Medicine Hat Police Service chief Alan Murphy says he is unsettled by transportation ministers choice of attire he wore while making an announcement that the province will be eliminating photo radar sites to enforce speed on provincial highways and local roads by April 1, 2025. Currently Medicine Hat Police use two vehicles covered in high visible decals to motor speeding at 108 approved photo radar sites across the city.--NEWS FILE PHOTO
bmiller@medicinehatnews.com
Medicine Hat police chief Alan Murphy says he and fellow chiefs were caught off guard by the province’s announcement that it will eliminate speed enforcement from photo radar equipment outside school, playground of construction zones next spring.
Murphy says throughout the course of 2024 the province’s association of police chiefs shared collective concerns surrounding the dangers of operating a motor vehicle at high rates of speeds.
According to Murphy, the Alberta Association of Chiefs of Police submitted eight separate unanswered requests to have an audience with the minister of transportation and economic corridors.
“We had not received anything at that point and then it was unfortunate that we found out through the media, which is not the way I think business should be done,” says Murphy.
Reports surfaced Nov. 29 from a media outlet in Calgary that the province would be removing photo radar ticketing from numbered provincial highways, as well as any areas where photo radar is used to generate revenue.
Murphy says the announcement was “a slap in the face” to all victims who have been seriously hurt or lost their lives due to high-speed collisions.
“Speed causes serious collisions,” says Murphy. “The severity of collisions can be very bad because of speed. So besides the victims, there’s families left behind, there’s loved ones.
“I think it’s unfortunate that those people are made to feel a certain way, that have lost loved ones or had loved ones seriously harmed in collisions. I think it’s a slap in the face to the great men and women in our province that do frontline policing and health care and fire services that have to attend to these collisions and deal with the horrific scenes they see.”
On Monday Dec.2, Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen held a press conference to announce the province’s plans to eliminate more than 70 per cent of the current photo radar sites by April 1, 2025, and spoke to reporters while wearing a cooking apron and pin that showed a red prohibition sign reading “Cash Cow.”
“It’s unbecoming of a cabinet minister to hold a media conference wearing an apron that says ‘no cash cow,’ and talks about fishing holes – just the manner it was all done,” Murphy says. “It was made as a joke by this minister and I think it’s wrong and I just can’t express it enough.
“For me, it was the manner in which the minister delivered the message. He took some joy in it for some reason, and only he can explain why that was. But I am thrown off by that and that police had some involvement, but we weren’t listened to clearly – you can tell I’m bothered by this.”
Currently there are 108 approved photo radar sites in Medicine Hat. Under new rules and depending on construction fluctuation, the city will have 68 sites from school, playground and construction zones operating, causing a “serious” local impact on roadways.
“I can only speak for this municipality but if I do this it’s going to have some impact on our city,” Murphy says.
In 2024 city police responded to five serious motor collisions involving high rates of speed. Fortunately none were fatal.
“In those five serious collisions people were significantly injured and probably could have easily been fatal had it not been for great medical care,” says Murphy, adding that in addition to collisions, police had four separate occasions over the summer where motorcycles went through photo radar sites in excess of 50 km/h over the speed limit.
“It’s happening here and those things cause serious collisions and repercussions for people, and that’s unfortunate.”
When questioned by reporters on traffic safety Dreeshan said consolidation with municipalities received a “mixed-bag” of data.
In Medicine Hat, police say 2.6 per cent of motorists who have gone through photo radar sites so far this year have been ticketed for speeding. The service has monitored 262,000 vehicles since the end of October and has issued 6,700 photo radar tickets.
Medicine Hat police do not use fixed photo radar equipment and cameras at intersections. In accordance with the automated traffic enforcement technology guideline introduced by the province in 2023, local police use two vehicles marked with high visible decals to monitor photo radar sites.
Over the next four months the province will review each photo radar site and remove any deemed ineffective or outside a school, playground or construction zone.
Dreeshan says municipalities will be supported by the province to re-engineer roads and intersections that have been proven unsafe and allow communities to request photo radar locations for high collision areas, or where other safety measures cannot be implemented.
“We will obviously do our jobs and ensure that we can bring that information to light and do our best if we can allow photo radar in certain locations,” Murphy said.
Lethbridge Police Services Chief Shahin Mehdizadeh echoed Murphy’s disappointment, saying the decision will have a number of undesired effects.
He also said police disagree with the statements made by Dreeshen about photo radar only being a cash cow and how the new rules are going to promote traffic safety.
“We totally disagree with that because that’s not the case,” said Mehdizadeh. “We have very clear evidence, and the chiefs of the larger cities have provided much more compelling evidence in their problem areas on how over the years they’ve been able to minimize collisions, fatality and injury collisions.”
Mehdizadeh also touched on the effect this will have on officers, who will have to ramp up speed patrol.
“One problem that we’re going to have is that this is one of the very few tasks police can actually do by use of technology, and taking humans out of it. And obviously it’s much safer for not only police officers but also our citizens,” said Mehdizadeh.
He said by using photo radar, there is no need to pull people over on the side of the road, which can be dangerous not only for the officers but to the drivers as they are dealing with passing vehicles.
“Now that we’ve lost that opportunity, we have to now try to augment that through using police officers to actually hit that mandate, and to be very honest with all our citizens, we do not have the capacity to do that,” said Mehdizadeh.
