Nearly 60,000 drivers have received warning letters from Syracuse Police for speeding through school zones in the first two weeks of a new enforcement effort. There’s still a grace period, but that ends in early November.
One of the top school zones catching speeders is along James St. near Lincoln Middle School. That's where mayor Ben Walsh held a press conference Thursday as students ended their day. Most drivers seemed to observe the 25 mile per hour limit. But in the past two weeks, he said one driver was clocked going 78 miles per hour by one of the cameras mounted on the side of the road.
“Our Syracuse schools are facing a speeding epidemic and this data underlies that fact," Walsh said. "As a reminder, the goal of this program is not to punish. It's to protect the young people that we just saw filing out of school, that are walking to their parents' cars, that are walking home, just trying to get from point A to point B.”
First deputy police chief Richard Shoff said he was a community policing officer in the neighborhood for several years, and worked with the neighborhood groups to install the flashing school zone signs.
“I've written a bunch of tickets here myself, assigned a bunch of details up here, and you can slow the cars down," he said. "But you can't afford to send a police officer here every day all the time. With these cameras that will be here every day all the time, I expect that that's going to slow things down.”
Shoff said he noticed speeds were significantly slower as he arrived at the school.
Common Councilor Jimmy Monto’s district covers much of the city’s far northeast side and admitted he received a warning on that very stretch of James St.
“I can tell you that immediately when I got that letter was like, I got to pay better attention and just slow down," he said. "When you drive by here, you see kids all over the place. So falling on my sword and saying, I'm already guilty of getting a warning. I will be more careful. And I just hope that everybody who drives these streets around all of these schools will do the same.”
Mayor Walsh said the camera-enforced zones are intended to change behavior, and admitted even he has to pay more attention and slow down.
The location with the highest number of speed warnings was along S. Geddes St. near Fowler High School. Cameras city-wide also caught 430 drivers running red lights. Actual enforcement begins November 3rd. Fines are $50.
