Not all heroes wear capes.
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“Gatso” is the slang word for a speed camera in the UK, so much so that I’d never realised it was a brand name before.
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Our state’s speed camera revenue is spent on road safety and road improvement projects, which is a big part of establishing the public legitimacy of cameras.
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I can agree traffic laws are important. How does that go with police passively watching people break said laws, even hiding to make sure their presence doesn’t encourage people not to break it, and then mailing them fines way after the fact? Would that enforcement make sense for any other important law?
A couple weeks ago someone committed theft, robbery, and kidnapped the president’s son to hold for ransom. There were police on scene watching the whole thing, and they saw the get-away car’s license plate was registered to your household. Here’s how much money you owe them.
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Ohio police suspect a link to local business Plaid Harry’s Tire Emporium
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Police murder people during traffic stops. As far as I know, a red-light camera has never murdered someone. I’m way out of ‘ideal solution’ territory here, just looking for incremental solutions.
If you posit that a law is fundamentally unjust (e.g. selective enforcement, or ‘just a way to raise money’) then it doesn’t matter who enforces it, so it may as well be robots. If you posit that that traffic laws /are/ just (as I do) then we need some way to enforce them that doesn’t also outlaw driving while black.
Your example (where the police witness a kidnapping but don’t intervene) is based on the idea that the police exist to PREVENT crime before it happens, which is not a thing the police ever actually do.
More the idea that they might intercede in crime while it’s happening, as per the phrase “help, call the police!”. I can agree that in the country in question it’s of very tenuous connection to how they actually operate though. 
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I dunno. What about NOT employing folks who want to murder people based on the color of their skin? 
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That sounds great, but after trying one solution for 50 years it might be time to consider alternative solutions.
Just for clarification, not murdering Black folks in traffic stops or the use of cameras? Because there essentially should be no alternative to not murdering Black folks.
Well, but, we haven’t ever really tried purposefully not employing folks who want to murder people based on their skin color. There are even judgments that’ve been upheld stating it’s okay to discriminate in hiring practices if applicants appear to be too intelligent…
So, yeah, these are both options.
Either way - the policing of traffic violations (IMO) should either be with a separate group of people with very limited duties, not “cops” as we know them today, or automated like your example, without any chance of violent outcomes.
It’s so wrong that we let our country be built in a very car-centric way while not upholding any basic rights to privacy while in your car.
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I live in Minneapolis, where every mayor ever has claimed that they were going to reform the police but we still have the same trigger-happy suburbanites roaming the streets as always. Hiring non-racist police who don’t shoot people is simply not an option.
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