An Open Letter to James L. Brinton, First Selectman of the Town of Washington, Connecticut

Much ado has been made of late concerning the automated speed cameras that have been installed in Washington, Connecticut, the first of their kind in this state. I was happy to hear about these. People drive far too fast in Washington; in fact, people drive far too fast in all of the small, rural villages in this state. Giving people a reason to slow down even a little bit is a good thing.

I have good reason to be invested in the well-being of Washington. Although I am not currently a resident, I work there and my family has deep roots in the town. My great, great grandfather was Headmaster at The Gunnery (back when they called it “The Gunnery,” at least), and I’m a former English teacher at the school. My mother was raised in Washington in a house that her father, my grandfather, built there. I’ve worked for years in one of the town’s small vegetable farms. I imagine that I’ll someday again be a resident, living in the house in which my parents currently reside, so I like the idea of people slowing down a bit on Washington's narrow, windy roads.

Then, I got a ticket. Well, to be clear, I got four tickets, though it took a good bit of time for the Town of Washington to inform me about all of them. When I received the first — being notified by a mailed citation — I took a look. “Yes, this seems legitimate,” I thought. “I don’t remember this day, but I bet I was, in fact, driving 43 mph in a 30 mph zone.” I thought to myself, “I’ll have to be more cognizant of my speed in Washington” and proceeded to access the town’s online portal to pay my ticket.

Upon doing so I was surprised to find, alongside the citation that I had just received by mail, that an additional three citations were available to pay on the portal. I wondered what this was all about. I hadn’t received any notifications of these; in fact, I wouldn’t have known about them at all if I hadn’t logged into the portal to pay my “first offense” citation of $50. Each of the three “subsequent offense” citations were listed with $75 penalties.

Something felt unfair about this. My initial reaction to the first citation was, I think, the one that First Selectman Brinton would have hoped for: I ought to watch my speed on that road and make sure I’m not going too fast. Yet, before I was ever given the option to enact that line of thinking, before I was ever given the opportunity to modify my behavior, the Town of Washington had already cited me an additional three times.

With normal law enforcement proceedings this is not an issue. An officer pulls you over for speeding and you are handed a ticket. You acknowledge at the time of the crime what has happened and choose how to act in the future at that very moment. Even with civil violations like parking tickets — and, to be clear, Washington’s speeding tickets are civil violations that cannot be reported to insurance companies or the DMV — you, the violator, are informed almost immediately of your citation: you return to your vehicle, see the ticket under your wiper blade, and choose if and how to modify your behavior in the future.

Mr. Brinton claims that the goal of the cameras is to change driver behavior, not drive town revenue.

"Our goal, and it really has nothing to do with revenue generated from these violations, our goal is to see the number of tickets and citations drop…” [source]

If that is, in fact, his goal, one wonders whether the Town of Washington’s officials are competent enough to achieve it. If nothing else, they certainly seem to have blundered the roll out.

I chose to contest the three “subsequent” violations, citing a summarized version of my argument presented above. All three contests were denied. In the documentation emailed to me about these denials, I was informed that I could appeal these denials by returning to the town’s online portal and requesting an in-person hearing. I attempted to do so, but no such option exists on the portal, at least not that I could find. I called the Board of Selectman’s office but their line rang with a busy tone all day. I tried the town clerk’s number, with the same result. At least as of July 9, the Town of Washington’s phone numbers appear to be inoperable. I’ve not yet even mentioned the “addendum” letters that I’ve received regarding errors on the original, mailed paper citations that neglected to include the legally required camera calibration date.

All of this would feel comedic — a regular Keystone Cops episode — if I weren’t facing nearly $300 in costs, some portion of which (irritatingly) won’t even go to Washington, but to the out-of-state manufacturer of the speed camera equipment. Yes, they get a cut of every ticket Washington issues, and they have a multi-year contract with the town to make sure the cameras don’t get shut down before they collect their needed fees.

As previously mentioned, I work in Washington. My route to work goes through both speeding camera areas on Old Litchfield Road. I drive it frequently enough that one would assume, in the two weeks that passed between my first violation and the actual notice of that violation, that I should have received more than a mere 4 tickets. The reason I did not is because I am not a fast driver. I generally abide by all traffic laws.

Although Mr. Brinton disingenuously offered the highest speeding amount recorded by the cameras — 83 mph — as proof of the problem (rather than the average cited speed on the road), I imagine the truth is that most people are not driving excessively fast past the cameras. Most are probably like me, mistakenly driving a bit faster than we should, and happy to correct our behavior…if given the chance to recognize what we’re being cited for.

Given the nature of the dystopian corporate contract Washington has undertaken with the camera makers, I’m not sure what can be done here, but perhaps it could start with Mr. Brinton issuing a public apology that recognizes how poorly he and other town officials have managed the implementation of this ticketing system that, in practice, if not in intent, serves to generate money for the town by financially punishing residents and locals thanks to Washington’s inability to expeditiously inform violators of their citations.