Deadly Monterey and Curtner intersection gets traffic cameras

It’s been just about a yr considering the fact that a driver hit Felipa Pineda’s daughter, Vanessa Arce, at the intersection of Monterey Highway and Curtner Avenue and sped off into the night. Like the greater part of lethal hit-and-runs in San Jose, the case is nonetheless unsolved as law enforcement depend on grainy footage from a fuel station’s surveillance camera that reveals tiny depth of the perpetrator.

But this 7 days the intersection — one of the deadliest automobile crossings in the town — observed the set up of the city’s to start with set license plate cameras, and it arrives as San Jose is on rate to shatter site visitors demise information.

Pineda, who has been pushing for far more avenue protection at Monterey and Curtner, now has some hope that upcoming parents won’t be left scouring blurry videos of deadly collisions and putting up fliers on gentle poles.

“My newborn woman is continue to absent, and they nonetheless have not caught the unique,” said Pineda. “Unfortunately, we’re not heading to resolve previous crimes now. But in the upcoming, I pray that the cameras do.”

The four cameras — identified as automatic license plate viewers — are element of a 12 months-extended pilot method that law enforcement say will enable them clear up hit-and-runs and other crimes in the town. But the mass surveillance technological know-how has sparked issues from privacy advocates over how the data spanning hundreds of day by day drivers will be saved and shared.

The pilot program will send out license plate facts and time stamps into a database where the material is retained for a yr in compliance with California code. For the time becoming, facts collected from the cameras will not be applied to enforce visitors violations this sort of as speeding but “may potentially be employed for individuals purposes in the foreseeable future,” claimed Sgt. Christian Camarillo, a San Jose police spokesperson.

The metropolis has contracted with Flock Protection, a startup that has confronted scrutiny from the American Civil Liberties Union, which contends the company is building “an totally new degree of surveillance to American communities.”

San Jose’s Metropolis Council, led by Councilmember Maya Esparza, accepted these cameras in September as neighborhood users pushed the city to stem the rash of traffic deaths.

“These challenges are everyday living and death” said Esparza, whose District 7 involves the Monterey and Curtner intersection. “We want most people to know that if you travel drunk and hit somebody and depart them to die in the streets, we’re likely to use these cameras to arrive and uncover you.”

In 2021 San Jose recorded 60 roadway deaths, matching a 25-year peak that the metropolis also expert in 2015 and 2019. Now with 29 fatalities this 12 months — the vast majority of them pedestrians — the metropolis is on track to blow earlier former targeted traffic demise records. This has led to calls for extra targeted visitors cops, and Mayor Sam Liccardo’s budget incorporates $6 million for avenue safety advancements.

Whilst the surveillance technological innovation is by now affixed to some San Jose police automobiles and employed across the Bay Area’s toll bridges, this will be San Jose’s to start with stationary license plate camera. Last week, BART also authorized an up to $2.4 million deal for license plate readers in its parking loads soon after several years of wrangling with privateness advocates.

Dr. Roxana Marachi, a professor at San Jose Point out College who is on the city’s Digital Privateness Advisory Taskforce, said the team experienced “critical questions” disregarded during the rollout of San Jose’s cameras.

“It seemed to be a rushed final decision,” Marachi reported through a March conference of the city’s General public Security, Finance & Strategic Assist Committee. “There have been a quantity of crucial issues lifted. There has not been plenty of general public engagement on this difficulty.”