With reckless driving on the rise in El Cajon, officials have proposed a one-year pilot program that would deploy automated cameras to detect speeding vehicles and issue a city-mailed warning to the vehicle’s owner.
The program would put four mobile speed-warning cameras in the city, with one initially placed in each council district. Each month, up to 500 warnings will be mailed to drivers going above 20 mph over the speed limit.
“Speeding continues to be a growing concern for both our residents and our city,” said Royal Bates, the operations Bureau Captain for the city’s police department. “Traditional enforcement alone cannot be everywhere at once, and that’s why we must consider solutions that think outside the box.”
Limited staffing and increased public safety demands have tied the hands of police officers, making it difficult to address reckless driving in an effective way, a staff report said.
While automated speeding cameras are used in other states to issue citations, El Cajon’s program will be limited to a warning-based system due to state regulations that ban automated tools from being used to issue fines.
The warning system will take aim at high-risk behavior by only issuing warnings for vehicles reaching significant speeds. Notably, automatic cameras cannot be used to tie a driver to a vehicle, so the warnings will be sent to the registered owner of the vehicle.
“Each warning will closely resemble a citation, but will be clearly marked with a bold red warning across the top,” Bates said. “The goal is to take away the anonymity of speeding and create a moment of accountability.”
The automated cameras can be easily moved from one location to another, Bates said, allowing the police department to quickly pivot the tool to neighborhoods experiencing speeding spikes.
Additionally, officials aim to collect data to track speeding trends and generate customizable reports.
As the city weighs the new automated warning system, data privacy concerns loom in El Cajon. The proposal came amid an ongoing lawsuit from Attorney General Rob Bonta alleging the city’s police department illegally shared automated license plate reader data collected by Flock cameras with out-of-state law enforcement agencies.
While opponents of the automated cameras raised concerns about privacy, city officials claim the tool is a legal way to increase safety in the community by providing law enforcement access to insightful data.
“I know we had some questions about our Flock system from privacy rights groups,” Councilmember Phil Ortiz said. “With Flock, we established (that) after a certain amount of time we don’t retain the data and it is deleted. If we could stay within those same parameters, that would be great.”
In El Cajon, data captured by Flock’s automated license plate readers is automatically deleted after 30 days.
The proposed automatic speed warning system is in the early stages and has yet to be formally reviewed and approved by city leaders, so specifics on how the tool will be implemented are not clear. However, Bates said it would be possible for the city to retain information about repeat offenders and upload the data to officer’s dispatch computers.
Most automated speed enforcement cameras don’t record constantly, but are designed to trigger and capture images only when a vehicle goes above the speed threshold.
Implementation of the program will cost $100,000 in total — or $25,000 per camera system — including maintenance. The city can opt to extend the contract for another year, if necessary.
El Cajon resident Anita Stewardson said she appreciates what the city has done so far to address the speeding issue, but that she hopes the new proposal will be tied with more frequent traffic patrols.
“We need the cooperation of the city, the county and the state to work together to make our corridors through our community safer,” Stewardson said. “Please do not stop after putting a Band-Aid on the situation.”