to issue moving violations with a fine and points on their driving records.

There was a public outcry when the program was implemented in August 2015, but Lees said he rarely hears a complaint from anyone now about it.

Officers issued the most citations in September 2015, the first full month of the speed-enforcement program, and then hit a record three-month period of 4,519 citations between June and August 2016.

But since then, the number of citations has dropped significantly.

A record low 257 citations were issued in December 2016. That’s compared with 680 issued in December 2015.

“People are finally getting the message and obeying the speed limit,” Ross said.

There are no plans to expand the speeding-citation program to other parts of the city, Ross and Lees said.

“We’re trying to modify behavior with speeding, but we don’t want to become extreme in collecting revenue,” Lees said. “We want to have a positive effect on public safety, and this has the most positive effect of any program I’ve ever seen.”

The department has spent about $350,000 of the money generated by the speed camera program, primarily for vehicles – including eight police cruisers [police combined this with other funds for the cruisers], police dog units, a prisoner-transport vehicle and a computer crime-reporting system, Lees said.

The department also plans to purchase about $110,000 to $170,000 on four other cruisers later this year, he said. Before this program, the department struggled to purchase police cars, Lees said.

Shelia Dunn, spokeswoman for the National Motorists Association, said the organization generally opposes the use of speed cameras because they “emphasize ticket volume over safety. It’s a way to generate income for police department.”

Lees said those assertions are inaccurate.

“Is there a revenue stream for this? Absolutely,” he said. “But we’ve had a positive effect on public safety, and we can show the results. We could have never reduced accidents and increased safety through conventional enforcement. We’ve been pretty responsible. I could deploy twice the resources and double the revenue, but we don’t. We want the freeway to be safe and fatality-free. People feel safer on the freeway because it’s slowed down due to enforcement with traffic cameras.”