Baltimore's error plagued speed and red light camera programs failed because the people who set it up and ran it lacked the proper experience, according to a city council committee report released Monday.
Councilman Jim Kraft, the committee chair, said the main problem with the largest such program in North America was no one was qualified to run it and that it was inadequately staffed.
“Police officers who were working overtime [after their shifts] were reviewing a citation between one every six seconds and one every nine seconds,” said Kraft who added it’s hard to be accurate after working eight to ten hour shifts.
In addition, transportation department staffers assigned to the program tried to get out, Kraft said.
He read from an e-mail exchange between one transportation department and his supervisor that went on for three months.
“[The employee wrote], ‘I don’t know how to do this job; send me back to my regular job.’ And the superior saying effectively ‘I don’t have anyone else to send over there; you’re the best guy I got,’” Kraft said.
He praised staffers in the transportation department for working hard on a program that no one had experience in running.
WYPR's P. Kenneth Burns reports on the results of the report.
The report was the result of an investigation begun in February 2014 after the Baltimore Sun obtained a secret audit that found an error rate of more than 10 percent in the camera program, costing motorists thousands of dollars in undeserved tickets.
The speed and red light cameras have been offline since December 2013 after reports of a series of problems. The city paid $600,000 to end its five-year contract with Anne Arundel County-basedBrekfordCorporation, which replaced XEROX in 2012.
In addition to erroneous readings, the program was faulted for a bounty program in which the vendor earned additional money based on the number of tickets generated and the quality of ticket verification.
The committee recommended reducing the size of the program and staffing it properly.
City officials plan to have a new program up and running early next year.
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