One of the top complaints about quality of life the Wheat Ridge Police Department receives is that people are driving too fast on our roads. Thanks to advances in new technology, the department believes it can address these issues more effectively in 2025.
On October 28, 2024, Wheat Ridge City Council approved a new ordinance and contract for the Wheat Ridge Police Department to work with a third-party company to begin the installation and implementation of automated speed cameras.
The department has been collecting speed data on local streets across the city for years and will be placing automated speed cameras in areas where we see consistent and excessive speeding. One of those locations will be along W 32nd Ave. right near Wheat Ridge High School. The other location will be posted in advance. The current plan is to have three of these cameras active across the city: one will be fixed, another will be a trailer that can be moved every few weeks and the third will be deployed with our Crash and Traffic Team (CATT) that is similar to a radar gun, but has the technology to take photos paired with a vehicles speed to upload to our new system. State law requires clear signage posted in the areas where these cameras will be located.
This is about keeping our roads safer for everyone who calls Wheat Ridge home.
Our community is unique and has several major highways cutting through it between I-70, Kipling St., Wadsworth Blvd. and more. The department has seen an uptick in crashes and citations in recent years, as Wheat Ridge becomes more of a cut-through community. While our CATT team is now fully staffed, we still don’t have the numbers to meet the need for traffic enforcement that we are experiencing. Because of this new technology, it will free up our officers on patrol to focus on Relationship-Based Policing and working proactively in the community.
Wheat Ridge is not the first community to implement this technology, and it won’t be the last. The department studied how these systems work in Denver, Aurora, Boulder and Morrison before taking this step.
There will be a 30-day grace period after our automated cameras come online where drivers found to be speeding will receive a warning. After that grace period, drivers will be sent a Notice of Civil Infraction in the mail for $40. A portion of that money will go to the company that helps the department maintain the cameras, while the rest will go to the City of Wheat Ridge’s general fund. Because the money goes to the general fund, it can be used to improve a number of city services, including parks, bike paths and sidewalks citywide. All Civil Infractions will be confirmed and approved by a sworn Wheat Ridge Police Officer.
The Wheat Ridge Police Department maintains the discretion to investigate egregious speeding cases and pursue traffic charges as we traditionally would. Implementation of speed cameras will likely begin in early 2025.
