Got to keep them honest, folks, and there’s nothing like a camera to do it.  Especially in Chicago, where there are a LOT of such cameras. But this is about those wonderful red-light cameras that we’re continually hearing about.

Now, you might think that an intersection where there are constant accidents might well benefit from the introduction of a red-light traffic camera.  It’d help keep drivers honest.  And to hear former 42nd Ward alderman Burton Natarus talk, you’d think he found just the intersection:

“I put it in there,” said Natarus, who was chairman of the City Council’s Traffic Committee when the cameras were installed in March 2007. “It’s a very dangerous intersection. . . . They roll right through that thing.”

Very dangerous intersection, he says.  Roll right through, he says.  So you’d think that such a corner would be plagued with accidents, right?

Wrong.  The Kingsbury / Ontario intersection was almost totally bereft of accidents for almost the last three years.  But considering that Natarus actually lives mere feet from the camera, which has actually turned in no less than a million dollars since it went up two years ago, it sort of makes sense that it went in there.

The problem here being that it makes sense for only one real reason–as a colossal cash grab for the City of Chicago.