Beverly Hills camera cop: motorists aren't smiling after being photographed running red lights.

Big Brother is alive and well and living in Beverly Hills - specifically, at the intersection of Wilshire and La Cienega boulevards.

That's where the city has installed a high-tech surveillance system designed to nab red-light runners.

Enter the intersection after the light has turned red and an electronic camera snaps your picture. Wait a couple of weeks, and chances are you will receive a $103 citation in the mail - as well as copies of photographs testifying to your guilt.

In other words, you can run the red light, but you can't hide.

Since installing the system in May, the city has issued more than 6,000 citations, says Sgt. Michael Hines, a spokesman for the Beverly Hills Police Department's traffic division. During the month of November, violators were being cried at a rate of as many as 100 a day.

A single officer monitoring the intersection, by contrast, can write perhaps five citations an hour - or 40 a day, if an officer had time to spend all day at a single intersection.

The greater efficiency of a "video cop" has captured the attention of other municipalities. Red-light enforcement systems are in use from San Diego to Oxnard to San Francisco.

L.A. County uses cameras to patrol Metro Rail Blue Line crossings. And the city of Los Angeles plans to install similar enforcement systems at eight of the city's busiest intersections next year.

The idea, according to supporters of electronic surveillance, is to intimidate motorists so much that they slow down, thereby reducing the number of fender benders.

And they say it works.

In L.A. County, for example, the number of accidents at Blue Line crossings dropped 92 percent and the number of citations fell about 80 percent after one year, says Tom Conner, assistant general manager of the city of L.A.'s transportation department, which collaborated with the county on the program.

Just how effective the system is in Beverly Hills remains to be seen. The intersection of Wilshire and La Cienega is the seventh busiest in the county, with about 100,000 vehicles passing through each day.

Over the past 12 months, just 10 injury-accidents were reported in the intersection. But that number excludes the dozens of fender benders that never get reported because no one was injured, said Hines.

City officials plan to complete a study on the rate of collisions in the intersection after the system has been in place for a year.

But informal monitoring of Wilshire and La Cienega points to a significant drop in the number of accidents, says city traffic engineer Bijan Bizari.

"We're very excited," Bizari says. "The system is extremely effective."

That's little consolation to motorists like Brent Blakely, a Manhattan Beach attorney, whose Ford Explorer was photographed in the intersection back in October. Blakely recently received his ticket in the mail.

"I was pretty ticked off about it," says Blakely. "I don't remember running a red light."

Blakely plans to fight his ticket, arguing that the signal in fact was yellow when he entered the intersection.

As for the photographic evidence, "these pictures prove nothing," he insists.

Blakely's court fight faces pretty long odds. Of the approximately 60 challenges mounted to the citations so far, only two have been successful - both because the vehicle had been misidentified, according to Hines.

Despite city officials' statements that their only intention is to make the streets safer, the red-light camera system appears to be generating more cynicism than gratitude among motorists in the area.

"It's Big Brother," says Frank Fischer, a Playa del Rey television producer who travels through the intersection every day on his way to the office. "It makes you real angry."

Although Fischer has not yet been cited, several of his friends have. And he suspects the city's motives have less to do with safe streets than they do with the bottom line.

"You just know the city is making money at this," he says.

That's not exactly the case. After state and county transportation agencies collect their share of the $103 red-light violation, the city of Beverly Hills is left with just $15. Of that, all but $2 goes to pay for operating the surveillance system itself, according to Hines.

Personnel savings, however, could be significant. With the signal patrolled automatically, there is less need to deploy motor officers - who earn $50,000 to $60,000 a year.

And an expected drop in collisions is likely to reduce the considerable time necessary to investigate injury-accidents, said Hines.

Even so, Hines maintains that the city's interest is in street safety, not money.

If anyone is getting rich, it's U.S. Public Technologies, the San Diego-based company that contracts with the city to set up the surveillance system, run the cameras and process the film. The city pays no up-front fee for the hardware or the service; instead, the company collects the lion's share of every paid violation.

Founded in 1989, USPT's revenues have been growing at a rate of 30 percent a year as a result of the increasing popularity of red-light enforcement systems, says Dana King, a company spokesman.

"It doesn't make sense for a police officer to sit at an intersection and write tickets all day," King said.

As for complaints about invasion of privacy and the specter of Big Brother, King argues that there is no constitutional right not to be photographed in a public intersection - and besides, the camera only takes a photograph when a violation has occurred.

King also is fond of quoting San Francisco Supervisor Susan Leal on the issue.

Asked about the privacy issue, Leal said, "I consider an invasion of privacy to be 3,000 pounds of steel hitting me when I'm not expecting it."