海角社区官网

“Officers are analyzing each occurrence to gather evidence and identify witnesses,” said 海角社区官网police Duty Insp. Peter Wallace, at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

Wallace asked the public for help and said officers would be canvassing the areas for door-cam footage.

Police did not say whether the camera attacks were connected or co-ordinated.

But for the first time, officers released images from a surveillance camera they installed to watch over the Parkside camera, showing at least two people in dark clothing involved in taking it down on the weekend.

“We cannot confirm if it鈥檚 done by the same people,” said Shannon Eames, a 海角社区官网police spokesperson.

Authorities are taking the matter seriously, Wallace said, noting if the public sees anybody suspicious near any speed cameras, they should call the police.

There are聽, meaning that more than 10 per cent of them were hit in the past 24 hours. Seventy-five of them were added in December.

Other Ontario municipalities have also been ramping up their speed camera programs.

海角社区官网police’s news conference struck a much different tone than earlier in the day, when Ford said it’s time for Ontario municipalities to put the brakes on speed cameras, calling the automated devices “a tax grab.”

“They should take out those cameras, all of them,” Ford told reporters after a breakfast speech to the 海角社区官网Region Board of Trade on Tuesday morning, before the total number of newly vandalized cameras had been reported.

“This is nothing but a tax grab. I’ve driven by speed traps that aren’t even close to school areas.”

He called on 海角社区官网Mayor Olivia Chow to follow the lead of Vaughan Mayor Steven Del Duca and take them off the roads.聽

“Or I’m going to help them get rid of them, very shortly,” Ford said, adding it’s “not fair” for drivers to be getting tickets for going “five or 10 kilometres over.鈥�

聽鈥淚’m dead set against this photo radar.”

The premier should be thinking about safety instead of condemning photo radar, said NDP Leader Marit Stiles.

鈥淲hat an idiotic thing to say,鈥� she told reporters at the legislature. 鈥淚f you鈥檙e speeding, you should stop speeding 鈥� we know that some of these speed cameras are put up as well because people died.鈥�

Asked about the flurry of attacks on cameras,聽 Chow spoke of them as safety tools,聽pointing to schools recently reopening. She said the chief has promised to bring those responsible to justice.

“The lawlessness, in my book, is not a way to run a city,” said Chow. ”So, number one, stop speeding, obey the law, obey the speed limit, and stop tampering with public property because it is a criminal offence.”聽

Coun. Brad Bradford called the spate of vandalism “unacceptable.”

“This was clearly a co-ordinated act of vandalism against the speed cameras,” he said in an emailed statement. “It鈥檚 unacceptable, and it has to stop. Right now, the fact this keeps happening is becoming a bad joke.鈥�

At least 27 pole-mounted cameras have been knocked down this year, in addition to聽the ones damaged overnight, according to city spokesperson Laura McQuillan.

The city has also received more than 800 reports of vandalism involving all types of speed cameras this year, though most were minor incidents such as graffiti that didn鈥檛 require the cameras to be removed from service, she added.聽

Positioned south of Algonquin Drive, the Parkside Drive speed camera has been vandalized seven times within the last year,聽with the most recent incident occurring over the weekend. Since November, the camera has been sawed down, dragged into a pond and stolen. The Parkside speed camera has also been the source of more than 70,000 tickets and $8 million in speeding fines for the city since it was installed in 2022.聽

Faraz Gholizadeh 鈥� co-chair of Safe Parkside, the neighbourhood group that has been advocating for slower speeds on that road for years 鈥� says he鈥檚 disappointed by the mixed messaging from politicians and lack of action from authorities, which he feels has led to the vandalism’s spread.聽

“I feel like it’s all because of Parkside. If the city had acted on Parkside, this would not be a hot button topic and it would not聽be escalating,” he said.

A recent survey by CAA found nearly three-quarters of the 1,500 Ontario drivers it polled in March support the use of speed enforcement cameras in target zones.

A separate study by The Hospital for Sick Children and 海角社区官网Metropolitan University聽also found that automated speed cameras reduced the number speeding vehicles in city school zones by almost half.聽

Looking at 250 different school zones across 海角社区官网from July 2020 and December 2022 while measuring speeds before and after cameras went up, the study found that the overall percentage of cars speeding dropped by 45 per cent 鈥� and that speed cameras most improved the behaviours of the speediest of drivers.