11/18/2008
Germany: Three Speed Cameras DestroyedMobile speed cameras rammed in Stuttgart and Grasberg, Germany while vigilantes decapitate a speed camera in Attendorn.
Three speed cameras were taken out of service in a series of unrelated attacks last week in Germany. In the town of Attendorn in the North Rhine-Westphalia region, Olper Police found the remains of a decapitated speed camera on Monday, November 10. Vigilantes had driven away with the camera housing and electronics after using an angle grinder to separate the device from its support pole. Officials will spend 40,000 Euros (US $50,000) to replace the equipment and resume automated ticketing. Police have no suspects, according to the Cologne Express.
Also that day a 41-year-old Berlin resident driving on the B27 in Stuttgart passed a mobile speed camera trap manned by two police officers. The man later returned to the location and slamming his vehicle into the mobile camera, knocking it off its tripod and damaging the mechanism. The man yelled threats at the police who were eventually able to subdue and arrest him, the Stuttgart Journal reported.
In a similar incident in the Lower Saxony municipality of Grasberg, a 27-year-old rammed a mobile speed camera, destroying it. The 53-year-old manning the automated ticketing machine was so frightened by the incident that he went into cardiac arrest and died shortly after being taken to the hospital. The driver was charged with assault and criminal damage but police found no link between his actions and the death of the speed camera operator.