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But there have been literally hundreds of incidents of vandalism this year — , or more than three per day. Sixteen cameras were cut down in just one night and three more bit the dust over the weekend, the city tells me. That now-famous camera on Parkside Drive has been toppled seven times now.

So if it’s so serious and it keeps happening, often in exactly the same place, why on earth haven’t the cops and the city done anything about it so far? At this point the police are looking foolish, baffled by a crime repeatedly committed under their noses, and the city is looking feckless — talking tough but getting nothing done.

Back in July, the city said it was working with police and the company that owns and operates the cameras — Redflex Traffic Systems (Canada), a subsidiary of a giant American transportation firm called — on ways to prevent further vandalism. They said exactly the same thing this week.

They’re “continuing to work” on solutions — including things like putting up more remote cameras to catch vandals in the act and using “stronger poles” that would be harder to chop down.

These are painfully obvious ideas. You can buy for $69 on Amazon, so every speed camera in the city could be monitored from multiple angles without breaking the bank. So you have to wonder why nothing has actually been done.

Maybe it’s because the city isn’t being hit in the pocketbook. amounting to $36.2 million through 2029 for installation and maintenance of 150 speed cameras. The company, not the city, is on the hook for fixing vandalized cameras.

But the city can’t wash its hands of this. Automated cameras, as has been demonstrated in independent studies, do reduce traffic speed and make roads safer — as irritating as some drivers find them. Faraz Gholizadeh, who’s been campaigning for reduced speeds on Parkside Drive, makes the point that the city is ultimately responsible. “It may not be their cameras,” he told me, “but it’s their roads.”

Or, perhaps, there may be little action because police don’t really take this problem seriously, despite their public statements. It’s just traffic after all, and until those 16 cameras were cut down last week the whole thing might have seemed like a sideshow.

Plus some cops clearly share the antipathy to the cameras that many drivers have. Back in July Star columnist Jack Lakey quoted a couple of them calling speed cameras “a f—-ing scam.”

That was based on the notion that they ding motorists going even slightly over the posted speed limit. Matt Elliott effectively debunked that idea in a terrific column in the Star over the weekend in which he crunched the numbers and showed the much-abused Parkside Drive camera nabs only a fraction of speeders. It’s far from the “cash grab” it’s accused of being.

Or maybe the lack of urgency to fix this problem can be traced to the irresponsible rhetoric coming from our premier. Doug Ford calls speed cameras and says cities should remove them “or I’m going to help them get rid of them very shortly.” He might as well have said to the ɫɫ�� vandals: “Go ahead. I’ve got your back.”

Vaughan quickly fell into line, voting on Monday to shut down its speed camera program. Maybe police see the writing on the wall and expect ɫɫ�� to follow suit — or be ordered to by a premier who’s quite prepared to meddle in local issues when it fits his own agenda.

Regardless of the reason, it’s a sorry situation. A group, or groups, of vigilante vandals are flouting the law and making our streets just a bit less safe. The people in charge, meanwhile, are talking a good line but doing not much to stop them.