(ThyBlackMan.com) ProPublica analyzed Chicago traffic cameras and found that they excessively ticket minority drivers excessively. Latino and black drivers are ticketed at much higher rates.
Despite this shortcoming, city officials will keep the traffic cameras on. Other cities are also planning to adopt the traffic cameras to discourage dangerous driving.
When the cameras were installed 20 years ago, they were meant to keep everyone safe, according to Richard J. Daley who was mayor then.
Daley’s successor Rahm Emmanuel also expressed safety concerns as reasons for introducing speed cameras.
The city has dotted cameras placed throughout. The city has collected millions of dollars thanks to the cameras. But these penalties have hit black residents hardest. Black neighborhoods have paid half a billion dollars in fines over a 15-year period.
Latino and black households get double the number of tickets as the white neighborhoods. The fees are a forerunner to vehicle impoundment, driver’s license suspensions and eventually for some bankruptcy!
Activist Olatunji Oboi Reed said that the black population had ‘felt the brunt of it the way white people didn’t.’ Reed added that many black and latino people in Chicago faced financial hardship because of tickets.
The onset of the coronavirus pandemic made the disparities in tickets even worse, because people in black and latino neighborhoods are less likely to work from home. Black households were the worst hit in 2020.
Chicago is not unique. New York City did away with the red-light camera program after noticing that it brought financial peril to low-income households more than it brought safety. Miami had a similar program which was closed in 2017 for the same reason.
In Washington, cameras placed in black neighborhoods issued so man tickets that activists raised the alarm in 2018.
Ironically, the tragic death of George Floyd in 2020 in an encounter with the police has made the cameras gain popularity. Different groups see cameras as a more partial alternative to traffic officers. One that could eliminate potentially fatal traffic stops.
The newly passed Federal Infrastructure Bill has paved the way for states to access federal funding for traffic cameras within school zones and work zones.
Chicago city officials were alerted of the disparities in ticketing by traffic cameras, after researchers from the University of Illinois shared their research findings. This resulted in the city of Chicago hiring the professors to research the issue thoroughly.
Within six months, Mayor Lori Lightfoot was proposing that cameras issue tickets for lower speeds in the interest of public safety. Critics see a financial motive behind it. They see it as a way to raise more revenue at the expense of black and Latino residents of Chicago. It was approved in 2021.
Racial disparities in ticketing endured, as observed by Propublica. Policy chief Dan Lurie argues that they were necessary to save more lives from traffic fatalities.
So far, the cameras are not going anywhere. But the city has promised to evaluate the presence of cameras in certain locations where they may not necessarily bring down the number of crashes.
In conclusion, the research shows that while speed cameras increase road safety, to some extent, they tend to place people of color at a disadvantage. The tickets for the aforementioned speed and red-light cameras in most Urban Centers in America increase the probability that some people of color will find bankruptcy the only viable option.
Staff Writer; Stanley G. Buford
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