‘Accomplished nothing but revenue’: Edgewood man challenges traffic cameras

Michael Stanzel, an Edgewood resident, has launched a campaign against the use of school zone cameras, speed cameras, and red light cameras in Washington, arguing they do not enhance safety but instead generate significant revenue for cities.

“I ended up getting a ticket a while back. I swear up and down it was for 22 miles an hour,” Stanzel said on “The Jason Rantz Show on KTTH.” “I thought that was pretty Mickey Mouse and started looking into it, and found out exactly how these programs work, and I had some problems with it.”

Stanzel’s investigation revealed the funds collected from these cameras often do not go towards safety programs as initially promised.

“They did actually put it back into the general fund, which they claimed they weren’t doing,” he explained.

Traffic cameras make Edgewood about $500,000 annually

In Edgewood, the cameras have generated about $500,000 a year, but Stanzel questions their effectiveness.

“Since 2014 to 2019, there was never an incident, not one incident, in an Edgewood school zone that was reported,” he said. “So they’ve accomplished nothing other than collect revenue.”

Stanzel has taken his concerns to local officials, including the mayor and police chief, and has set up a petition on change.org to gather support.

“There’s a lot of people that are very upset about these cameras,” he noted. “Edgewood is the only city in the Puyallup School District with traffic enforcement cameras, and it’s probably one of the safest school zones and cities in the area.”

Despite mixed studies on the effectiveness of traffic cameras, Stanzel remains determined to see them removed.

“It just doesn’t seem like there was really a purpose in Edgewood to stand those things up in the first place,” he said. “They never performed a traffic study. They just held up that company, and they had them start standing them up, and they’re paying them $400,000 a year to write these tickets.”

On his website, Stanzel said the Edgewood Police Department has issued 23,570 citations and has collected over $3,432,880 since October 2019. Stanzel has a petition online for people who want to see the cameras removed.

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