When the city of Kent added two more school zone traffic cameras this fall, city officials expected the number of speeding tickets to go up.
But if the month of October serves as an accurate indicator, tickets are way down even with cameras at four elementary schools instead of two.
A total of 974 citations were written for the four schools in October, Kent Police Chief Ken Thomas said at the City Council’s Public Safety Committee meeting on Nov. 10. In October 2014, 1,198 citations were issued, according to Kent Municipal Court records.
“Wow, I have no idea how to make sense of this,” Thomas told the committee. “It’s the first month, so I don’t know what it means yet – it’s only one month.”
A total of 332 tickets were issued at Neely-O’Brien, 292 at Sunrise, 132 at Meridian and 50 at Millennium last month. The numbers do not total to 974 because of a lag in the court system, Thomas said. But the number of tickets are way down.
Cameras were installed this fall at Meridian, 25621 140th Ave. S.E. and Millennium, 11919 S.E. 270th St. Cameras were installed in 2014 at Neely-O’Brien, 6300 S. 236th St., and Sunrise, 22300 132nd Ave. S.E.
“I understand these are preliminary numbers,” Councilman Jim Berrios said at the meeting. “But it seems to be encouraging that people are learning we are serious about this. This speaks volumes in terms of people taking this serious and you will be cited. We are safer in those school zones and that’s good news – and if this trend continues – it’s very good news.”
Councilman Les Thomas was pleased and surprised with the early numbers.
“We take Neely-O’Brien and Sunrise with about 600 and that’s cut in half,” he said compared to last year’s numbers. “The message has become very clear. I don’t understand Millennium and Meridian, I thought those would be higher. I’m really pleased about the other two schools.”
Police issue a $124 fine for a vehicle exceeding the 20 mph school speed limit by 1 to 9 mph and issue a $248 fine for speeds of 10 mph or faster above the speed limit. The program has brought in more than $1 million to the city. The police department will spend up to $845,000 of the funds on city jail renovations, police overtime costs, a use of force training simulator and traffic safety equipment.
Police started the program in January 2014 at the request of Kent School District officials in an effort to get drivers to obey the 20 mph speed limit at schools where traffic studies showed the most speed violations.
“I just want to be cautious as we look at last year’s numbers to this year’s numbers,” Chief Thomas said. “We went a couple of months (last year) and made a significant difference down a couple hundred tickets and then all of a sudden it went higher in 2015 than 2014, so there is still not enough data to draw strong conclusions.”
Berrios hopes the numbers prove true.
“The intent is to get people to slow down in school zones, and I just hope to God that is what’s happening here,” he said.
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