Salem Renews Push For Automated Camera Traffic Violation Enforcement

SALEM, MA — The Salem City Council is renewing its decade-long push to allow for camera enforcement of traffic violations around school buses, school zones and other dangerous intersections in the city.

The City Council agreed to send the resolution to the State House pressing to move out of the Transportation Committee for a vote laws that would allow fine enforcement through intersection cameras.

The Peabody City Council and School Committee have pressed for similar enforcement using school bus cameras when a pilot program found more than 850 violations over a three-month span earlier this school year after students were injured when they were hit by vehicles near school buses last fall.

"What I'm trying to do with the mayor, with the superintendent, with the police chief, is to try to underscore the fact that municipalities want this," City Councilor Patti Morsillo said, "that we need some help in enforcing traffic violations in our city and that we can't possibly afford to put a police officer on every street, at every intersection, throughout the city every day.

"So we need help."

The City Council voted unanimously to pass the home-rule petition rooted back in a video traffic enforcement push that began as far back as 2012.

"I am in full support of this resolution and I am not happy to see it in front of us again because this means here we are again asking the state to do work we're asking them to do," City Councilor Meghan Stott said. "So it's frustrating on that level. But it's great to hear that we have even full support of so many in the city."

Stott cited the Peabody study and said that "as the parent of a child that gets off a school bus and who has to cross North Street every day before the redesign of North Street cars were literally going around a stopped school bus to pass it.

"It's ridiculous the mentality of some of the drivers in this city," she said. "Knowing that there could be additional enforcement that could make that driver stop and think — it's unfortunate to think that a driver has to think about going around a school bus — but we need that additional enforcement.

"I really, really hope that we don't see this resolution again and the state takes action."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)