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Last week, the airwaves of KKOB-AM radio began to crackle again with the collective rage of callers seeing red over red-light cameras, as per usual.

It might have been the same old inflammatory banter commandeered each weekday afternoon by talk show host Jim Villanucci, known for his caustic distaste for Big Brotherisms and stupid people.

But this time, things veered beyond the armchair grumbles. This time, change was a'coming.

This time, it was war.

His guests that Tuesday included a loyal gaggle of city officials, including Municipal Development Director John Castillo, there to cheerlead for the much maligned red-light cameras - how numbers of crashes have decreased at those intersections, blah, blah, blah, how the camera fines are not the city's unfettered money grabs, blah, blah, blah.

Villanucci and his listeners would have none of it, and tempers boiled over when someone mentioned that yellow lights at the offending intersections were timed shorter than they should be.

Apparently, every shortened yellow second adds to the likelihood that motorists will run the red. A scam, in other words. The shorter the yellow the bigger the green, as in dollars - $100 and up in fines for each offense.

Listeners armed with stop watches, second hands and, in one case, an especially precise chronometer hit the streets to time the yellow lights.

The intersection especially targeted was Montgomery and San Mateo boulevards Northeast, one of the most dangerous in New Mexico.

Callers reported that the yellow at that intersection was a mere 3.1 seconds - a full eye-blink less than the suggested 4 or more seconds.

Villanucci and the callers referred to studies that purported the need for that precious time.

My own check of various sources, including the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, found that by increasing the timing of a yellow light by just 1 second the red light violations would be decreased by at least 50 percent.

"Of course, they don't want to put back that second," one caller sneered. "They'd lose money."

But Castillo and crew disagreed. The yellow lights were not deliberately shortened in order to reap more red-light profits. The seconds, all 4 of them, were there.

Villanucci lambasted the officials as just another batch of snooty, scheming, money-grubbing bureaucrats. He became the champion of the second.

It all seemed to work in Villanucci's favor. During his next show, callers reported that the yellow lights, including those at San Mateo and Montgomery, had miraculously lengthened overnight to 4 seconds.

One caller claiming to be a city employee said he and other street workers were called in early that morning to adjust the yellow-light timing quickly, quietly.

Villanucci and the power of the peeved had seemingly done the impossible: They got the city to do in a few hours something the public wanted.

Not that anyone can prove that.

Castillo, apparently hearing the show, was not amused. He called in to insist that the callers, once again, were wrong, that there had been no early-morning order, that no yellow lights had been re-timed.

"Doesn't the truth count at all on your show?" Castillo growled.

"You're a liar," Villanucci hissed.

And so it went. City officials were calling foul. Callers were overjoyed. And Villanucci was looking for his next big quest.

"Are there any other causes you'd like us to take up?" he asked his listeners on a subsequent show.

Call it activist radio.

Or not.

Castillo said in a phone call this week that the city has done no yellow-light monkeying and that the Montgomery-San Mateo intersection yellows have been and remain at 4 seconds.

"The timing of the yellow has been consistent before Redflex (the red-camera company) was installed, through its installation, through today," he said. "We have never asked workers to change them."

Castillo said workers were asked to go out to the 20 red-light camera intersections in Albuquerque to double-check the timing and found no discrepancies.

He also said he offered to show Villanucci years of timing records of various intersection lights but received no response to his offer.

The offer stands for any member of the public who requests it.

The red-light furor has continued to broil through this week. Castillo made another visit to the Villanucci show, as did Albuquerque police Chief Ray Schultz, the city's only nice guy talking head, sent to smooth riled feelings and salve the gaping public relations wound the city has endured over the issue with a joke and a statistic.

So the war of words ticks on, on the radio and in the streets, this second and many more to come.