Smart Cameras Blog

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

A story on the difference between Chicago and San Francisco’s use of cameras. Its a rich news story with some good facts (fyi – I talked to the reporter). The story points out that in San Francisco, no one watches the camera footage live, they go back and look at it for serious crimes. In contrast, for Chicago, there are always a few people watching the camera feeds and they use the footage for minor crimes like drinking in public. San Francisco is treading lightly, while Chicago wants to make sure its citizens know they are being watched. Here are some interesting snippets:

Chicago police said that, as of the same day, they had used camera footage in 1,407 arrests, including at least five homicides, since the city began tracking data in February 2006.

“If you were to ask me for change for a $20 bill,” said Hendricks, a 40-year-old printer, “I wouldn’t give you change. “The camera doesn’t know I’m giving you change,” he continued. “The camera thinks we’re doing a drug deal. The police would come out, and I’m not going through that harassment for nothing.”

Flyers distributed in neighborhoods detail several camera-related arrests – for shooting dice, for stealing a street sign for scrap metal and for firing a gun. “This is a way to make it much more effective,” said police Cmdr. Jonathan Lewin, who heads Chicago’s information services division. “It’s a more trustworthy source to say, ‘Here’s an arrest made because of a camera.’ It becomes real.”

Chicago police acknowledged a problem that San Francisco investigators have linked to their lack of arrests using cameras: When a serious crime is captured, and the footage is looked at later, the images often aren’t sharp enough to identify suspects.

rshah Chicago, Other Cities