To the editor:

Barrington’s powers that be are full-tilt committed to installing speed cameras in our town. Doing so was recommended by the “study” conducted by Blue Line Solutions, a company which would profit from every ticket issued with their gear. 

Under the speed camera proposal, the town would have no power to calibrate the equipment and no way to prevent ‘adjusting’ of the numbers here or there to increase profits. There’ll be no oversight of company personnel. Nor will there be a representative protecting drivers’ interests. The company’s operators will have sworn no oath to protect the interests of the drivers. We’d just have to trust them.

As in East Providence, the ‘fines’ would be mailed to drivers directly from the camera company. Then the drivers mail their hard-earned money to a private address. We are told there is a layer of police department approval over outgoing fines, but how could an officer who was not at the scene know that the information on the proposed fine notice is accurate? He couldn’t. Police oversight is simply a comforting fiction.

Under the speed camera plan, Barrington will collect 60 percent of the fines. We would hold Municipal Court hearing to enable ‘due process’ challenges, between a private company operating out-of-sight, and a citizen who likely has no recollection of the day represented by the date on the fine (likely several weeks past).

We have no reason to assume that only legitimately speeding cars will get ticketed. We are asked to put blind faith in Blue Line.

It is unfathomable to me that this proposal could seem benign to anyone, let alone beneficial.

What was omitted from last week’s article on this topic, is that speed signage was missing at the time of the speed study that was offered as justification for the plan. Indeed, neighbors had previously complained about missing and obscured speed signs- per vice president Kate Berard’s report to the town council in November. It’s hardly surprising that some folks would not reduce speed in a school zone wherein there is not signage warning of such.

At the next meeting on this issue, there will predictably be dire warnings that our children are in danger unless speed cameras are installed. But other, less problematic methods are available to slow speeders, including better signage and speed bumps. These methods should be put in place first.

Alerted drivers, driving at lower speeds in school zones, will make our kids safer. Drivers receiving a fine in the mail weeks later, after they obliviously found themselves to be well-inside a school zone before realizing it, will not.

We are already bathed in cameras across our state’s highways and cities. Now they want them in our towns. We aren’t doing our kids any favors by leaving them a world that is drenched in constant surveillance. It’s not what our relationship with our government is supposed to be.

The drawbacks of more cameras far outweigh the supposed benefit.    

Janine Wolf

Barrington