The City Beautiful deploys imperial probe droids

Coral Gables has installed a complex camera array at Alhambra and LeJeune that fires a burst of laser beams at cars that run the red light, instantly vaporizing them. Or fines the owner. The Herald reported this Orwellian development without quotes or color. They also say nothing about the company responsible for this technological (and aesthetic) atrocity, American Traffic Solutions, whose name is doubly ironic because the company is dedicated to foisting a most un-American problem on us. One of their competitors has the far more apt name of Redflex Traffic Systems, which connotes both a commitment to a totalitarian ideology and an infantile infatuation with brute force. ATS boasts, “We have installed nearly 1,100 cameras around the country, with hundreds more in various planning stages.” Fantastic. Sounds like you’re building just the kind of world we all dream of living in.

One federal district court held that a Missouri town using an ATS array did not violate due process, mainly because the red-light fines were civil in nature. In another case, a very clever plaintiff alleged that ATS violated Texas law because what they did amounted to investigation and required a private investigator’s license. But that suit was dismissed. Where’s the ACLU when you need them? We need a whole horde of sandle-wearing, twig-eating, do-gooder, ex-hippie lawyers to take ATS and Redflex out before they deploy any more probes. I mean, how can anything so ugly not violate 12 or 13 Gables ordinances? Isn’t this the same place that made you hide your F-250 King Ranch?