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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Commish caught on a reader's camera

By: Staff Writer

Posted: 03/18/2008 3:50 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

This one is for every driver who has been caught speeding by mobile photo radar.

Everyone who has cursed the camera. Or wished the commissionaire stealthily parked waiting for speeders could know what it feels like to open an envelope and see a photo of the back end of your vehicle.

And the hefty, heartless fine that goes with it.

The Free Press reader, who happens to be a teacher, sent photos and the story that goes with them.

For weeks, the teacher had been passing a photo-radar vehicle set up near the Gateway Community Centre in North Kildonan. And for weeks he had been troubled by how the vehicle always had its motor running.

"We are trying to teach our youth about protecting our environment," he wrote.

Anyway, one day -- "on a whim" -- he decided to take a picture of the city vehicle polluting the environment seemingly so needlessly.

March 10 was a Monday.

As the teacher recalled it, the sun was shinning and the temperature was around zero, at about 4 p.m. when he stopped to take a picture.

He had expected the driver to confront him.

But there was no danger of that.

The camera "cop" -- shades shielding his eyes -- was titled back in his seat.

Literally asleep at the wheel.

Or so it appeared because, as I suggested, the commissionaire didn't budge as the teacher snapped away.

"I then realized," the teacher wrote, "that the equipment would operate on its own, and the driver didn't even need to be there."

"Why," the teacher went on, "should these vehicles be polluting our city? Why are we paying for people to be sleeping on the job?"

Fair questions all.

I'm told there's a simple answer to the environmental one.

The motor needs to be on to power the photo-radar equipment.

As for the more intriguing question about the dude dozing on duty, I sent the photos to Winnipeg Police Service Patrol Sgt. Randy Vertone, who is in charge of the photo enforcement unit.

Vertone wasn't amused.

It's not the first time he's received an asleep-at-the-wheel complaint about the commissionaires, but it's the first time there has been anything approaching proof.

"We don't expect that from them," Vertone said after he looked at the photos.

The commissionaires have duties to perform.

They're supposed to be watching the traffic and making corroborating descriptive notes of the vehicle each time the photo radar catches a speeder. Every half hour, they also have to verify the equipment is working properly.

Later, Vertone said he spoke with both the commissionaire and his supervisor. Vertone declined to discuss what the commissionaire said in his defence.

If anything.

But Vertone did say this: "The message has gone out to them about the perception. How it appears to the public."

By the way, when Vertone checked the data for March 10, he learned that the commissionaire performed all his duties on that shift.

Vertone reported 88 cars passed the photo radar unit during the two hours the commissionaire was parked there.

But he didn't have to make any notes about speeders.

There were none.

How -- yawn -- boring.

A brief afterword.

I feel as if I may have left the wrong impression. I mean that I was more interested in the "gotcha" moment than the teacher's more important point about the environment.

In fact, his letter had a profound effect on my own actions. I now turn my car off while waiting -- and waiting -- at railway crossings.

And last Saturday, at the Tuxedo Shell station, I even turned my car off as while I waited -- and waited -- in a line to get my car washed.

It was a pleasant day, though.

The sun was shining. I had Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg Variations on my CD. The line was inching its way forward ever-so-slowly.

And I fell asleep.

At the wheel.

I understand my brothers of a certain age.

I truly underzzzzzzzztand.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 18, 2008 $sourceSection$sourcePage

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