Five protesters, including City Councilmember Brad Lander, were arrested for blocking the street outside State Senator Marty Golden's office on Friday morning during a 24-hour vigil led by Families for Safe Streets founder Amy Cohen, and other parents who have lost children to reckless drivers.

The protesters, who ended their round-the-clock demonstration by linking arms in the street in front of Golden's office, are calling on the city's leading GOP state senator to return to Albany for a special session to renew and expand the speed camera program. The cameras will likely be turned off next month if no action is taken, despite widespread consensus that they serve as an effective deterrent to reckless drivers. In the 140 school zones with cameras, fatalities and serious injuries are down by 21 percent.

Golden was not seen during the 24-hour vigil. On Friday morning, one of his employees tore down the protesters' posters and smashed a memorial candle.

A woman who works in @SenMartyGolden’s office has started removing @TransAlt’s signs and notes demanding speed cameras and justice for drivers who kill. Just after this clip, the woman dropped and shattered a memorial candle on the concrete #CURBSpeeding pic.twitter.com/4AMXtpkoNn — Scott Heins (@scottheins) June 29, 2018

The protesters also called attention to Golden's abysmal driving record. As StreetsBlog noted recently, his Cadillac has been caught speeding in school zones three times in the last six months, and has racked up 14 violations since 2014.

"Golden’s failure to reauthorize the camera program—in light of his own record of reckless driving, and the consequences for our kids—is both obscene and dangerous. Golden is a reckless driver, and a reckless senator too," Lander tweeted on Friday morning.

Golden's spokesperson, meanwhile, now says that the senator is not against the cameras, and that his longstanding opposition to the devices is just a big misunderstanding. "Publicly, and in meetings with both advocates and those who have lost loved ones at the hands of dangerous drivers, Senator Golden has made known his co-sponsorship of legislation that maintains the current speed cameras and doubles the total number to 290," John Quaglione tells Gothamist.

It's unclear when Golden arrived at that position, or whether he plans to stick by it. Earlier this week, the senator's spokesperson told the Times that the safer option would be to replace the cameras with stop signs and traffic lights. He is co-sponsoring legislation that would do just that, which would mean an end to the cameras within six months.

The spokesperson did not respond to a question about whether Golden supports a return to Albany for a special session to reauthorize the program. The speed cameras will be turned off on July 25th of the senate does nothing.

Golden has still not directly addressed the protesters, many of them family members of children killed by reckless drivers. On Thursday evening, he tweeted and deleted a message to those outside his office, telling them, "You people can't even 'protest' properly anymore."

An NYPD spokesperson said the five people arrested were charged with disorderly conduct and failure to disperse.