Loma Linda, a Southern California city with less than twenty thousand residents, is ready to make a million by the end of the year with its new red light camera program. So far, the set of four automatic ticketing machines which began operations in early January have issued a sufficient number of $352 citations that the city is budgeting revenue of $456,000 for the first six months. This would grow to $912,000 by the end of the year.

San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department Lieutenant Hector Guerra confirmed in a January update to the city council that the majority of "violations" are not motorists running intersections on red, but those who do not "stop behind the first limit line of a crosswalk." Those, for example, who crawl into the intersection in an attempt to look around heavy traffic to the left before turning right are being photographed. For now, police say they are not mailing tickets for this form of technical violation.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration statistics show that the practice of "California stops" -- slowing but not coming to a complete halt before turning right -- is not a dangerous practice.

A full copy of the budget memo is available at the source link below in a 122k PDF file.