His successors echoed those sentiments as they expanded camera enforcement. “My goal is only one thing, the safety of our kids,” Rahm Emanuel said in 2011, as he lobbied for the introduction of speed cameras. And in 2020, Lori Lightfoot assured residents her expansion of the program was “about making sure that we keep communities safe.”
But for all of their safety benefits, the hundreds of cameras that dot the city — and generate tens of millions of dollars a year for City Hall — have come at a steep cost for motorists from the city’s Black and Latino neighborhoods. A ProPublica analysis of millions of citations found that households in majority Black and Hispanic ZIP codes received tickets at around twice the rate of those in white areas between 2015 and 2019.
-Chuck
I would think if you looked at prison populations you would see similar results.
ReplyDeleteGee, who woulda' thunk it....
DeleteThey dinndonuffin. In Florida the "latinos" go around with no insurance, expired plates and are usually illegal aliens,that usually get set free after causing accidents or get stopped for drunk driving. The blacks will rent a high end car and simply keep it until it gets impounded for a traffic offense.
ReplyDeleteThis shit makes me crazy!
I am really tired of the "shift the blame" game. If the camera is catching a person doing something wrong its got nothing to do with the color of their skin and everything to do with violating the laws.
ReplyDeleteWho commits the most crimes in the city? You think they give a flip about the red light camera. Isn't it racist to say someone is black or mexican based on a zipcode. And if you are talking about addresses for license plates for illegals, is it real. They do a study on who actually pays their red light fine based on race?
ReplyDeleteSo the next absurdity will be the city of Chicago getting rid of the cameras in the black areas because they are racist because more blacks for some reason get busted by them while ignoring that they break the laws about 8-12 times the rate per capita of whites. :(
ReplyDeleteOngoing crime analysis statistic from the Eff Bee Eye dating back decades, 13% of the U.S. population commit 90% of the crime. Guess who that is and against what community those crimes are committed.
DeleteNemo
Well, if the black and brown folk don't have as much money to spend on drugs and guns we all benefit.
ReplyDeleteThe down side is they need to rob more or bigger stores to come up with the funds.
As one who has had two relatives & one biker buddy killed by asshole stop sign runners, I say throw the fn book at them.
ReplyDeleteWell, they can't go blaming racist police officers this time. The cameras only discriminate against drivers who are speeding or jumping red lights.
ReplyDeleteAccording to a 2017 city report, Black Chicagoans are killed in traffic crashes at twice the rate of white residents. They drive like maniacs around here. Get em off the fricken road.
ReplyDeleteOf course, driving the speed limit and stopping at red lights isn't part of the discussion. That, too, would be racist.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course this has nothing to do about speeding, running red lights, or making unsafe/illegal actions. Instead, it has everything to do with racist cameras. Yo.
ReplyDeleteMany years ago I lived in a Detroit suburb that was transitioning to black. Some of my black coworkers who lived in the area swore they were being targeted by that towns cops. One day I did a very unscientific study, I stood next to the road and watched cars. The cars that I perceived as speeding were mostly driven by young men of color(we had an Arab population too) second were black women and rarely would I see older whites speeding.
ReplyDeleteMaybe, just maybe, the people in the Black and Hispanic ZIP codes don't know how to drive...
ReplyDeleteIt can't be racist in Chicago. With the speed cameras only the car is at fault. Nothing is held against the driver.
ReplyDeleteThe rationale being you can't actually tell who was driving the car, so you can only ticket the car but not the driver. The car's owner is responsible to pay for the ticket, but it's not held against his driving record.
Geek
Ya, people should just drive within the posted limits but let's get real...
ReplyDeleteA hundred dollar fine to me when life is good is not a big deal, when I was living paycheck to paycheck a hundred dollars was HUGE!
Perhaps they are twice as dangerous.
ReplyDeleteObviously those obviously deplorable zip codes must, by mandate, be reassigned in exchange for old white guy zip codes. Yeah, that outta work. Evil zip codes, right?
ReplyDeleteWow, our country is so racist even our traffic cameras profile people! ROFLMA!
ReplyDeleteFirst these are your democrat leaders, the ones you voted for. You deserve what you get, or more like what is taken away from you.
ReplyDeleteAs a side note, these cameras are more than likely and have been from the start all about money. I was station on the Strand across from San Diego back in the late 90s, they had put a halt to using the red light cameras. The city said they were for safety and to protect the population. They then installed these cameras at intersections with the shortest yellow lights. People would jam on the breaks the second the light changed to yellow to avoid a ticket costing hundreds of dollars. This in turn would cause vehicles to slam into the breaking car. It resulted in more accidents and not fewer. They managed to halt the use of the cameras due to the fact that Lockheed Martin ,the contractor for the lights, was issuing the tickets which is illegal in California. When the city was ordered to shut the cameras off they went to court and argued that they had already budgeted 30 million dollars into the city budget resulting from the collection of the fines. Always follow the money.