By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
SEPT. 16, 2022 | How about those speed cameras around many Gwinnett schools! We all appreciate technology allowing us a new way for these school streets to be safer. But they sure are costly for some motorists.
We’ve been technology-ticketed enough to realize those cameras really keep up with your speed. And we often take different routes to circumvent the cameras. It’s not that we speed through these school areas routinely. But…sometimes … .thinking perhaps of other matters, we travel faster than we realize…..and ipso facto, the mail brings new evidence which is hard to dispute.
For sure, we’re not the only ones sometimes exceeding the school zone speed. In fact, lots and lots of us are doing it. A press release this week said that at only three county schools, the speed zone cameras had brought in $950,000 through the end of July. The cameras were installed at Duncan Creek Elementary on Dec. 10, 2021, and at Graves Elementary and Anderson Livesey Elementary on March 2, 2022 so that total is at most for only nine nine months!
How about the speed at which surveillance cameras allowed the Atlanta Police Department to catch a woman who killed two people in downtown Atlanta recently! That was something.
The cameras worked so well that police had an identification of the person almost immediately, and caught her at Hartsfield Jackson Airport before she could catch a plane! In the meantime, footage from the cameras in the building where she killed two guys was on television relatively soon. Piecing together information, the cameras allowed the police to do their job with amazing speed.
A system of Flock branded cameras is now deployed in areas of Gwinnett, which is helping our police catch some people before they even get out of a car. The cameras alert police to stolen cars before the criminals are aware of it. It makes our community safer.
There’s been a lot of talk throughout the world about how surveillance cameras are an infringement on liberties. The January 6 hearings are another example of how the use of these cameras is benefiting our society. It produced evidence that has sent a lot of the perpetrators at the insurrection in Washington already to prison, and threatens to send more.
We’ve never thought of these cameras as a detriment to freedom. It’s more like they allow technology to protect us in a new way.
How about these numbers? Elections Manager Zachary Manifold tells us that for the General Election this year in Gwinnett, there are 629,997 people registered to vote!
And finally, how ‘bout them Braves? The Atlanta baseball team is in a neck-and-neck race with the New York Mets for supremacy for the National League East championship. The Braves have really come on strong in the second part of the season, and look good to overtake the Mets and win the division.
Over the last part of the schedule, the Braves face the Phillies in seven games, the Nationals in six games, and close out the home season against the Mets on Sept. 30, October 1 and 2. The Braves 2022 season ends in a three game set on October 5 in Miami. Yep, they could win their third straight division title in 2022, and maybe second straight World Series!
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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