Longview police use 'confirmation lights' in new initiative to curb red-light running

Longview police have brought back a tool to help officers cite red-light runners in the city as part of a recent traffic enforcement initiative.

Police Chief Anthony Boone said at a recent Longview City Council meeting that the blue “confirmation lights” on some signal poles in the city are set to go off when the traffic light turns red, allowing officers to see when vehicles run through a red light.

The concept for the lights is not new, although the recent confirmation lights were added as part of the department’s Operation: Pump the Brakes initiative aimed at making Longview’s roads safer by focusing on enforcement of speeding, racing and red-light violations.

Boone said at the June 23 council meeting that “there’s been some rumors about what those were — if they were cameras or what … .”

He said the confirmation lights are in sync with red lights so an officer knows what color the signal is from the other side — “generally where your violator is coming through the intersection,” Boone said.

Longview police spokesman Brandon Thornton on Thursday reemphasized the chief’s description. He said when the red light is activated, the blue confirmation light turns on.

“When that light is not red, that light — the confirmation light — is not active,” he said.

The confirmation lights are not red-light cameras and do not automatically trigger a ticket.

Thornton said the department has used different versions of the confirmation lights in the past.

“These aren’t really new,” he said. “We haven’t had as many of them throughout the city in the past, but at one point in my 20-plus career, they were white over to the side.”

He said at another point, the lights were a lot smaller and red.

“These blue lights are just the newest ones that they’ve installed to help us determine when the light is red,” he said.

Boone told council members that the lights are “another way to safely try to stop anybody who is running our red lights in town.”

And the lights, along with the initiative focused on traffic enforcement, appear to be working.

The department issued almost seven times as many red-light citations in May as it did in May 2021. According to data provided by Thornton, there were 37 red-light citations issued in May 2021 and 249 in the same month of this year.

The difference was nearly as marked for June. In June 2021, the department issued 45 red-light citations compared with 159 this June, an increase of more than 250%.

Thornton said the numbers “kind of speak for themselves.”

The new confirmation lights, though, have been installed only during part of that time.

When Boone spoke June 23 at the council meeting, he said the lights were in place at the intersections of three roads along north Loop 281 — Gilmer and McCann roads and Fourth Street — with more to come.

Rick Evans, the city’s assistant director of public works, said the lights were installed at the three intersections in June, and they also have been added on High Street at Marshall Avenue and on Judson Road at Loop 281.

The lights also will be installed at Spur 63 and Marshall Avenue and on Eastman Road at Marshall Avenue and at Eastman and Hawkins Parkway, according to Evans.

Thornton said the lights are just a piece of Operation: Pump the Brakes that aims to take a holistic approach toward traffic enforcement.

“I would say that we did recognize that red-light running has become a problem, and the chief took steps not just for red light running but for speeding and reckless driving and that sort of thing,” Thornton said.

The operation, which had been in the works, was jumpstarted in May after two men on motorcycles were killed in separate crashes inside the city on April 30.

Speaking at a City Council meeting May 12 to announce the program, Boone said, “Our goal is not to increase revenue — that’s not what this is about. But this is to reduce social harms, and crashes are definitely social harms.”

“We are focusing on that, and hopefully it’s successful,” Thornton said Thursday. “Then again, we’re only two months into it, but we are seeing results.”