Big Brother and Orwell share a hearty laugh

West Palm looks to cameras to spot crime

A test of surveillance cameras might lead to widespread use in the city.

By Andrew Marra, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

WEST PALM BEACH — Police are rolling out surveillance cameras downtown and in the city's most violent neighborhoods, the first step in an ambitious plan to make West Palm Beach the most closely monitored city in South Florida.

In the next month, four cameras are expected to be placed along Clematis Street and in troubled neighborhoods on the city's north side. Able to rotate 360 degrees and read a license plate a half-mile away, they will roll 24 hours a day and can be programmed to zoom in at the sound of gunfire.

West Palm Beach police will test the first four cameras for several weeks before deciding whether to purchase them from a Miami security company. In two years, the department's assistant chief says he hopes to have as many as 100 in place.

"If we could put up 100 throughout the city, that would be ideal," Assistant Chief Guillermo Perez said.

The cameras' arrival will put West Palm Beach in the middle of a national debate about the use of police surveillance in public places. The cameras have been hailed as an innovative police tool and condemned as a dangerous infringement on privacy.

But cities that have used them on a large scale, including Chicago and Baltimore, credit them for significant reductions in crime.

They are not cheap. Perez estimates that each will cost the city roughly $17,000, depending on how many features, including the ability to recognize gunfire, are included.

The police department hopes to buy them with grant money or cash from drug seizures.

The widespread use of police cameras on city streets would be a first in South Florida and the Treasure Coast.

The towns of Palm Beach and Manalapan have installed a handful of basic surveillance cameras. Many cameras throughout the county monitor traffic at major intersections.

But no police agency in South Florida has sought to put so many high-tech surveillance cameras in neighborhoods throughout a city. "This is just one of many tools to help keep the neighborhoods safe," Perez said.

The cameras will record constantly, and their footage likely will be saved for several months, Perez said.

The endless stream of footage will raise questions about how well the department will be able to sift through the material and whether the public will have access to it under public records laws. Perez said many of those issues are still being worked out.

The effectiveness of police surveillance cameras has been questioned. Some experts say studies of their effect on crime rates are conflicting.

A drug dealer may not ply his trade before the lens, they say, but he won't stop dealing. He'll just move to the next block.

Others question whether money for pricey cameras could be better spent on hiring more police officers.

"The more cameras you use, the more data you have and the more you have to pay to process it," said Kevin Watson, spokesman for the Law Enforcement Alliance of America, a Virginia-based law enforcement advocacy group. "If you use the same amount of money and put officers on the street, you're guaranteed to have arrests."

Some organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have complained that round-the-clock surveillance cameras infringe on citizens' general expectation of privacy, but courts have ruled that people on streets or public property can be photographed or filmed against their wishes.

The Baltimore Police Department has installed 175 cameras on its most dangerous streets since May and plans to post 75 more. Officials already credit the cameras with a 26 percent drop in crime in the surrounding areas.

"We've caught murderers. We've caught shooters. We spotted a missing child downtown," said Kristen Mahoney, the department's chief of technical services.

She said the cameras are popular among cops and residents, to the point that many volunteer to come in and monitor the footage on video screens while others push to have cameras installed on their streets.

Officers praise the cameras for allowing them to leave a high-crime area in order to respond to other calls without worrying that the area will be left completely unwatched, Mahoney said.

In West Palm Beach, one place where police intend to install a camera is the corner of Sixth Street and Division Avenue, an intersection at the heart of the inner city where drugs and guns are common.

It was welcome news to Toya Barnes, a 23-year-old mother with a 3-year-old boy at home.

Barnes lives with her mother and her son in a small home on the corner of Sixth and Division. She said gun violence has become so common there that she gets nervous when she sees her mother talking to young neighborhood men, fearing she will get caught in a drive-by shooting.

"It's good in certain places," she said of the decision to put a camera outside her house. "There's a lot of shooting going on."

Staff researcher Melanie Mena contributed to this story.

Get used to it.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2004-04-30-chicago-police-cams_x.htm?POE=TECISVA

Most are already in use — 30 by the police department and 1,000 at O'Hare International Airport. Other cameras are on elevated train platforms and the city's 600 schools. An additional 250 cameras yet to be installed will raise the number to more than 2,000.

The city is also considering allowing private companies to join the network, for a fee. Officials said the system size is nearly limitless.

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I find the prospect frightening, moreso because they're bandwagoning on the idea an hour up the road. We have a cop living across the street from our house. I feel much safer knowing an accountable human being lives there than a camera that may or may not be used properly is watching my street.

I agree. I despise the idea of a camera in my neighborhood and even more so focused on my house. In fact, if I were to see someone out there with a double barrel shot gun aimed at the sucker, it would not me picking up the phone to report them.

Film can be altered and abused and made to show anything. It cannot be trusted but the public can be made to believe that it can be trusted. Therefore it can be very dangerous when it can be entered or used as evidence in a trial.

Measures can be put in place to secure photographic evidence but they are expensive and rest assured they will be cast aside for cheap methods that will sooner or later be abused by some nut with a grudge or an axe to grind.

If you want to clean up your neighborhood, get to know your neighbors. Patrol your own neighborhood (5 people at a time if necessary) - call the cops out everytime you see something happen.

That's a lot more effective than putting a camera on the corner.

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Yes, we've had this in the UK for years. If you live near a conurbation of any kind then you can't walk down the street without appearing on a TV screen somewhere.

People don't mind it, and video evidence has been vital in solving crimes and terrorist attacks.

If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, but even so I do mind it because it's yet another example of 100s of little erosions to our basic human rights that are rapidly adding up to create a distasteful future for our children.

If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, but even so I do mind it because it's yet another example of 100s of little erosions to our basic human rights that are rapidly adding up to create a distasteful future for our children.

Alls I can say is: Cheese!

Well its done is it not? Theres no real use to complain about it just adapt.

I think the correct phrasing is: "Lie back and just take it. If you try to fight it It'll only be worse and you're not going to stop it anyway."

Ok. So given the track record, why do you think fighting the idea of public servailance would be a benefit to you? When actually the benefit is for everyone else. I can think of a number of reasons why this is a benefit. Course then, so called 'activists' always think whatever the government thinks is a bad idea.

You know, it might all be worth it to get rid of the paparazzis.

First, there is no persuasive evidence that video surveillance of public places is, in fact, an effective deterrent to crime. It may be that it reduces street crime in locations where cameras are present, but only by displacing it to locations where they are not. Such a circumstance would mean that effective deterrence could be achieved only by having police surveillance cameras everywhere, even in the residential areas outside our homes.

But even then, full deterrence seems unlikely. Setting aside the conceptual improbability of achieving a truly crime-free society through the mere dispersal of cameras, the empirical evidence does not support it. In Britain, which now has more than one million surveillance cameras, violent crime has actually increased.

While a police officer who is physically present can intervene to stop a crime in progress, rescue the victim and arrest the suspect, it is far less clear what can be accomplished by an officer watching on a screen several miles away.

In the case of the most serious crimes, the filmed record might assist in eventually apprehending and convicting the offender. But this does little to prevent the crime or spare the intended victim, particularly since most offenders don't carefully weigh the prospects of being caught.

Lauk,
I don't honestly see how it can be interpreted as an erosion of human rights. .

No more than it would be to have a policeman stationed on the street corner watching you. And people are always complaining that there are not enough of *them*.

The erosions of our rights are taking place much more stealthily and quietly - the proposed bill making it a criminal offence to download what the government defines as 'extreme' images is one example. It is a bill that on the surface seems acceptable, until you really look into it and see what it truly means.

I just found the phrasing you used to express this idea amusing because it held distinct similarites to disturbing arguments used in other situations.

How is photographing public locations an invasion of privacy?

The people in Chicago that live in the neighborhoods where the cameras first went up have been happy to allow themselves to be photographed in public after seeing the result is that the street corner hustlers have moved elsewhere.