Beware: Cameras in place to catch illegal roadside dumping
Published: Thursday, January 15, 2009 at 11:42 a.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, January 15, 2009 at 5:59 p.m.
Illegal dumpers beware: Big Brother is watching.
High-resolution surveillance cameras installed by Sonoma County officials at a half-dozen roadside hotspots have netted their first conviction — and more are expected to follow.
Walt Kruse, director of the Department of Environmental Health, said the goal is to stop the steady stream of trash and discarded furniture that winds up along rural byways, socking taxpayers with an annual clean-up bill of about $250,000.
“We find bags of trash, all kinds of couches and whatever, dumped right on the side of the road,” Kruse said. “We end up picking up the tab to remove it.”
With part of a $500,000 grant from the California Integrated Waste Management board, the county this summer installed motion-detector cameras at locations from Windsor to Petaluma to catch violators.
The exact locations are secret but officials said they have been mounted in hard-to-see spots, such as along Mark West Springs Road, Trenton Road, Todd Road and I Street in Petaluma.
In July, at a chronic dumping spot near the Russian River, a camera recorded Teodosio Valdivia Paredes, 39 of Windsor, unloading a large quantity of trash from his vehicle, said Deputy District Attorney Jeff Holtzman of the environmental and consumer law division.
Officers used still images from the camera to identify Paredes, who in November pled guilty to illegal dumping and received a fine of $250 and 40 hours of community service, Holtzman said.
Paredes, who returned to the site to clean up his trash, said he thought dumping along that portion of road was permitted, Holtzman said.
“It’s the type of crime that when one person does it, it encourages other people to do it,” Holtzman said. “Word is spreading in the community that these cameras are up. We hope it has a deterrent effect.”
Kruse defended the single conviction in five months, saying officials needed time to fine-tune equipment and procedures. More cases will come, he said.
The use of surveillance cameras by local government is not new in Sonoma County. They have been placed at bus stops and in buses, in parking garages and on high school campuses, recording fights and graffiti vandals.
Cameras appeared in the 1990s atop traffic signals in Santa Rosa to catch people running red lights.
Although they are widely praised by law enforcement, civil libertarians argue they infringe on privacy rights. And some people have questioned their effectiveness.
The county’s newest cameras are part of a larger program that includes signs and a Web site — www.KeepSonomaClean.org — to educate the public about the ills of illegal dumping.
The six solar-powered units, which cost $6,000 each and about $35,000 a year to operate, are mounted in vandalism resistant boxes and take sharp pictures from a range of up to 100 feet.
County road crews responsible for cleaning dump spots monitor the cameras and download images by remote to a laptop computer.
License plate numbers and faces are easy to see. The photos are combined with other evidence to make a criminal case.
“They take a series of photos,” Holtzman said. “They are very good quality and extremely helpful in identifying perpetrators.”
The cameras also can be programmed to issue sharp, verbal commands to people who set off a motion sensor. But the county has opted not to do it, in part to avoid seeming too Orwellian, said Christine Sosko, a supervisor in Environmental Health.
The cameras, which operate round-the-clock, are trained on the dumping area and do not photograph passing cars or pedestrians, Sosko said. Letters are sent to residents within a quarter-mile, advising them of the program, she said.
“It’s all part of our effort to minimize the Big Brother effect,” Soskos said.
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