What delayed E. Main's red-light cam? City answers prompt more questions

For the past two weeks, I’ve been thinking about the red-light camera at East Main and North 25th Streets far, far more than any normal person should. Here is how this still-ongoing street-safety fixation/miniature mental breakdown came to be.

February 27th: The Lookout published a column oriented around the fact* that the red-light camera at that particular—and particularly terrifying—intersection was finally about to start issuing tickets after the conclusion of its 30-day grace period, during which it issued only warnings. Available reporting and messaging from the Department of Public Works (DPW) indicated that period ought to have ended at the end of February.

February 28th: Ross Catrow, the city’s director of the office of strategic communications, reached out to let me know that this *fact, was in fact, not one: somebody at the city decided to extend the 30-day grace period (during which the camera issued only warnings) through March 8th “due to the winter storms.”

March 3rd: I updated my column, amended an editor’s note, and followed up with Catrow to find out who made this call, what the winter storm had anything to do with it, and generally speaking, what was taking DPW so long to get these cameras installed. After all, it was way back in September 2025 that Mayor Danny Avula announced the plan to install 10 of them around the city; it was early January when he renewed this announcement with an emphasis on four of those 10, including the one at E. Main and N. 25th Sts. Catrow warned me that he might be slow to respond due to the imminent unveiling of Avula’s budget. Fair enough.

March 5th: DPW issued a press release announcing the grace period “ends in a few days.” Er, for half the initial cameras, at least: while the ones at E. Main/N. 25th and S. Belvidere & W. Cary Sts. would begin dispensing tickets on March 8th, the other two in this initial wave wouldn’t until March 24th.

March 6th: DPW spokesperson Paige Hairston, apparently following up for Catrow, emailed The Lookout with a bullet-pointed list of the steps required to install a red-light camera. (See below.) “The process involves much more than mounting a camera,” she said, explaining that it “is a complex infrastructure project that involves the coordination of dozens of different partners working with the vendor to ensure equipment is installed safely and integrates properly with the traffic signal system.”

March 7th: Two cars got into a crash at E. Franklin and N. 25th Sts., one block north of the intersection in question. I learned about this from a guy I met at a party, who pulled up a photo of the crash on Facebook. (See below.) Not exactly related, but not, like, unrelated, either. You know? Multiple people at this party—which was much more fun than this anecdote is making it sound—asked me what the deal was with the red-light cameras. I gave them the update and made a note to follow-up with DPW.

March 8th: I followed up with DPW, reiterating to Hairston that I was looking for more insight into how/by whom the decision was made to delay the grace period, and what the winter storm had to do with it. I also referred her to an article published in a trade journal earlier this month outlining New York City’s plans to install red-light cameras at 50 intersections per week through the end of March. NYC has a much larger, busier, and more complex grid than Richmond, and it is exposed to more severe winter weather, yet it is projecting 600 of its intersections will have red-light cams by the end of the year. Obviously, it’s not apples-to-apples: the land mass NYC DOT must cover is much bigger (300.46 square miles of land there to 59.92 here) and more densely populated, but presumably it has a much bigger budget, too.² And 50 a week is just bananas compared to RVA’s pace. Baffled by the disparity, I asked Hairston if DPW had an internal goal/benchmark for how long installations should take.

March 9th: A tipster reached out with a note about one of the items on the agenda for the then-upcoming City Council meeting. An ordinance up for consideration at the March 10th meeting concerned “the manner in which civil penalties are allocated” after being issued by red-light cameras. The ordinance is denoted as having been introduced on December 15th—some four months after Avula’s announcement. I followed up with Hairston with the obvious question: did the first two cameras actually start issuing tickets on March 8th, like DPW said they would? And if so, is it typical to start operating that sort of infrastructure before City Council has specified how any funds it generates are to be allocated?

March 13th: I wrote this column without any answers to those questions, because I did not hear back from DPW before publication.

📜 Possum Poetry

Possum Poetry is original verse written exclusively for The Lookout by Penelope Poubelle, the Lookout’s litter critter-at-large. If you spot roadside trash you’d like her to immortalize in doggerel, email a photo to [email protected]. All submissions anonymous!

💰 A million dollars later, Newbille, Avula still firmly back RPD’s surveillance network

I filed a big investigation this week at The Richmonder comparing Richmond Police Department’s claims about its use of Flock Safety’s controversial, AI-powered surveillance technology to independent scholarship, national reporting, and city payment data. You can read it in full here:

This report focuses in part on a campaign led by Richmond’s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America calling on the city’s elected officials to cancel RPD’s contracts for for Flock’s automated license-plate readers (ALPRs), gunshot detectors, and powerful search software¹ over concerns over privacy, racialized and “predictive” policing, and documented cases of abuse by beat cops, county sheriffs, and the Trump administration’s federal immigration forces.

Spokespeople for City Council President and longtime 7th District representative Cynthia Newbille and even-longer-time East End resident Danny Avula declined to make them available for interviews for my investigation. However, both spokespeople provided emailed statements reiterating the politicians’ support for RPD’s use of Flock; in Newbille’s case, the statement was nearly identical to the one her spokesperson issued The Lookout in July 2025, when RPD admitted its system had been improperly accessed by the feds for immigration-related queries.

Neither spokesperson responded to inquiries as to whether Avula or Newbille had read the recent research paper co-authored by Christopher Newport University Center for Crime, Equity, and Justice Research and Policy director and Church Hill resident Steven Keener showing how Hampton Roads’ placement of Flock cameras disproportionately surveil that area’s poorer and Blacker populations. RPD’s Edwards declined multiple requests to disclose the locations of Richmond’s Flock cameras, but conceded that “we do generally put them where our gun-violence hot spots are.” Six out of 13 of those are located in the East End; none are located west of the Nickel Bridge.

🗺️ MapRVA’s 10,000th geolocation was a Libby Hill looker

Cartographic sicko and Church Hill resident John Pole took a break from cataloging every inch of the knowable world throughout space and time to fire off an update to your humble Lookout editor. The MapRVA crew behind Yesterdays, a super-slick portal into Richmond’s geolocated visual past, recently crossed a major milestone, pinning the 10,000th historic photograph to its big, interactive digital map of Richmond. The photo that put the project into five figures was the beautiful shot of the James River from Libby Hill you see above, snapped by an unnamed photographer in January 1990 and archived by the Richmond Commission of Architectural Review Slide Collection. Here’s its full listing at Yesterdays.

I asked Pole if it was a coincidence that No. 10,000 happened to be of such an iconic Church Hill view, or if, amid his prolific geolocating, he coordinated to make sure Yesterdays crossed the threshold in his neighborhood. “On purpose because I’m a dork and knew what number I was on,” he texted back, adding that the picture was too good to pass up. Amateur archivists from other parts of the city who take issue with his homerism had better get to geolocating. The 15,000th geolocation beckons, and right now, Pole is in the pole position.

📢 Happenings on The Hill

• Pi not?: The first 50 people in line at Proper Pie Co. tomorrow (3/14, do you get it?!) will get a special mug with their orders. Gaze upon it.

• Work it: Jefferson Ave. Community Garden has a work day scheduled for tomorrow from 10am-3pm. More details here.

• Corps memory: Serve Virginia is hosting a picnic in Chimborazo Park tomorrow from 12-2pm to mark the conclusion of AmeriCorps Week. Info here.

• Journal journey: There are still a few tickets left for a lay-flat journal-making class at Top Stitch Mending on Monday (3/16) from 6-9pm, taught by Nycol of Windblown Sisters Botanicals. More details.

• Spring thing: Celeste Farms is hosting a “spring equinox storytelling” event led by Liza Newell next Friday (3/20), with doors at 5:30pm. Tickets over here.

Happenings on The Hill is a digital bulletin board for events, causes, and other items of interest to East Enders that don’t necessarily merit full editorial treatment. Got something for a future edition? Email the relevant details, links, etc. to [email protected] for consideration!

📸 A Very CHill Photo

Want to share your Very CHill Photo from the neighborhood? Email it to [email protected] with your name as you’d like it to appear for publication, and the camera you shot it on.

1  In a harrowing feature earlier this week at Business Insider about the false positives Flock generates and the consequences from same, one former cop described this software as “information overload” and likened alerts from it as “like scrolling on Instagram or a slot machine, you hear that ding from your computer, and now your adrenaline goes up a little bit.”

2  I pored over the NYC budget for a bit, and the Richmond budget for a bit, and frankly I’m just kinda torched. If you can help me draw an appropriate budgetary comparison between NYC DOT and Richmond DPW, hit the comments, or send me a tip!