School zone, red light cameras yield nearly 50,000 tickets in a year

Video enforcement of intersection safety and school zone speed limits in the city of Sarasota is resulting in significant reductions in violations. 

During its 2024-2025 presentation to the Sarasota City Commission on Sept. 15, Chief of Police Rex Troche and representatives of the Sarasota Police Department Real-Time Operations Center (ROC) reported an average 60% reduction in school speed zone violations from a five-day spring 2024 test period, and a 34% decline in traffic light violations throughout the city year over year. 

Data presented was culled from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025.

The speed zone monitoring system at Cardinal Mooney High School in particular, ROC Manager John Lake told commissioners, has prompted an average 80% reduction in speeding during the immediate before and after school hours along Fruitville Road. The program covers six of the city’s most problematic school zones with a total of 22 cameras, including Alta Vista Elementary, Southside Elementary, Tuttle Elementary, Sarasota High School and Sarasota Military Academy, in addition to Cardinal Mooney.

In all, there were 25,861 citations for red light violations over the 12-month period, and 23,459 for school zone speeding. Not all of those incidents had adjudication or payment yet, because the lag time between citation and settlement extended beyond the end of the study period. 

A small number of those citations were contested before a magistrate, prompting Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch to question why a driver would challenge a ticket for a violation captured on video and, by the same token, how the citations are upheld in court.

“Every red-light camera violation is recorded every 11 seconds,” Lake said. “It shows the light turning red, so it's very hard to go to court and dispute when you're looking at an 11-second video. A vast majority of these people don't even know that there's video that they can watch online before they go to court.”

Photo by Andrew Warfield

A link to each violation video, Lake said, is clearly marked on the citation document sent via mail. Still, some either overlook the link or don't view the video and still show up in court.

For either school zone or red light violations, the driver has 30 days to simply pay the $100 fine. In not meeting the deadline, the violation elevates to a uniform traffic citation (UTC), which increases the fine to $206. Ahearn-Koch asked, what about a seasonal resident who may be out of state for several months during which time a citation is delivered by mail and they miss the 30-day remittance deadline?

Lake cited a similar example, and the solution.

“He was a truck driver. He was on the road for two months, came back and then he saw the violation,” Lake said. “That person called in, and we brought it back to the $100 and dismissed the UTC.”

Following up on what she has heard from some residents, Mayor Liz Alpert questioned whether the school zone speed cameras are in operation throughout school hours and not only before and after.

Troche confirm that, per state statute, they are active throughout the school day and citing violators of the normal posted speed limit. Signs notifying drivers of the enforcement, he added, have had a chilling effect on speeds in the school zones regardless of time of day, and even the day of the week.

“As I drive throughout the city throughout the day and I'm in these school zones, they're driving like Miss Daisy,” Troche said, referencing a movie title. “Even on the weekends, people are still driving (slower) because they are in the habit of, as soon as they see school zone signs, they start to slow down.”