LTE: "Back the Blue" Has a Price Tag. Fairfield's Camera Opponents Aren't Paying It.

Letter to the Editor

There is a particular kind of selective concern that surfaces in American political life with remarkable consistency.

It sounds like this: Support the troops. Back the blue. Our brave men and women in uniform deserve our respect and gratitude.

It sounds sincere. It is often performed with flags and bumper stickers and standing ovations at sporting events. And it evaporates completely the moment supporting those troops or backing that blue requires any personal inconvenience whatsoever.

Fairfield's speed camera debate has produced a perfect specimen of this phenomenon.

For three months, residents have stood at microphones, filled Facebook comment sections, and written letters to editors demanding that speed cameras be replaced with police officers. They want human enforcement. They want personal interaction. They want the judgment and discretion that only a trained law enforcement professional can provide.

Let's be honest about what that judgment and discretion actually means to them.

It means the possibility of a conversation. The possibility that the officer looks at the driver, considers the circumstances, and decides this particular person deserves a warning instead of a ticket. It means the possibility that knowing the right people, driving the right car, or simply presenting the right way produces a different outcome than the law requires. The Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project has documented for years that this discretion does not fall equally. It falls disproportionately on minority drivers. It falls on working class drivers who cannot afford to take a day off to fight a ticket in court. It falls on people who don't look like they belong on the road they're driving.

The people demanding human enforcement over cameras are not demanding equal enforcement. They are demanding the system that has historically worked in their favor. They want the gray area back. They want the pass that a camera will never give them.

That is not support for law enforcement. That is support for selective enforcement. And those are not the same thing.

What they have not asked, not once in three months of very loud public debate, is what replacing cameras with officers actually means for the men and women doing the job.

Every traffic stop is a potentially dangerous interaction. This is not an opinion. It is a documented fact that law enforcement professionals live with every single day. Officers are killed during routine traffic stops every year in this country. A vehicle pulled over for speeding can contain a driver who is impaired, armed, wanted on an outstanding warrant, or simply panicked in ways that turn a minor enforcement action into a fatal one. There is no such thing as a completely routine traffic stop. Every officer who approaches an unknown vehicle on the side of a road knows this. Their families know this. Their colleagues know this.

There is another risk that never gets mentioned in these demands for human enforcement. An officer standing on the side of Jefferson Street or Redding Road engaged in a conversation with a driver they have pulled over is exposed to every vehicle passing that location. Distracted drivers. Impaired drivers. The same drivers who produced 94,173 violations in 17 days on these exact corridors. Officers are struck and killed by passing vehicles at traffic stops every year in this country. It is one of the most dangerous moments in law enforcement, not because of the driver being stopped, but because of every other driver on the road who is not paying attention. The people demanding human enforcement on Fairfield's highest volume cut-through corridors are asking officers to stand on the side of those roads tens of thousands of times. Every single one of those moments is an exposure. The camera doesn't have that exposure. It just records the speed.

Chief Michael Paris supports the cameras precisely because they free officers from the burden of making tens of thousands of traffic stops on high volume corridors, allowing them to focus on higher priority work where human presence actually matters.

Now consider what Fairfield's camera opponents are demanding instead.

94,173 violations in one month. Six corridors. Around the clock. In August heat and February ice. On Jefferson Street, which carries thousands of vehicles per day as a cut-through for drivers avoiding Post Road congestion. On Redding Road, where two people have already died. On Unquowa Road, where 10 crashes and 3 injuries are documented in the official record.

They want officers standing in that traffic. Approaching those vehicles. At 2am on a Tuesday. At 10pm on a holiday weekend. In weather that makes the road surface dangerous. Approaching drivers who may be impaired, armed, or simply unwilling to accept being stopped. Standing exposed on the roadside while thousands of vehicles pass. Tens of thousands of times.

Because a camera is somehow less appropriate than a human being standing between moving vehicles on a corridor where people have already died.

Someone will argue that traditional traffic stops catch drunk drivers and armed criminals that cameras miss. This is true and worth acknowledging. It is also an argument for more officers doing proactive patrol work across the entire town, not an argument for stationing officers at six fixed locations processing a volume of minor speeding infractions that no department could sustain. The cameras handle the school zone volume so officers can be everywhere else in town where the drunk driver and the armed individual actually are. Tying officers to six locations processing tens of thousands of speeding tickets doesn't put more officers on the street finding dangerous criminals. It puts fewer of them there.

And for those who will now pivot to speed bumps as the alternative, consider this carefully.

What do you want a child to do when their father is having a heart attack and the ambulance is bouncing over speed tables on Jefferson Street and those seconds matter? What do you want a woman to do when a dangerous ex boyfriend is breaking down her door and the responding officer is braking for a speed hump on Redding Road in the middle of the night? What do you want a family to do when their house is on fire and the fire truck is decelerating for a speed table on a primary emergency response corridor?

Speed bumps do not discriminate between a speeder and an ambulance running a cardiac call. They do not distinguish between a reckless driver and a police cruiser responding to a domestic violence emergency. They do not yield to a fire truck racing to a structure fire. Every second of delay on those responses is a second that belongs to the victim. The cameras slow dangerous drivers without slowing the people racing to save lives. Speed bumps cannot make that distinction. The people advocating for them as a replacement for cameras have apparently not thought through what they are actually asking for when the emergency is theirs.

So let's be completely direct about what opposing these cameras actually requires.

If you oppose the cameras and demand human enforcement instead, ask yourself honestly what you are really asking for. Equal enforcement where the same standard applies to every driver regardless of who they are, what they drive, or who they know? The cameras already do that. Or selective enforcement where the right person gets the right outcome based on factors that have nothing to do with their speed? That is what you actually want. Say it directly.

If you want speed bumps instead, you are arguing that ambulances should slow down for cardiac patients, that police cruisers should brake for domestic violence calls, and that fire trucks should decelerate for structure fires. You are arguing that the infrastructure designed to save lives in emergencies should be compromised so that drivers are inconvenienced into compliance rather than held accountable for their choices.

Or you are saying there shouldn't be enforcement at all. Which means you don't care about the children who are just trying to be kids on the roads where they walk to school.

There is no fourth option.

The cameras are the tool that handles the volume, frees the officers, protects the children walking to school, and does not slow down the ambulance racing to your father's cardiac event. They do not brake for the officer responding to the woman whose door is being broken down. They do not decelerate for the fire truck.

They just record the speed of people who chose to drive dangerously past schools. Equally. Without exception. Without discretion. Without the possibility of a conversation that ends with a pass.

If you genuinely support law enforcement you support the tools that keep them safe while enforcing the law equally for everyone.

If you support law enforcement only when it means someone else stands exposed on the side of a high volume road in the rain at 2am so you can retain the possibility of talking your way out of a ticket, you don't support law enforcement.

You support the system that has always worked in your favor. And you are angry because it no longer does.

The children walking to school on Jefferson Street, the father having the heart attack, the woman whose door is being broken down, and the family whose house is on fire deserve better than your nostalgia for selective enforcement.

Patrick Smith

Fairfield, CT