Smart Cameras Blog

From San Francisco Chronicle via Schneier on Security:

The 178 video cameras that keep watch on San Francisco public housing developments have never helped police officers arrest a homicide suspect even though about a quarter of the city’s homicides occur on or near public housing property, city officials say.

Nobody monitors the cameras, and the videos are seen only if police specifically request it from San Francisco Housing Authority officials. The cameras have occasionally managed to miss crimes happening in front of them because they were trained in another direction, and footage is particularly grainy at night when most crime occurs, according to police and city officials.

Similar concerns have been raised about the 70 city-owned cameras located at high-crime locations around San Francisco.

The 178 cameras on public housing property, which have been installed over the past two years with money from the federal government, were the subject of a hearing Monday by the Board of Supervisors’ public safety committee.

So far this year, 66 homicides have occurred in San Francisco, compared with 85 in all of 2006. On average, about a quarter of the city’s homicides happen on or near public housing property every year, according to statistics from the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice.

Though the Housing Authority doesn’t keep a record of how often its cameras’ footage is used in making arrests in crimes, a housing authority official and a police lieutenant told the committee they are unaware of the footage ever being used to arrest a homicide suspect.

The city has its own security camera program with 70 cameras in 25 high-crime locations. None of them is on federal housing authority property, but many of them are positioned at street corners right outside them. The city cameras operate in much the same way; they are not routinely monitored in part due to privacy concerns, but footage is available to police upon request. Lenore Anderson, director of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, said she didn’t know whether any city cameras had been used to make an arrest in a homicide case.

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