An Open Letter to James L. Brinton, First Selectman of the Town of Washington, Connecticut
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 at 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 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…” [Patch]
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. 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 were 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.
[Note: First Selectman Brinton did eventually call me (I assume in response to an email I later sent him) and allowed me to schedule an in-person hearing, over the phone, after saying that he doesn't know why the portal has no option for scheduling it, nor why the documentation about the contest denials say it does. He admitted that he "doesn't know much about IT stuff" despite his number being the only one listed for anyone who has questions or concerns about a citation.]
All of this would feel comedic — a regular Keystone Cops episode — if I weren’t facing nearly $300 in costs (two days' wages for me) that are being levied by a municipality that seems wholly unprepared for the administrative duties required for this sort of operation and which is being led by someone who is to me, as a non-resident, entirely electorally unaccountable.
All of this would feel comedic — a regular Keystone Cops episode — if I weren’t facing nearly $300 in costs (two days' wages for me) that are being levied by a municipality that seems wholly unprepared for the administrative duties required for this sort of operation and which is being led by someone who is to me, as a non-resident, entirely electorally unaccountable.
As an additional irritant, some portion of my fines won’t even go to Washington, but rather to the out-of-state manufacturer of the speed camera equipment. Yes, they get a percentage of every ticket Washington issues (notably, the highest possible percentage allowed by law), 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. Atop the administrative mishandling of most aspects of the ticketing process, that the Town of Washington would choose to work with a private company that has a profit motive to issue as many tickets as possible lends no confidence to the operation.
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 four 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, which is a far more useful metric), 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. According to CT Insider, "Out of the tickets generated by the cameras, Brinton said about 20% are repeat offenders," a surprisingly high percentage that becomes markedly less so within the context that offenders are not being punctually informed that they are being cited in the first place.
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 and the for-profit, private company that installed the cameras by financially punishing residents and locals through Washington’s inability to expeditiously inform violators of their citations.
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 four 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, which is a far more useful metric), 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. According to CT Insider, "Out of the tickets generated by the cameras, Brinton said about 20% are repeat offenders," a surprisingly high percentage that becomes markedly less so within the context that offenders are not being punctually informed that they are being cited in the first place.
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 and the for-profit, private company that installed the cameras by financially punishing residents and locals through Washington’s inability to expeditiously inform violators of their citations.
Postmortem (7/21/25)
I’m unable to hold onto anger for more than a few days. It rises in me like a geyser, steams away, and falls dormant. I have roughly 72 hours in which to take action in anger, so I was without it when I arrived for my in-person hearing with the First Selectman in which I presented my argument, sans the vitriol that inspired it.
The summarized version of our discussion is that it resulted in agreement. Yes, issuing multiple citations before the recipient is notified of the first one is counter to the notion that the speeding cameras are intended to change behavior, not merely punish it. My three “subsequent” citations were dismissed and I paid my original citation, which I felt was fairly issued. While I remain bothered by the intertwining of for-profit interests and municipal law enforcement, at least it appears that the ultimate authority for adjudication lies with the municipality, as it must.
But there’s a bigger story here.
My dad is fond of saying “on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” As a generation of keyboard warriors surely know (at least subconsciously), the facelessness of the internet makes for a natural tinderbox. As humans, we’re hardwired to read and respond to body language, facial cues, and other, less obvious indicators in order to properly assess one another. That assessment frequently calms explosive emotions. It's the reason soldiers were historically bad at killing each other: it's harder to be cruel to someone when you can see their face, an evolutionary development that undoubtedly benefited our species. The internet deprives of us this critical social component. We only really know someone when we are presented with the “full package,” face-to-face, and likewise only really know ourselves in that same moment, freed of the theoretical “what would you do if X happened?” as X, in fact, does actually happen. To be blunt, talking to someone is different in-person.
I was warned from some who know him that First Selectman Brinton was an incredibly friendly, reasonable person. True to that, he listened to everything I had to say. My initial outrage long since depleted, and faced with someone who seemed earnestly interested in finding solutions to his constituents’ interests (that people slow down on Washington’s residential roads), I could do no more than present an emotionless plea for greater fairness. Clearly, this resonated. (Far more so than a previous claimant’s assertion that Brinton is a “domestic terrorist,” I’m told. Perhaps he too might have benefited from a brief cool down period.)
In an age in which social media politics reign supreme and internet hounds howl from their respective cubicles, those of us who live in small towns should defend fiercely the great privilege of being able to access and speak with elected officials - in this case, not even my own. It is a thing difficult or impossible in even a small city despite how beneficial it is for both citizen and office holder. As the dogs of the wider world bark into their powered windows, small towns present a model for how a society can manage to live with itself.
Comments