Sarasota Police Department representatives present report to City Commission
Between July 1, 2025 and June 30 of this year, 32,946 violations were issued to drivers for running red lights at City of Sarasota intersections, John Lake, manager of the Sarasota Police Department’s Real-Time Operations Center (ROC), told the City Commission during its regular meeting on Oct. 5.
As The Sarasota News Leader has reported, Lake and Capt. Tom Quinlan, who leads the Police Support Services Division, appeared before the board members last week to present the data collected for the School Speed Safety Zone Program in the state’s 2025 fiscal year, as well.
In regard to the red-light camera violations, Lake said, 68 were contested, with 67 sustained as being valid and the other one dismissed.
Altogether, he reported, 4,710 violations resulted in Uniform Traffic Citations.
The data is collected for what Lake noted is formally known as the city’s Intersection Safety Program.
Further, he told the commissioners, of the 25,793 violations that had been paid thus far for the 2025 fiscal year, $2,128,950 went to the state, with the city having received $2,249,574.43.
As he explained with the school program, the lower count for payments in comparison to the number of violations reflects the fact that a number of fines remain pending, while others have been contested and, in some cases, the timelines for payments to be made had not expired before the state’s fiscal year ended on June 30. (Unlike the state, the city operates on a fiscal year timeline of Oct. 1 through Sept. 30.)
In response to a question from Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch, Lake also reported an 18% reduction in the number of drivers running red lights at the intersections where cameras are positioned.
He did explain that the program initially used 20 cameras, so when he ran the figures for the 2025 fiscal year, he took the numbers just from those intersections. Comparing that data to more recent figures, Lake continued, he was able to see that the numbers of violations recorded by 12 of the 20 cameras had fallen.
“What is that an indication of?” Ahearn-Koch asked.
“That people are paying attention to the red light cameras, or red lights, actually,” he told her, so they do not get a Notice of Violation.
Then Mayor Debbie Trice asked Lake whether he had any statistics showing a reduction in collisions at the intersections where cameras have been installed.
“It’s hard” to get that information, Lake responded, “because of the left-hand turns on a lot of the lights …” Even though the light may be green for through traffic, he explained, drivers legally may make left turns when they have flashing yellow lights, “and a lot of [the intersections with cameras] have left-hand turn [flashing yellow lights].”
Moreover, he told Trice, “When you go to these crashes, these rear-end crashes at the intersections,” it is difficult [to get the true result of how [those crashes] happened. Was the person distracted?” he added, for example.
If he were to show up at a crash scene, Lake continued, a driver involved in a rear-end collision “is not going to tell me that they were texting on their phone because [that means] another ticket. You have a lot of variables that go into this.”
When the intersection program began, Lake noted, “We had dedicated left-turn arrows. … That helped a lot.”
Therefore, he said, more crashes may be documented at intersections, but they do not all result from people running the red lights. They happen in many cases “because people are making a left-hand turn in front of oncoming traffic,” thanks to their ability to do so because of the implementation of the flashing yellow lights.
By count of the News Leader, the number of intersections in the city with red light cameras has grown to 30.
The Sarasota Police Department website provides the list of all of those intersections:
