First in a series
[img]2709|right|Captain Allen Azran||no_popup[/img]The most frequent justification employed by backers of red light police cameras at select intersections is that the allegedly infallible eye reduces/prevents accidents.
Really?
Such distractingly annoying, elusive, amorphous data seems as sparse as the amount of revenue City Hall collects from the practice.
Nobody knows exactly how much income is funneled into the City Hall pot of gold.
Equally, not one person in or out of the Culver City Police Dept. knows the number of projected crashes the presumably honest cameras prevent or how much of a reduction they can be credited with.
Shining a brilliant lamp as he emerges from this bramble bush of philosophically dense haze is police Capt. Allen Azran, operations chief. He is the most passionate advocate of red light cameras of any agency within flying distance of Culver City.
Alluding to the invisible data, he says that “a lot of this is supported by data. But a lot of it is theoretical only because we have had our system in place for so long.
“Since ’99, 2000. And some of our intersections (for camera placements) are a little newer, like ’06. But we are talking 8 to 10 years.
“We all know that the flow of traffic through Culver City streets is drastically different today from what it was in, say, 2000, clearly.”
You may disagree with him for hours, but he is remarkably resilient and impossible to wear down, much less discourage.
His passionate conviction and his marketingly convenient initials, A.A., should make him an ideal poster boy, billboard star, for advocates of red light cameras.
The bottom line of persuasion, says Capt. Azran, is that “people are getting citations for running red lights” that they would not be drawing if the only available arbiters were human.
(To be continued)
