TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) - It's been more than two months since Tucson voters ordered red light cameras shut down.
But Monday is the first time we've seen the actual cameras and lights coming off the poles.
Our KGUN9 crews caught a technician from the camera contractor removing hardware from enclosures at the former red light camera intersections.
It may look like the cameras are still up because the enclosures are still here. But we can assure you the camera vendors has been removing the cameras and lights.
We found a technician from American Traffic Solutions removing the flashes, and the cameras from intersections at Kolb and Tanque Verde and Grant and Swan.
And we were able to confirm the gear was gone from Speedway and Kolb.
Mark Spear worked hard to convince Tucson voters to ban the cameras. The city promised to stop using cameras for enforcement right after the vote, but the company kept the cameras on the poles until just now.
"I was predicting that they would take it down by the end of the year. I understand that they may have had some more priority things to do during the holiday season and they would probably wait until after that."
Spear says as an engineer he understands why the company would remove the sensitive stuff first, and come back later for the boxes.
But as long as the enclosures are there it looks like the cameras are there, and some drivers are still nervous about whether red light cameras are really dead and gone.
Anders Ullstrom is one driver who says, ‘A lot of us feel those things are still up because the city's trying to find some way to back door what the voters wanted and keep them in place. If they're trying to find some way to go around what the voters asked for that's why they're leaving them up otherwise why not just take them down?"
The city has said it will honor the word of the voters.
We've tried to get an explanation for why the cameras are coming down so long after Tucson stopped using them for tickets, and why the enclosures were left shine.
The company referred us to city government. Monday the city was in holiday mode for the MLK holiday. An officials with Tucson DOT says because the cameras were tied into city systems, city workers will need to be present for some of the dismantling.
It's not clear if the company got to all seven cameras Monday. We saw for ourselves at least three were dismantled.
