In what must be a Saturday Night Live skit, Maryland police are installing cameras…to watch cameras…watching you. Apparently privacy hoodlums have taken to shooting, dismantling and otherwise simply vandalizing the traffic cameras in Prince George’s County, Maryland. These are expensive cameras, you see, and the county’s nanny corp wants to make sure the herd is acting in a safe manner.
Many people find speed cameras frustrating, and some in the region are taking their rage out on the cameras themselves.
But now there’s a new solution: cameras to watch the cameras.
One is already in place, and Prince George’s County Police Maj. Robert V. Liberati hopes to have up to a dozen more before the end of the year.
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Liberati is the Commander of the Automated Enforcement Section, which covers speed and red-light cameras.
Since April, six people have damaged speed cameras.
On April 6, someone pulled a gun out and shot a camera on the 11400 block of Duley Station Road near U.S. 301 in Upper Marlboro, Md.
Two weeks later, a speed camera was flipped over at 500 Harry S. Truman Drive, near Prince George’s Community College. Police believe several people were involved because of the weight of the camera itself.
Then in May, someone walked up to a camera on Brightseat Road near FedEx Field, cut off one of the four legs, and left.
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But when someone burned down a speed camera on Race Track Road near Bowie State College on July 3, Liberati and his colleagues began to rethink their strategy.
“It costs us $30,000 to $100,000 to replace a camera. That’s a significant loss in the program. Plus it also takes a camera off the street that operates and slows people down. So there’s a loss of safety for the community,” says Liberati.
Maryland law says they can’t use the cameras for anything but traffic enforcement. Good to know.
