Between Thursday and Sunday nights on the Providence waterfront, a modified exhaust rips past roughly every 30 seconds. I know because I live there and I count them. I also work in sound professionally. I understand what sustained exposure to 90-plus decibels does to a human body — not as an annoyance, but as a public health condition.

Mayor Smiley called noise a top priority. That was years ago. It has gotten worse.

Here is what actually happened. In 2023, the city funded decibel meters for the Providence Police Department. Officers were trained. The program was real. Last year, the city issued 162 citations for noise violations across the entire city.

One hundred and sixty-two.

On my block alone, that number would be exceeded in a single weekend. This is not enforcement. It is a press release.

Meanwhile, the city has spent three years chasing acoustic cameras — an expensive, legally complicated technology that Providence has managed to bungle at every turn. Bad legal advice killed the 2024 effort. The General Assembly never passed enabling legislation despite claiming to support it. The Providence City Council allocated $100,000 for cameras that year; the mayor never spent a dollar of it. Another $180,000 was approved in July 2025. As of this spring, deployment is still months away.

Camera technology for noise enforcement is real and it will improve. The price will fall. Other cities are piloting it and learning. Providence should watch, wait, and benefit from their experience rather than spending down public money on first-adopter costs and first-adopter mistakes.

But none of that excuses 162 citations. The meters exist. The ordinances exist. The trained officers exist.

What is missing is deployment at scale, and a commitment to equity in how that deployment works. Noise pollution is not evenly distributed in Providence — it tracks closely with the neighborhoods least able to push back. Any serious enforcement program must be built around citywide coverage, with public data showing where citations are being issued and where they aren’t. That transparency is not optional. Without it, a meter program becomes another tool for selective enforcement in the communities that already bear the most.

The ask here is not complicated. Assign officers with meters to the highest-burden corridors on the nights and hours when violations are concentrated. Issue warnings, then tickets. Publish the data. Build the coalition of residents — East Side, West End, South Side, waterfront — who already know this is a health issue and are waiting for the city to act like it knows too.

Providence doesn’t need to wait for better cameras. It needs to use what it already bought.

Liam Freaney is a Providence waterfront resident and analytics professional.