Friday, Feb. 11, 2005 | 3:30 a.m.
WEEKEND EDITION
February 12 - 13, 2005
Those cameras perched atop valley traffic lights will see if you run a light, they just won't do anything about it.
For now.
A bill passed in 1999 outlaws the use of remotely controlled cameras to gather evidence against drivers who run a light or get in an accident, but North Las Vegas officials want the 2005 Legislature to consider changing that.
In August officials asked the Legislature for a two-year study of the cameras' effectiveness in hope that would bolster efforts to change the law in 2007.
The request will likely set off a debate between advocates who say traffic cameras can help reduce accidents and civil libertarians who fear Big Brother is looking over their shoulders.
Fifty cameras in the valley are used to adjust the timing of traffic lights, said Niel Rohleder, manager of the Freeway and Arterial System of Transportation, the multimillion-dollar joint venture between the state and area municipalities to monitor traffic flow.
In addition, Clark County planners have positioned two other camera types -- one to watch real-time traffic patterns and another to detect cars in intersections -- throughout the valley, according to Herbert Arnold, county chief of traffic engineering.
Similar cameras placed to catch drivers in the act of running red lights or to photograph accident scenes began sprouting up in California and several East Coast states in the 1990s as an automated alternative to stationing a patrol officer at busy intersections.
In California, the process has become so automated that drivers can expect to receive photographs of intersection infractions in the mail, complete with a summons to appear in traffic court. In those cases, a human police officer rarely contacts them.
Clark County Sheriff Bill Young is curious about the proposal but sees it as a "mixed bag."
"Some are very positive toward it ... but there's a big difference between someone getting pulled over by a police officer and something spit out in the mail," he said. "We need to do some fact-finding and study it."
Under current Nevada law, city officials are barred from even studying whether the cameras would be effective law enforcement tools, Kimberly McDonald, North Las Vegas' chief lobbyist, said.
"That's the whole thing," she said. "We would like the ability to at least do the two-year study. We think that's very reasonable."
The city has enlisted the National Campaign to Stop Red Light Running, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that credits the cameras with saving lives nationwide.
Leslie Blakey, the campaign's executive director, pointed to what she called "countless" studies that detail the cameras' effectiveness and their support among law enforcement organizations, including the National Association of Chiefs of Police.
The North Las Vegas Police Department is in favor of the move, but the state's largest law enforcement agency, Metro Police, has not taken a position.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which maintains a database of each state's traffic laws, Nevada is one of only three states to outlaw the use of the cameras for traffic enforcement.
Blakey's group said there are at least 100 communities in 20 states where traffic cameras are used for law enforcement. The campaign estimates camera use in urban areas has increased about 40 percent in two years.
That is a trend the American Civil Liberties Union says sets a dangerous precedent because cameras in public venues invite abuse, according to Allen Lichtenstein, Nevada ACLU'sgeneral counsel.
"It is a public area and there's clearly no specific prohibition about shooting pictures on the street," he said. "But we're talking about a systematic use by government of a network of cameras and that certainly goes against the spirit of being left alone."
Young said too many advocacy groups push the cameras as a replacement for stationing police officers at dangerous intersections, a move the sheriff said would do little to curb the crime rate.
Most often, "a good butt-chewing" by a police officer does more to alter a motorist's driving habits, he said.
"They (traffic cameras) get put out there as being a replacement for police officers, and that particular philosophy does not lower your crime rate," Young said.
In 1999, the year the law passed, Metro opposed the restrictions but since has shied away from supporting any subsequent efforts to change the rules, said Stan Olsen, executive director of Metro's Office of Intergovernmental Services.
According to the pro-camera campaign, video surveillance is responsible for a 33 percent reduction in the number of injuries in Phoenix intersections since 2001. In San Diego, no crashes were attributed to red-light running at intersections with cameras between June 2003 and 2004, according to the campaign.
Lichtenstein questioned the role cameras played in the reduction.
"If you follow the logic that the proponents offer, it leads to the idea that there should be cameras everywhere watching us, and that's a very scary idea," he said.
Legal experts, including UNLV constitutional and criminal law professor Lynne Henderson, say drivers should not expect to be left entirely alone in their cars.
While Henderson acknowledged a potential for abuse, she said that cameras mounted at intersections likely pose no more constitutional questions than those mounted in other public places.
"There are concerns because it's a spy in the sky, but you're in a public place," she said of government-managed roads. "You can be concerned about the government filming you driving your car, but no court has held it to be unconstitutional."
In California, the footage obtained by traffic cameras can be -- and often is -- used in court to prove cases against drivers suspected of driving while intoxicated, said Bruce Nelson, a deputy Clark County district attorney in charge of the vehicular crimes unit. Prosecutors use the film when drunken drivers are involved in collisions caught by the cameras.
Several Arizona cities have similar laws, although no statewide statute encouraging or prohibiting their use exists.
Even if cameras are used some day in the Las Vegas Valley, the information gained solely from the cameras could prove unreliable, said Sgt. Tracy McDonald of Metro's Traffic Investigation Section.
Possibly their best use would be to confirm what witnesses tell officers at the scene of a crash, McDonald said.
One case where having a video record might have helped was the Dec. 31 crash at Hacienda Avenue and Rainbow Boulevard that killed 32-year-old Julio Valdovinos-Manuel when another pickup truck broadsided his 1995 Ford pickup, McDonald said.
Investigators interviewed more than a dozen witnesses who provided officers with several accounts of what happened and what color the traffic light at the intersection was when the collision occurred, he said.
"In almost every accident that involves a traffic signal, it would help to have a recording," McDonald said, noting that human witnesses are still preferred. "Without witnesses, the traffic signal cameras (alone) make it very difficult to tell who's at fault."
Saying they had not seen North Las Vegas' request, Young and Olsen would not speculate on whether Metro was inclined to support the changes to the law.
Olsen, however, said the North Las Vegas proposal includes what some consider to be a more intrusive dual-camera system that photographs both the front and rear of a car, a system Metro is reluctant to support.
Ideally, Young said, Metro could place the cameras in 10 of the most dangerous county intersections for a year to measure their effect.
Like McDonald, Nelson said that having footage from a traffic camera would not likely make a difference in the severity of a suspect's charge, but could provide another element in a case that would ultimately rely on human memory.
"I know they do cut down on accidents" in other states, Nelson said. "They're probably the wave of the future. I would think Nevada would eventually allow cameras at the intersections."
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