West-bound Hallandale Beach Blvd. & N.W. 9th Terrace, Hallandale Beach, with the so-called Red-Light camera warning sign posted a block farther east of the camera on the corner of N.W. 9th Terrace, which, as it happens, is also a popular area for dangerous U-turns. It's right around here somewhere...In what way, exactly, is the red-light camera warning sign "visible" from this distance? September 25, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier
Or from this distance in the right-hand lane? September 25, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier
Where did it go? Shouldn't we see it by now? September 11, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier
Oh, there you are, red-light camera warning sign, intentionally placed right between two trees!
You only see the sign above because of the reflection of my camera's flash, since it's pitch-black there at night.
You'd almost say they were hiding it, yes?
Looking west on W. Hallandale Beach Blvd. & N.W 10th Terrace, Hallandale Beach, April 24, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier
As if the summer hadn't already been hot enough and embarrassing enough for residents of Hallandale Beach, who have once again had to watch in complete dismay as their city was once again involved in being on the wrong side of an ethical issue, due to the city's own longstanding incompetence and failure to pay close attention to either a written contract or to what its taxpayer citizens said and demanded.
And as usual, Mayor Joy Cooper thinks she knows better than everyone else, and as we've seen so many times before to our own chagrin, nobody-but-nobody in South Florida government and public policy believes and swallows her own mendacious lies like Joy Cooper does.
It's like she even has to lick the mixing spoon, so thoroughly does she fall for her own self-delusions and serving lies.
So, can you believe it's happened yet again?
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Red-light cameras save lives, fund essential research
5:40 p.m. EDT, July 22, 2012
By Joy Cooper
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/fl-guest-cooper-cameras-mon0723-20120722,0,6873108.story
What's worse?
The galling audacity of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in giving free space to thoroughly mendacious Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper 16 weeks before an election to spread her unique brand of un-reality, which shows complete contempt for the truth, or the degree of her stridently self-serving lies re the issue of Red-Light cameras in Hallandale Beach, which she and her Rubber Stamp Crew at the time rammed thru in order to to gain more revenue for the city, NOT because of safety, as anyone who is even slightly-objective and paying even the barest of attention to the proceedings would know, given how very poorly Cooper and her puppets articulated their point of view?
The Sun-Sentinel won't admit it publicly anytime soon, but trust me, it just got rolled and played like a country bumpkin by a consumate con-woman in Joy Cooper, who won't acknowledge any truth but the truth in her own mind, regardless of what the national, state or county law is, and regardless of what the law requires.
That personal disconnect of her's from both the reality and the law that the rest of us have to obey and deal with explains a good part of old-fashioned dislike and contempt in with Cooper is held by the portion of this city's populace that is well-informed and actively engaged, which includes myself as it happens.
That's a pretty telling statement, alright, and yet the South Florida news media as presently constructed continues to fail to ask how it could be that Cooper is both so consistently on the wrong side of both the facts, the law and history, and yet remains in office.
Cooper is the conundrum that won't go away on her own accord, but they ignore what's right in front of them.
To me, someone like Susan Candiotti or Ike Seamans in the Miami TV news of the 1970's and '80's, before they went national with CNN and NBC News respectively from Channel 10/WPLG and Channel 4/WTVJ, would've positively jumped at the chance to put together a news report or two within a short period of time that pinned the tail of responsibility and failure on this donkey, with common sense facts and wit and a few lacerating-but-fair questions with a microphone pointed Cooper's way.
Yes, nobody in elective office in South Florida has profited more from the sleepwalking state of the South Florida press corps more than Joy Cooper.
Their absence is her wish come true, day-after-day.
It's really too bad for the rest of South Florida who doesn't live here and who doesn't know the true facts, that there wasn't anyone from any of the local Miami TV stations or newspapers
consistently attending all or even most of those HB meetings on Red-Light cameras.
Someone in the press corps actually paying attention to the facts and reality, since then they could've seen everything for themselves, including what the citizens here were overwhelmingly saying and thinking.
Yes, but then that was back when both newspapers largely liked to pretend that HB didn't exist, and didn't send reporters here for large parts of a year.
In the Herald's case, nearly a year-and-a-half as I recall
Not so very different from now, actually, esp. when something of note is going on in Hollywood on a Wednesday.
Yes, it's hard for me to not think about how much better it would be if one of the TV stations had actually sent a film crew and actually caught then-Police Chief Magill on film caught up in the fanciful story that he had to spin for the mayor and city manager's benefit.
So much so that he actually got tripped-up weaving his lies about traffic statistics & anecdotes re north-bound U.S.-1 and Hallandale Beach Blvd., the media's new cause-celebre at the time because of how much in fines was coming into City Hall.
Magill lied about an accident with a fatality that happened elsewhere -near City Hall- in order to make it seem as though it happened there, in order to justify the city's placement of the camera.
You remember, the warning sign erected behind the bus shelter, on the far side of
the sidewalk, so that passing drivers couldn't really see it?
Right before the entrance to The Knife?
That's the one!
But Chief Magill got caught lying, alright, and I and many of you out there reading this witnessed it, and in any case, it's on the city's videotape.
blogspot.com/2011/02/now-as-before-facts-seldom-if-ever.
Yes, nobody from the South Florida news media was really the least bit interested in hearing what the citizens of this community had to say, which was that it was done, plain and simple, to raise revenue, at the behest of Cooper and the City Manager.
Yet another attempt by her to use the city as a prop to score points and chits with her League of Cities pals who have never set foot in this city, and who have no earthly idea how disastrous a mayor she has been for this community for ten years.
The South Florida news media could've cared less about any of that!
If they'd shown up and been properly prepared, they'd know that the City of Hallandale Beach City Manager and Police Chief Magill were so disinterested in having an honest exchange and fair discussion of the issue that they refused to even reveal to citizens basic info, like where the highest percentage of speeding tickets in the city were issued, and where were the intersections with the highest number of accidents, since logically, IF you believe in cameras, that's where the cameras should go if safety was really the number one concern.
But the city refused because they knew the information would NOT support their faulty theory or its carefully chosen location of cameras.
Even in committing their fraud, they were unconvincing because the facts simply don't support what they say, and nobody lied more than Joy Cooper.
When the city commissioned a survey/poll by mail with a Kansas-based company, with very poorly-written and frankly, LOADED questions, the Red-Llight cameras came back as THE number-one complaint,
Guess who pretended that the #1 problem citied by her own citizens wasn't really a problem?
Guess who had the nerve on the one hand to pat herself on the back for voting to have the survey done, and then ignore the #1 problem citizens cite?
Yes, Joy Cooper, in her typically thin-skinned, confrontational and oblivious way, which I'm sure that American Traffic Solutions won't forget now that she's running for re-election against the only person on the dais with any integrity who fought against the inside con job by her and city employees -Comm. Keith London.
In here piece, you'll also notice how Cooper completely neglects to mention the huge amounts of money the city initially made, which is THE only reason that the South Florida news media paid any attention in the first place, since that was the last time HB was mention in newspapers or on TV all over the state the way it was before the lifeguard incident three weeks ago, which she also had NOT been 100% truthful about.
I trust that I don't have to spell it out for you that this sort of fact-free, propaganda BS from Mayor Cooper should NOT be allowed to go unchallenged, because in the year 2012, we simply can't rely on the quaint idea that the South Florida news media will actually verify
anything that this mendacious women says before it gets into print or on air.
Sadly, that's an ideal that no longer exists in South Florida.
-----
Photos from my February 24, 2011 post that showed the truth regarding the mayor's lies, in a post I labeled, Now as before, facts seldom if ever matter in red-light camera debate in Hallandale Beach. Instead, it's just a pathetic case of "Show me the money!"
before-facts-seldom-if-ever.
Below are some photos of a self-evident fact that I and many tens of thousands of other Hallandale Beach and Hollywood residents have known about ever since the red-light camera was installed on Hallandale Beach Blvd. & N.W. 10th Terrace, Hallandale Beach, with the so-called warning sign posted a block farther east on the corner of N.W. 9th Terrace, which, as it happens, is also a popular area for dangerous U-turns.
It's here somewhere...
It's right around here somewhere.
In what way, exactly, is the red-light camera warning sign "visible" from this distance?
Or from this distance? September 25, 2011
Where did it go? Shouldn't we see it by now? September 11, 2011
Oh, there you are, red-light camera warning sign, intentionally placed right between two trees!
You only see the sign above because of the reflection of my camera flash.
You'd almost say they were hiding it, yes?
Looking west on W. Hallandale Beach Blvd. & N.W 10th Terrace, Hallandale Beach, April 24, 2011.
In fact, it's not until you are almost parallel to the sign itself, assuming you notice it among the other signs preceding it, that it's visible to west-bound drivers in the road lane that is actually CLOSEST to the sign. That seems illogical on its face doesn't it?
Shouldn't the lane closest to the sign at least see it at roughly the same instant others do?
Instead, the driver closest to it is the one driver most likely to NEVER see it.
How exactly is that common sense?
The fact that there is no street light there only makes it even worse at night, as this photo below amply demonstrates.
Above, the red-light camera warning sign on the north-side of west-bound W. Hallandale Beach Blvd. at N.W. 9th Terrace on February 27, 2011 at 6:40 p.m., a bit past sundown.
The ONLY reason that you even see the sign above is because I'm standing on the curb and pointing my camera directly at it, using my camera's flash.
Where's that red-light camera warning sign?
Looking west on W. Hallandale Beach Blvd. approaching N.W 10th Terrace, Hallandale Beach. About 6:50 p.m., April 24, 2011.
And that assumes that you the driver aren't distracted -and a bit un-nerved- by the sight of the over-grown palm fronds that obstruct the electronic message board directly behind it.
September 11, 2011
Hmm-m... erecting an electronic message board behind a palm tree on a west-bound roadwhere a setting sun is often brutal at times?
No, nothing bad could ever go wrong with that sort of well-organized plan.
Well, unless it rains .. and the palm fronds get larger.
And aren't properly maintained and cut.
Like the reality in Hallandale Beach since that particular red-light cameras went up.
Where's that red-light camera warning sign?Looking west on W. Hallandale Beach Blvd. approaching N.W 10th Terrace, Hallandale Beach. About 6:50 p.m., April 24, 2011.
Where did you say that red-light camera warning sign was, again?
No, it's not that silver-colored one next to the curb, that the Merge/Bike lane sign.
Looking west on W. Hallandale Beach Blvd. & N.W 10th Terrace, Hallandale Beach, April 24, 2011.
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