TAMPA — After receiving assurances that school-zone speed camera data would not be shared and lead to greater government surveillance, the Tampa City Council voted last week to expand the speed camera program.
The ordinance that passed reshuffled the list of campuses covered by the cameras. It expands the speed camera coverage area from 13 schools to 18 schools.
The bulk of the new schools are in New Tampa where Benito Middle School, Liberty Middle, Freedom High, Chiles Elementary and Turner-Bartels K-8 have been added to the program.
The shift followed a new speed study by RedSpeed Florida LLC that showed some of the original schools no longer met requirements based on speeding data, while others, like the New Tampa schools, did.
Turner-Bartels, for example, had 2,119 drivers exceeding by 10 mph or more the posted speed limit during the two-day study, or 41.4% of all traffic passing the school on Imperial Oaks Boulevard, right off Bruce B. Downs Boulevard. Other New Tampa schools had more than 1,000 violators tracked over the two-day study in April, which once the cameras are active would result in a $100 fine.
While there was little disagreement about expanding the program, at the first reading last month several council members and residents questioned how the city’s speed camera vendor, RedSpeed, would use the data collected by the cameras.
At the second reading July 16, Tampa Police Deputy Chief Patrick Messmer presented an affidavit from the company stating it will not share data with Flock or any other provider. Doing so would violate state law, the city ordinance and the contract, giving Tampa grounds to terminate the agreement.
Messmer said the data sharing is banned by state statute, city ordinance and the contract itself.
Messmer said video is retained for 30 days. License plates are associated with a record only when a violation occurs. Video that is not tied to a citation is purged after 30 days and unavailable even if it is later subpoenaed.
The camera devices run all day between drop off and pick up, not just during the times the school-zone lights are flashing. The enforcement threshold, however, is tighter during the pick-up and drop-off windows.
The cameras do not operate at night, on weekends or during breaks, unless summer school is in session.
The violations apply to drivers going more than 10 mph over the posted school-zone limit.
“If you’re going over 10 miles an hour over the speed limit in a school zone during that time, then you got it coming,” said council member Luis Viera. “And I will make no excuses for you, and I strongly support this, and I think we should.”
Despite the affidavit and other assurances, some residents remain unconvinced that the cameras don’t have the potential to expand government surveillance.
“I will maintain the only way to really ensure privacy is to make sure these cameras don’t go up at all,” one public speaker said.
He added that hiring a company headquartered in Illinois that will be profiting from lawbreakers in Tampa has no incentive to actually stop speeding.
“It’s like the M&Ms company getting, you know, sponsoring a dental convention.”
But Emily Hinsdale, the founder of Sidewalk Stompers, which supports walking and biking to school, urged council members to approve the ordinance.
Hinsdale reminded them that the vote wasn’t about whether to keep speed cameras. The city’s contract already covers the original 12 schools. Instead, the question before them was whether to expand the program to additional campuses in other parts of the city.
“Unincorporated Hillsborough County has been fortunate enough to have these cameras at 28 schools for a year with the same company that we are working with now,” she said. “In just a few first months of operation, the number of vehicles speeding dropped 48%. During that same period in Tampa, 1000s and 1000s of drivers sped at deadly speeds past our schools.”
Hinsdale pointed to the latest speed study as evidence the expansion was needed, noting that the two-day study at St. Lawrence Catholic School on North Himes Avenue recorded more than 6,000 drivers traveling at least 10 mph over the speed limit during school hours.