Neither darkness nor threats stop bylaw chief

JOHN THOMPSON

Robert Kavanaugh doesn’t need a radar gun to spot a speeding driver.

Iqaluit’s bylaw chief knows how fast you’re driving, within a kilometre or two, at a glance. Parked in an unmarked vehicle one afternoon at the Baffin Regional Hospital, he overlooks a long stretch of the Ring Road, including the 30 km/hr school zone in front of Inuksuk High, and calls out the speed of passing traffic.

“I’d guesstimate that’s 47,” he said, pointing at a distant white vehicle, then checks with his radar gun. “I got 46.” He tries another, and ends up off by just two clicks.

Iqaluit’s bylaw department spends much of its time enforcing the rules of the road, as best they can. They’ve doled out 130 tickets so far this year. Last year, they gave out 188.

As the number of vehicles on the road continues to swell with every sealift, it looks like they’ll stay busy. Some days, Kavanaugh and his three bylaw officers look like four lone guns in a town full of outlaws.

Children on bikes dart into traffic without warning. Pedestrians wander into the street without looking in either direction. Trucks and cars follow no single strategy against these bewildering obstacles. Some, out of courtesy, pull to a halt for pedestrians, cross-walk or not. Others roar by.

And when they’re moving, drivers regularly flout the speed limit – at least, until they see a bylaw truck parked conspicuously by the roadside.

Inside vehicles, small children can be seen crawling on a driver’s lap, perched inside an amauti or exploring an SUV’s trunk space. Kavanaugh said the lack of proper restraining devices for children remains one of the most troubling vehicle safety issues he sees.

A photo that hangs from the door of the bylaw office serves to remind Kavanaugh just how fast drivers can go. It shows a reading from his radar gun on July 21, 2004, just a bit after noon: 115 km/hr, in a 40 km/hr zone.

Kavanaugh takes his job seriously, and that doesn’t make him popular with residents he’s pulled over. “I’ve had visits at my place,” he said. That doesn’t deter him.

Once this spring, when police phoned and asked for assistance with an armed stand-off near Aqsarniit school, he donned his Kevlar bullet-proof vest and helped set up barricades and direct traffic.

“We get calls at all hours of the day, and all hours of the night.”

Some of those calls have involved the city’s own sewage and water trucks, which have been blamed for several pedestrian deaths over the last few years. To curb their speeding, governors – gadgets that limit the top speed of an engine – were installed in some city vehicles during the spring.

Last Friday, another bylaw officer called police for assistance after a speeder he pulled over decided to get into a shoving match with him.

During the winter, snowmobiles that tear around town keep bylaw busy. Kavanaugh stresses it isn’t the hunters heading out on the land that are trouble.

Instead, it’s young residents riding their machines recklessly. The city owns no snowmobiles for Kavanaugh and his crew, for fear of a lawsuit that might arise from a bystander injured during a chase. Still, he said they often have no trouble tracking down someone spotted weaving dangerously around town.

“We usually have a means of finding out who a person is and where we can find them.”

Speeders in southern jurisdictions live with the hope that the cop who caught them won’t attend their court hearing. No such luck here. “I always show up,” he said. “It’s a part of our job.”

Police must understand the criminal mind – so does Kavanaugh have a speeder within? He won’t give any indication, although the desktop wallpaper of his office computer shows his old ride back home: a 1989 Ford Mustang, painted purple and white, spinning its tires and kicking up smoke.

“That has nothing to do with my job,” he said, stern-faced.