New camera is clicking away at Brady, Hayes

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By Times staff | Friday, September 29, 2006 6:55 AM CDT | () comments

When the clock struck midnight, the camera went on and the speed of travel went down, or at least it needed to do so.

Davenport’s newest speed-monitoring camera went into operation at midnight Thursday near the intersection of Brady and East Hayes streets.

The camera is the sixth to be installed for the purpose of catching drivers traveling in excess of the speed limit. Three are at the same locations as some of the four cameras designed to photograph vehicles running red traffic lights. Those are at the intersections of Kimberly Road and Brady Street; 35th Street and Welcome Way; and Locust Street and Lincoln Avenue.

The other two fixed-location speed-limit cameras not associated with traffic lights are in 3400 block of Division Street and near the corner of Pine and West 3rd streets. The city has one mobile speed-limit camera in a van.

Yet to go online are speed-limit cameras planned for the 1400 block of East River Drive between Federal and Mound streets and one near the corner of Pine Street and West Kimberly Road.

Police Chief Mike Bladel said those two will be the last cameras to go up for a while because the city has to shake some bugs out of the system, the bugs being the processing of the violations. The staff the city has dedicated to the work cannot keep up with the volume of photographs taken and citations generated, he added.

The cameras have created controversy and resulted in two court challenges.

A Scott County magistrate ruled in the city’s favor during July on a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, on behalf of a Quad-City man who said his constitutional rights were violated by the city ordinance. In that case, the car was traveling 49 mph in a 35-mph zone on East Locust Street, but the owner contended there was no proof that he was driving it at the time. Unlike a speeding ticket, the city ordinance seeks to penalize the owner of the vehicle with a civil infraction, not a criminal offense.

A Rock Island woman filed a class-action lawsuit in August after she allegedly was caught speeding by a camera. She contends that the cameras violate state law and are merely a revenue-generating measure. If she wins the case, the city could be ordered to compensate everyone who has paid a fine as a result of the speed-limit and red light cameras, her attorneys say. Through the end of the fiscal year that ended June 30, the citations had generated about $220,000, more than the city anticipated.

In a prepared statement issued Thursday, the police department and the city said the placement of the latest camera is just another step toward promoting voluntary compliance with all traffic laws. It can help reduce the number of vehicular crashes and the number of people who are injured or killed in those collisions, the statement continued.

“For almost everyone who wants to eradicate the speed cameras, we’ve got somebody else in the community who wants to eradicate speed in their neighborhoods,” Bladel said.

(Times reporter Dustin Lemmon contributed to this article.)

The city desk can be contacted at (563) 383-2245 or newsroom@qctimes.com.