Police Chief on Speed

Charlack, Missouri, is a small municipality (population = about 1,000) in St. Louis County. Its police chief/city administrator, Tony Umbertino, announced recently that he's putting up cameras to catch speeders on I-170 -- one-quarter-mile of which is within Charlack city limits.

The county's chief of police, Tim Fitch, has been vocal in his opposition to the idea, so I invited him to join me on KTRS/St. Louis today and explain why (I also invited Umbertino, but he declined). As Fitch points out, Charlack has offered no evidence that accidents on that stretch of road occur at a heightened rate compared to other interstates in the St. Louis area.

In fact, MODOT says there have been about 61 accidents in I-170 in Charlack in the last five years. That's one accident per month -- none of them fatal. Doesn't seem like a huge problem to me, either. Sounds like a cheap revenue grab by a town that already gets almost a third of its revenue from traffic tickets.

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