Sean Watson holds an unusual record in the history of Baton Rouge’s red-light camera program. He’s amassed $26,633 in unpaid tickets and late fees, putting him at No. 1 on the list of top violators.

His case also illustrates the challenges of the city’s red-light camera program 10 years after it was adopted as fewer and fewer people pay their tickets because they know there are no real consequences for failing to do so. It's a problem other cities face as well and has some of them rethinking whether to continue their programs.

Baton Rouge is on the tail end of its current contract with the Arizona-based vendor that maintains the system and sends tickets to those who are caught on camera running red lights.

Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome’s administration has defended the concept of red-light cameras. Chief Administrative Officer Darryl Gissel says it promotes safety and lets police officers focus on more serious matters.

People who blow through red lights at select intersections with the cameras receive $117 tickets in the mail, with a $50 upcharge for multiple offenses. The top 20 violators owe anywhere between Watson’s eye-popping debt and $4,350 in unpaid tickets and fines. Watson has received more than 100 tickets, according to city-parish data.

But in 2016, just 42.6 percent of people who received the tickets paid them. That number dropped to 38 percent last year, when Arizona-based American Traffic Solutions issued 72,847 first notices of violation.

So far this year, only 23.7 percent of people have paid red-light tickets. Nearly 32,000 notices have gone out. In the program’s entire history over the past decade, half of the people who received 497,721 first notices have paid them and the city-parish estimates that more than $43 million in red light camera fines are owed to them.

“Because it’s not enforceable, why pay it?” Watson said in the doorway of his apartment home. “It doesn’t count against you.”

He declined to comment further, and wished a reporter a blessed day.

Gissel said, though, that it is important for people to pay the fines.

He described the program as a “public safety driver,” pointing to data from ATS.

The company says 85 percent of drivers who received a notice of violation in the history of Baton Rouge's red-light cameras program did not receive a second infraction. And, they said, 96 percent of drivers did not receive more than two infractions — making the serial red-light-runner, Watson, an outlier.

“It’s a modern way to do red light citations,” Gissel said. “If you try to put a police officer on the street, that’s an officer you don’t have working violent crimes.”

Options for strengthening red light camera enforcement are outlined in the ordinance from 2007, though the city-parish has not taken action to implement those options. The law allows the city-parish to boot vehicles, to report the debt to collection agencies and to request money from offenders through small claims court.

Last year, red-light camera tickets raised $2.9 million in city-parish revenue. So far this year, the program has resulted in $1 million in revenue for the city-parish. ATS gets a sizable “collection cost” off the tickets’ gross revenue, and received more than $1.5 million last year.

That collection cost expense is one of many gripes that critics of the program, including some Metro Council members, are quick to point out.

“I don’t think fiscally, it is a good idea to continue them when we’re not getting a return on the investment,” said Metro Councilwoman Erika Green.

Green, who is an attorney, said there are a multitude of ways to fight the tickets in court and she said the program is not as useful as it was intended to be.

Program data shows that few people choose to fight red-light tickets in court via administrative hearings. In the past ten years, 1 percent of people who received tickets had them dismissed after going through the process, while another 0.2 percent of people throughout the program’s history paid their tickets after a hearing or an appeal.

Councilman Buddy Amoroso voted against the most recent contract renewal for ATS in 2013, and said he still has problems with the cameras. The company’s contract runs out January 1, 2019.

Amoroso said it’s not fair for the people who are responsible and pay their fines that others face no consequences for not paying.

”You get to the point where you just cannot collect the money anymore,” Amoroso said, calling the program unsustainable.

Councilman Matt Watson offered a solution. He said the city should hire more police officers, giving the department enough manpower to ticket those who run red lights.

And when people pay those tickets, he noted, the city-parish would stand to collect 100 percent of the money, rather than having to fork over a big share of the revenue to the private company.

State laws have recently tightened around traffic cameras, and changed last year to require cities to post signs that alert drivers when lights have cameras on them. Other nearby cities, meanwhile, have chosen do away with cameras that catch speedsters and red light runners.

Got a New Orleans traffic camera ticket from 2008-2010? Here's how much you might be refunded... New Orleans owes $25.6 million in refunds to hundreds of thousands of motorists ticketed by the city's traffic camera program in the first thr…

Lafayette suspended its traffic camera program last year, creating a $1 million hole in their police department’s budget.

Lafayette's mayor-president announced earlier this year that the cameras were gone for good, and that Lafayette might instead add traffic cameras in some school zones.

Newly installed New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell has pledged to do away with traffic cameras in the Crescent City as soon as her administration determines how to make up for the revenue they generate.

A class-action lawsuit in New Orleans related to their traffic camera program also resulted in a judge ruling earlier this year that the city needed to refund $26 million to 200,000 people who received traffic camera tickets in between 2008 and 2010. The judge ruled that using the New Orleans Department of Public Works to run the program during its early years violated the city’s charter.

Jefferson Parish did away with its program that was in place between 2007 and 2010 after questions rose about payments their vendor, Redflex, made to local lobbyists. A judge there ruled in 2015 that the parish owed $7.1 million to 147,000 drivers who received tickets while the cameras there were in use.

+2 Lafayette traffic camera program suspension continues; city-parish will use $1 million to fill gap for police The suspension of the Lafayette traffic camera program has blown a $1 million hole in the city police department's budget, which will mean dip…

But Gissel points to state Department of Transportation and Development data that illustrates why such red-light programs are needed and have value.

That data, based on law enforcement crash reports, says there were 276 wrecks in 2016 in East Baton Rouge Parish and 318 wrecks last year when drivers disregarded traffic signals. More than 1,700 people were inside the vehicles involved in crashes during that period.

College Drive and South Sherwood Forest Boulevard, both busy roads, have the most red-light cameras in Baton Rouge.

Jeff Adelson contributed to this report.