Stephen Ruth claims he disabled the cameras on New York Route 25 between the towns of Coram and Centereach as a public service to save lives after a county study showed an increase in accidents at half of intersections outfitted with them in 2010.
The cameras photograph vehicles that don’t stop and authorities issue tickets based on those pictures, according to the Ars Technica tech news site.
“They call it a crime; I call it saving lives,” Ruth told a CBS affiliate in New York.
“I believe in what I’m doing and I’m only trying to save lives,” he said.
Ruth claims the accidents are occurring because county officials have shortened the length of yellow lights that precede the reds to increase the amount of fines.
But Ruth now faces 17 felony charges and a prison sentence of as long as seven years if convicted of all of them, Ars Technica said.
Ruth was arrested last August on similar charges after posting a video on YouTube demonstrating how to disable the cameras by pointing them to the sky and encouraging people to do the same.
“I’m going to show you how easy it is to take the power back,” Ruth says in the video, according to the website.
“It doesn’t take more than a minute, and the gratification is huge,” he says.
Yet Ruth is not the only person with complaints about the traffic camera program.
A class-action lawsuit filed by drivers ticketed because of the cameras claims the program is designed primarily to raise money, and even requires motorists to pay a $30 administrative fee for every ticket.
The attorney who filed the suit on behalf of the motorists, Dave Raimondo of Lake Grove, NY, also alleges that yellow light times have been reduced to trap more motorists with red light tickets.
“They just manipulate it slightly to make sure it is a little bit shorter to force red light running as a result create revenue for the county,” Raimondo told Ars Technica.
Suffolk County officials say they use “the nationally accepted methodology” to calculate yellow and red light times.
