Sioux City speed camera.
There’s a border war over speeding tickets issued by the traffic enforcement cameras in Sioux City. The State of South Dakota is now blocking police in Sioux City, Iowa, from getting the addresses for South Dakota license holders caught by speed cameras on Interstate 29.
Matt Konenkamp, a policy adviser to South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard, says the block took effect today.
“We’ll be redacting information that the Sioux City Police Department can obtain when they access our system,” he says.
A South Dakota law bars police from sharing vehicle information with private companies that collect the fines from tickets issued by traffic enforcement cameras. However, the advisor to South Dakota’s governor says Sioux City police have been giving that information to Redflex, the private company that manages Sioux City’s speed camera program.
“When that bill became law in July of 2014, we immediately began to curtail the uses for our information from companies like Redflex,” Konenkamp. says. “It later became apparent to us that Sioux City had found a way to obtain this data and provide it to Redflex.”
South Dakota officials say the data block will not prevent Sioux City police from getting information they may need.
“We are giving Sioux City access to our dispatch and so they can contain dispatch 24 hours a day, seven days a week to obtain any information that we have relative to a criminal matter,” Konenkamp says. “I think it’s important to point out that if Sioux City were looking for a felon in South Dakota, South Dakota law enforcement would be engaged and, of course, they would have the address.”
Sioux City used to issue $168 speed camera tickets, but the city council voted last month to lower the fine to $100. A former state senator in South Dakota who runs a bail bond business in Sioux City, Iowa, put up a post on Facebook this afternoon, inviting Iowans in the Sioux City area to get their vehicle license plates in Union County, South Dakota — so they can avoid any traffic camera speeding tickets in Sioux City. You don’t have to be a resident of South Dakota to get South Dakota plates on your vehicle, he says. You just have to establish a mailing address in South Dakota.
Dan Lederman, the former state senator in South Dakota who issued the invitation, said officials in Sioux City are trying to fill the city’s coffers with traffic ticket fines. Lederman has been cited for speeding on Interstate 29, citations issued by one of the speed cameras.
(Reporting by Woody Gottburg, KSCJ, Sioux City)