Spy cameras fail to focus on street crime
By Matthew Cella THE WASHINGTON TIMES August 13, 2006
Surveillance cameras like those authorized by the D.C. Council for police
investigations and now being put in place have shown limited success in
decreasing violent crime in other cities. Baltimore,
for example, set up about 80 cameras in May 2005 in high-crime neighborhoods.
Volunteers and retired law-enforcement personnel monitor the images in real
time, but the cameras have not helped put criminals behind bars.
"Generally, the State's Attorney's Office has not
found them to be a useful tool to prosecutors," office spokeswoman Margaret
Burns said. "They're good for circumstantial evidence, but it definitely isn't
evidence we find useful to convict somebody of a crime."
Miss Burns said Baltimore prosecutors kept detailed
statistics from the first nine months of the camera program. Most of the 500
cases forwarded to prosecutors were quality-of-life crimes, she said, and 40
percent of those cases were dropped by prosecutors or dismissed by the courts.
"We have not used any footage to resolve a
violent-crime case," she said. Miss Burns said
police sometimes misidentify suspects because the cameras produce "grainy" and
"blurry" images. "We have had that happen more than
once," she said. The D.C. Council, faced with a
sharp increase in crime, passed emergency legislation July 19 that allows the
Metropolitan Police Department to use surveillance cameras in neighborhoods as
part of an emergency plan. D.C. workers on Thursday
began installing the first four of an expected 47 cameras throughout the city.
Officials said the four cameras are temporary and will be replaced by permanent
ones later this month. About 24 cameras will be deployed by the end of August,
and 23 more will be added in September, police said.
Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey is required to notify
only two persons about plans to place a camera in any given neighborhood: an
advisory neighborhood commissioner and the appropriate council member. The
cameras will operate 24 hours a day, but police will review the images only when
a known crime may have been recorded. Chicago
deployed a few dozen cameras in neighborhoods in July 2003. Authorities there
captured their first drug transaction 19 months later, in February 2005.
Police arrested three suspects and confiscated 12
packets of heroin. However, the cameras have not helped in criminal
investigations. "From my perspective, I would love it if we had footage of
the murderer leaving the house, but that hasn't happened yet," said Kevin Smith,
a spokesman for Chicago's Office of Emergency Management and Communications,
which administers and monitors the 170-camera network.
Police in San Francisco said a camera paid off in an
investigation for the first time in June, when they arrested a man in connection
with a shooting in April. Nine months after the
first cameras were installed in neighborhoods, a camera captured the image of a
man getting out of a car. The man subsequently shot at another man and missed,
injuring a 13-year-old girl. The image was not recorded, but police said the
camera was key to the investigation. Surveillance
cameras also have generated headlines for the wrong reasons.
In April 2005, a San Francisco police officer was
suspended from the department for using surveillance cameras to ogle women at
San Francisco International Airport. New York
officials say surveillance cameras in public-housing projects have led to
substantial decreases in crime. Written policies and
random audits help guard the system against abuse, but that proved ineffective
when the tape of a 22-year-old man who fatally shot himself in the lobby of a
housing project in March 2004 surfaced on a pornographic Web site.
Critics argue that cameras only push criminals into
unobserved areas. A University of Cincinnati study in 2000 concluded that
surveillance cameras have a short-term deterrent effect, which likely would
increase when the public is notified about their presence.
Cameras in Baltimore, Chicago, New York and San
Francisco are labeled as police property. No police department logos are affixed
to the D.C. cameras that were in place before the recently crime emergency.
D.C. police spokesman Kevin Morison said police are
required to post signs indicating that an area is under surveillance. He could
not say whether such notification would be required under a clause dealing with
"exigent" circumstances. Mr. Morison said several
neighborhood leaders have requested cameras. Marc
Rotenberg, executive director of the District-based Electronic Privacy
Information Center, said he has heard neighborhood leaders express approval of
the cameras at hearings but is not sure whether most residents share that
support. "It's very difficult to get a clear read on
whether this is something that residents really want," Mr. Rotenberg said. "I
don't think people understand that if you put these cameras in residential
communities, you're talking about a telescopic lens that can zoom in and a
360-degree casing that can look into your bedroom."
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