Colorado Springs is at this point only dabbling with Robocop ticket-writing -- a contract still in the works will soon have a private entity operating red light cameras at certain intersections in the city, automatically issuing tickets to drivers caught in the act. This may reduce red light-running -- a good thing -- but it can also, if expanded, become a major revenue-generator for the city, at relatively low cost, which can incentivize the further expansion of such technologies city-wide.

This is one area where the slippery slope definitely beckons, as this story in the Boulder Daily Camera indicates. Once you embrace automated law enforcement, the logic of it (and the economics of it) tend to drive you toward greater and greater use of it -- and abuse of it, almost inevitably. That may fit in well with the Boulder model, which tends toward command and control, but I'm not sure it fits comfortably in Colorado Springs, where people are a little more wary of Big Brother-like technologies and attitudes.

I wasn't on Council when the red light cameras were approved, so I didn't have an opportunity to raise these concerns and objections. But count me as a strong skeptic of more Robocoping, as we move forward.