http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/21/national/21cameras.html?th
The New York Times
|
"Cameras
are the equivalent of hundreds of sets of eyes," Mr. Daley said when he
unveiled the new project this month. "They're the next best thing to
having police officers stationed at every potential trouble spot."
Police
specialists here can already monitor live footage from about 2,000 surveillance
cameras around the city, so the addition of 250 cameras under the mayor's new
plan is not a great jump. The way these cameras will be used, however, is an
extraordinary technological leap.
Sophisticated
new computer programs will immediately alert the police whenever anyone viewed
by any of the cameras placed at buildings and other structures considered
terrorist targets wanders aimlessly in circles, lingers outside a public
building, pulls a car onto the shoulder of a highway, or leaves a package and
walks away from it. Images of those people will be highlighted in color at the
city's central monitoring station, allowing dispatchers to send police officers
to the scene immediately.
Officials
here designed the system after studying the video surveillance network in
"What
we're doing is a totally new concept," said Ron Huberman, executive
director of the city's office of emergency management and communications.
"This is a very innovative way to harness the power of cameras. It's going
to take us to a whole new level."
Many
cities have installed large numbers of surveillance cameras along streets and
near important buildings, but as the number of these cameras has grown, it has
become impossible to monitor all of them. The software that will be central to
Mr.
Huberman, a 32-year-old former police officer who is also what one aide called
"a techno geek," said this new system "should produce a
significant decrease in crime, and from a homeland security standpoint it
should be able to make our city safer."
When the
system is in place, Mr. Huberman said, video images will be instantly available
to dispatchers at the city's 911 emergency center, which receives about 18,000
calls each day. Dispatchers will be able to tilt or zoom the cameras, some of
which magnify images up to 400 times, in order to watch suspicious people and
follow them from one camera's range to another's.
A
spokesman for the
"With
the aggressive way these types of surveillance equipment are being marketed and
implemented," Mr. Yohnka said, "it really does raise questions about
what kind of society do we ultimately want, and how intrusive we want law
enforcement officials to be in all of our lives."
The
surveillance network will embrace cameras placed not only by the police department,
but also by a variety of city agencies including the transit, housing and
aviation authorities. Private companies that maintain their own surveillance of
areas around their buildings will also be able to send their video feeds to the
central control room that is being built at a fortified city building.
The 250
new cameras, along with the new system dispatchers will use to monitor them,
are to be in place by the spring of 2006. A $5.1 million federal grant will be
used to pay for the cameras, and the city will add $3.5 million to pay for the
computer network that will connect them.
This
project is a central part of
"The
value we gain in public safety far outweighs any perception by the community
that this is Big Brother who's watching," Mr. Huberman said. "The feedback
we're getting is that people welcome this. It makes them feel safer."
One
community organizer who works in a high-crime neighborhood, Ernest R. Jenkins,
chairman of the West Side Association for Community Action, said the 2,000
cameras now in place had reduced crime and were "having an impact, no
if's, and's or but's about it." Nonetheless, Mr. Jenkins said, some people
in
"I
just personally think that it's an invasion of people's privacy," Mr.
Jenkins said of the new video surveillance project. "A large increase in
the utilization of these cameras would oversaturate the market."
City
officials counter that the cameras will monitor only public spaces. Rather than
curb the system's future expansion, they have raised the possibility of placing
cameras in commuter and rapid transit cars and on the city's street-sweeping
vehicles.
"We're
not inside your home or your business," Mayor Daley said. "The city
owns the sidewalks. We own the streets and we own the alleys."