According to the Dallas Morning News, members of the local police and fire departments will have to live by the same rules as the rest of us.

Meaning: They will be fined if caught on camera running red lights and they are not on an emergency call.

It's about time this became a nationwide phenomenon, if we have to live with these surveillance systems.

Dallas police and firefighters will soon have to pay up if they run afoul of the city's red-light cameras.

Starting Sunday, any Dallas police officer in a marked squad car who is captured on the city's cameras running a red light will have to pay the $75 fine if the incident doesn't comply with state law.

Firefighters who run red lights will have to pay if they're not on an emergency run.

Many police officers are angry about the proposed policy. The prevailing belief among officers has been that they can run red lights as they see fit.

The bottom line is that there should be no selective enforcement of traffic regulations - police or firefighters shouldn't get a free pass when not on an actual call, because, when people see them 'breaking the law' with impunity it can only result in less respect for our legal system.

"I know that a lot of the officers are not real happy about it," said Senior Cpl. James Bristo, second vice president of the Dallas Fraternal Order of Police. "Nobody out here is just running red lights left and right."

He said many police officers view the new policy as yet another thing they have to worry about.

Welcome to our world.

Since mid-January, the cameras have recorded at least 355 emergency vehicles running red lights. Not all of those vehicles belonged to the city of Dallas. Notice is sent to the departments so they can determine whether the driver of the emergency vehicle had a legal reason to run the light.

My guess is that the camera operators can't just bury these violations - it would be tantamount to destroying evidence of (or failing to report) a crime - which puts them in an awkward position, doesn't it?