For other commentary on smart cameras, you can see my posts at InHardFocus

The history of gunshot detection in Chicago begins with a trial in 2004 by Safety Dynamics and a later pilot program in 2007 with ShotSpotter. In April, I noted that despite ShotSpotter – Not a Silver Bullet, the city felt gunshot detection was too expensive. The NBC reporters decided to pursue this story:

But now? Both systems appear to have gone by the wayside. A police spokesman wrote in an e-mail that the programs were “not entirely effective” in an urban environment. The cost of the programs were also cited. Despite repeated requests to interview Chicago police, our requests went unanswered.

Perhaps the reason for the silence is the fact that the city apparently hasn’t paid its bills. Officials from both ShotSpotter and Safety Dynamics said the city owes them money. Safety Dynamics said it would like its equipment back or be paid. Shot Spotter said the city owes them close to $200,000.

The story does mention (as will ShotSpotter) that there are cities that are happy with the results of the gunshot detection technology. The more interesting part of the story for me is not Chicago’s unwillingness to use the technology, but their inability to be open to the public about the technologies they use.

A plug for myself . . . recent interview on red light cameras:

We are assured they are for our own good. We are assured they decrease accidents at intersections. And with those assurances comes the unspoken rebuke: How could anyone be against anything that reduces accidents and saves lives?

It was not a question Rajiv Shah intended to address. Shah, a communications professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, originally set out to study the City of Chicago’s extensive use of closed-circuit TV cameras. But when he learned the city also had the largest network of red light cameras in North America, with RLCs deployed permanently at 188 intersections, he decided to investigate the city’s claims that those RLCs significantly reduced intersection accidents.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/light+cameras+increase+rear+crashes+revenue/3554953/story.html#ixzz10A59LN1V

Meanwhile, Lombard is nixing its one remaining red-light camera, at North Avenue and Route 53. “We didn’t see any significant statistical differences (in crashes),” Deputy Police Chief Dane Cuny said.

Originally, Lombard had cameras at two intersections. The statistics showed crashes decreased at North and Route 53 but increased at another location at Finley and Roosevelt roads. The conflicting results convinced village leaders to yank the devices.

The official leading the spending spree on surveillance cameras:

Pressed on whether the ever-expanding network is a good thing, she said: “Absolutely. If you look at cities around the world — like London, for example, [and] Madrid has been employing more cameras — they are deterrents. But they are also force multipliers, and they enable us to make the best use of our first responders.”

[From Cams a Critical Crime-Fighting Tool: Weis | NBC Chicago]

The CPD and OEMC are drawing attention to the cameras. They claim the cameras have helped to solve 4,500 crimes this year and the cameras have been the lead investigator in roughly 24,000 missions.

Police Supt. Jody Weis on Monday lauded the network of blue light cameras that sit high above Chicago’s streets, . . . “The police can’t be everywhere every minute of the day, so the cameras play a critical role in preventing and solving crime,” he said.

Weis was joined Monday evening by Jose Santiago, the Executive Director of the Office of Emergency Management and Communications, and by Jonathan Lewin, the Managing Deputy Director of Public Safety and Information Technology, to illustrate two recent examples of how the the Police Observation Devices, or PODs, played a role in solving a crime. On May 2, a camera on the 1300 block of East 75 Street appears to show two men in a drug transaction. The camera was being controlled nearby, inside the District 3 headquarters. Once the sale appears to be consummated, a pre-assigned tactical team rushed in and made an arrest.

. . .

In other cases, the address tied to a phone calling to report a crime will automatically trigger the nearest camera to begin looking for the trouble. That’s exactly what happened on July 30, when police say a passenger’s anger over a fare led him to attack his cab driver near the corner of West Elm Street and North LaSalle Boulevard. The camera was triggered by a call and officers then manning the camera were able to communicate to their counterparts on the street to make an arrest.

CBS News ran a story that provides a basic overview of the Chicago camera network.

The CPD is using predictive profiling as a new technique, from the Sun-Times and Government Technology:

The Chicago Police Department is working with the Illinois Institute of Technology and the Rand Corp. on an innovative project that will help pinpoint hot spots of criminal activity. The process — called predictive analytics — is to analyze every violent incident and gang interaction with police to extrapolate and identify future problems. The numbers will be analyzed by experts at ITT. . . . Weis explained how the information pinpoints the time of day and location of violent crimes. In the past, gang data were compiled on a yearly basis, Weis said. Now any police interaction with a gang member will be fed into the system for a “real time, ongoing” account of where gangs operate.

For a different angle, the folks at Second City Cop have also weighed in on this technique.

Naperville is going to stop using red light cameras for ticketing right turns (at most intersections). This is a very sensible policy, since right turn traffic violations are usually not a significant safety risk (especially compared to people running straight through red lights). It’s good to see a city treat its citizens fairly and not find a sneaky way to extract some money out of them.

This part analyzes accident data obtained from the city of Chicago. The city’s study looks at 20 RLC intersections and 20 control intersections and compares them. The control intersections are supposed to be similar intersections to the RLC intersections in terms of traffic and accident rates. By using control intersections, it is possible to isolate the effect of the red light cameras from other factors affecting accidents, e.g., people driving less.

The study compares the accidents 1 year prior to the startup date to accidents 1 year after the start up date for the red light cameras. In evaluating the study, we had to eliminate 10 of the intersections, both control and RLC, because they did not have a full 12 months of prior data. This left us with 10 control intersections and 10 RLC intersections.

The control group experienced a 3.8% decrease in accidents, while the RLC group experienced a 5.3% decrease in accidents. In sum, there was only a 1.5% different attributable to the RLCs. This suggests a very small benefit for the RLCs. This decrease is a much smaller figure than the city claims.

This study was conducted entirely by the city of Chicago. The report is dated October 2007. The departments involved were the OEMC and the Traffic Management Authority. The study was not made public. I received the data after a FOIA request that required the assistance of the Illinois ACLU to push the city to release this information.

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this study. The city picked the camera locations to study. I have no idea if they tried to “massage” the data to gain beneficial results. The city is planning a followup report due later this summer. As far as I know, they do not having any impartial experts involved in the process. I hope the city’s analysis will be fair, rather than manipulating the data to justify the effectiveness of the red light cameras.