[JuniperMesos]

Is putting a bunch of red light cameras in a black neighborhood to catch and fine red-light runners an anti-black policy because it imposes automatic punishment on black drivers who are running red lights? Or pro-black because it helps secure the safety of black pedestrians who deserve not to have people breaking traffic laws around them? What if it turns out that even though the neighborhood is black the car traffic on that street has a greater percentage of non-black drivers than the neighborhood population? What if it turns out that black people run red lights at a rate much higher than other races everywhere in the country, so no matter where you put up red light cameras it will always catch and fine a disproportionate number of black drivers?

Regardless of whether you approve or disapprove of automatic red light cameras, you can construct an argument that either having them or not having them is the policy that is actually racist against blacks.

More generally, whether automated law enforcement is good or bad depends highly on how good or bad the law is, which people legitimately disagree about; and also how reliable the automatic enforcement is.

[blackcatsec]

To be fair, the first point is a good point. But I'd argue that you should deploy them everywhere in order to not be racist since we already generally know that the red light cameras are revenue generating devices. Is there some data on whether they increase safety? Preferably unbiased (probably not). Unsure.

Nonetheless, a fair point that deserves analysis. (My vote, to be fair, is ask the community what they want and put it up to a vote. With honest information on safety data versus revenue generation)

[JuniperMesos]

What are the boundaries of the community that votes? What if the racial demographics of that community have changed recently, in ways that affect how the vote turns out? What if some people in that community are aware of these voting patterns and explicitly bring up race when engaging in public discussion about the merits or demerits of the red-light-camera-policy, because it's important? What if they try to change the boundaries of the voting district in order to include/exclude more people who they think will vote with/against them on the red-light-camera issue, in ways that highly correlate with race?