Revolt Brewing Over Chicago's Traffic Cameras
(CBS) -- There's a growing revolt in Chicago: regular folks fed up with the city's red-light and speed cameras that keep popping up.
Friday, they were doing something about it.
CBS 2's Mike Parker reports.
Speed cameras are set up to nail faster-than-the-limit drivers near schools and parks. Along with the red-light cameras the city expects to raise $120 million in fines in 2014.
Mark Wallace is fighting to stop it.
"I think it is such an over-burdensome problem, financially, to the citizens of Chicago and even to people who would visit Chicago.
Wallace and a band of volunteers that call themselves Citizens Against Red Light Cameras – now including speed cameras – have gathered 52,000 signatures on a petition to call on the city council to abolish the cameras.
He says they're unconstitutional.
"If I want to contest it the city has now made it more financially burdensome, that I have to pay a $300 filing fee if I want to have a jury trial," Wallace says.
Fourteen aldermen voted against the speed-camera program. Bob Fioretti was one of them.
"I don't believe the administration was honest in what they were trying to do," he says. "It was all about revenue."
Fioretti says the mayor may end up facing an opponent using that as an issue – and that it just might work.
"I've never heard anybody say, 'Yeah, we want more of those,'" he says.
Is it possible Fioretti wants to run against Emanuel in the next election? He won't say.
