Smart Cameras Blog

[From Special Segment: Blue Light Watchers - 3/31/10 - Chicago News - abc7chicago.com]

A few more tidbits about the Urban Institute study on cameras in Chicago have come out, here is an older post on the study. The core part of this findings are:

Dr. Nancy LaVigne led the study which focused on two neighborhoods – Humboldt Park and West Garfield Park. Each has a fairly high concentration of cameras. In Humboldt, the conclusion is that the cameras have had a real impact. Drug, robbery, weapons offenses, and overall crime dropped significantly after cameras arrived. The same, however, is not true in West Garfield where there was no significant change pre and post camera.

So why would they have an impact in one neighborhood and not in another? There are a number of possible explanations, but the short answer is researchers don’t know.

What they can say, however, is that if you combine the numbers from the two neighborhoods, the cameras still have a significant impact on crime.

The presentation of this study points out a potential big hole in the study. There was another factor contributing to the crime reduction in Humboldt Park, other than the cameras. The police officers over at Second City Cop have pointed this out. The Urban Institute has a rich history of doing good work, so I am going to hold off commenting until I see the final report (which is due out this summer).

I should point out that the Urban Institute had the cooperation of the CPD in gaining access to three years of data. I have been pushing the CPD for reports and data on the effectiveness of the cameras for years and have received little cooperation.

rshah Chicago

[From Video cameras in cars make some cops uncomfortable :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Metro & Tri-State]

The Sun-Times has a story on video cameras in police cars. There are 340 police cars with cameras installed (there are 4,000 vehicles under the CPD). The cameras are pointed “out of the front window and the other aimed at the back seat, where prisoners are transported. Audio is recorded on traffic stops, but not on other types of street stops.”

The interesting part is that the camera system is more about watching police than the public. At one point, officers could turn the cameras off. After all, who wants to have a camera on them while they are working, especially under the conditions police officers have to operate in. The CPD has changed the camera setup, so now supervisors will receive an “electronic alert when an officer is patrolling with a turned-off camera. Eventually this year, new hardware will tie the cameras to the ignition. The cameras will turn on when the key is turned, and they will stay on for an hour even if the car is turned off.”

Another technology that is watching the police in Chicago are the GPS units in police cars. They can determine the following several times a minute: Engine on or off, Idling in place, Parked, Speed, Emergency Equipment activation, and Location. This information is available to police dispatch as well as supervisors (even on their Blackberry).

This story is less about the technology in cars, but how police work is joining a growing set of jobs done under surveillance. While we can think of cameras as neutral, this doesn’t tell the entire story. The cameras affect how people are managed and how they do their jobs. The cameras cut into the autonomy given to police officers. Just take a look at what is said over at Second City Cop on GPS and Weis.

Joe the Cop over at Chicago Now has a thoughtful exploration of a police officer’s stance on cameras. Here is his anecdote on another tracking device in cars:

Back in the mid-90′s my department had tracking devices placed in our squad cars, “for officer safety.” We were told that the trackers could be used during chases if an officer drove into another jurisdiction where he didn’t know street names, or if an officer was injured or unconscious and couldn’t call out his location. A high-ranking member of my department (long since retired) told an assembly of officers that the devices would not be used for disciplinary purposes, and were solely for our safety.

After the devices were installed one of our officers got into a chase that ended 4 towns away. Our dispatchers found out that they could not refresh the computer screens fast enough to effectively use the tracking program during a chase. Strike one. Within months, some supervisors began calling in officers and questioning why they were parked so long at a given location, or why they spent so much time parked next to a fellow officer. It was clear the devices were being used to monitor officer movement and productivity. Strike 2. At a subsequent meeting that high-ranking supervisor told that same assembly of officers that he had never said the program would not be used for discipline. He said–and this was demonstrably false–that he had always described the tracking devices as a management tool. Strike 3. There were a whole lot of officers there that would never again believe anything that came out of that supervisor’s mouth.

rshah Chicago

I created a new red light camera map with revenue data obtained by Barnet Fagel from the Chicago Department of Revenue. The map below shows intersections that have generated $2,000,000 or more in revenue between 2007 to 2009. The complete data set lists the revenue for all intersections with red light cameras for each year (2007-2009). I have made it public, so please drop me a line if you find it useful.

Download the KML here

UPDATE: Here is a link to the complete table with all the revenue information

rshah Chicago, Red Light Cameras

The Chicago Police Department (CPD) uses a formula to calculate whether your neighborhood should receive a camera. If your local corner gets a score of 100, then the CPD may place a camera on the corner. The formula is:

• 1 point for calls for service

• 2 points for reported crimes (public violence, public nuisance, and drug related)

• 2 points for reported arrests (public violence, public nuisance, and drug related)

The formula relies on a 90 day period with a distance of about 200 meters from the camera location. So assuming you could get the data, here is a hypothetical analysis for 5000 W Madison:

100 Calls for Service = 100 points

20 Reported crimes = 40 points

25 Arrests = 50 points

Total = 190 points

The 190 points is above the threshold score of 100 and therefore 5000 W Madison could be a candidate for a CPD surveillance camera.

Unfortunately, the CPD doesn’t make it easy to calculate these scores. Only reported crimes is publicly available at gis.chicagopolice.org. Even then, the CPD restricts you to viewing 14 days of data at a particular location, even though they provide 90 days worth of data. The other two sources of data, calls for service and arrests, are not provided to the public by the CPD web page. Don’t get me started on the lack of crime data, it’s really an injustice!

rshah Chicago

A previous post focused on the extent of Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) in Chicago. It noted there were at least 75 locations (both fixed and mobile) operated by the police or OEMC that use ALPR. The post explores the effectiveness of the ALPR technology. For three different sources, here are some statistics on their effectiveness:

In the first ten months of the cameras (starting from January 2006), they had recovered 310 vehicles for the first 2.3 million plates scanned – see Sun-Times from Nov. 2006. By May 2007, there were 725 vehicles recovered and 6.5 million plates scanned. By spring 2009, there were over 13 million plates scanned and 1000 vehicles recovered. (The data also includes arrests). Here is a graph of the recovered vehicles over time:

I was a bit surprised when I saw these results (based on three data points). I would have expected a high rate of recovered cars initially and then a gradual taper to a plateau. First, I don’t have the most reliable data sources. Second, I don’t know much about the circumstances of how these cameras were deployed (how the cameras come online, how they were deployed, where they were use).

The average is one recovered car per day (using over 75 cameras). There are also 325,000 license plates scanned every month on average. If every camera is working equally, this works out to 144 license plates scanned per day with each of the 75 cameras. This is a very low number, because some of these cameras are capable of scanning 3,600 license plates per hour!   I have no idea why this discrepancy exists.

I can’t fully explain this data, but I thought it would be useful to publish it. Please let me know if you have any explanations.

rshah ALPR, Chicago

Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) is used throughout Chicago. It’s installed in over 40 vehicles. There are also 36 fixed locations. In 17 of those, license plate recognition occurs through real-time video. This is a major development. Using video from a pod camera, it is possible to automatically scan and process a license plate. Here is a summary from an article at officer.com:

Chicago-based EyeNet Enforcement Systems offers technology that can read license plates from video captured by the POD cameras. The camera and license plate reader system is approximately $10,000, and can be used with an existing camera. Some PODs are programmed to point in the direction provided by gunshot sensors and link with EyeNet’s license plate reader system.

Tom Tarach, CEO of EyeNet, says there were challenges with the implementation. “This had never been done before, but the Chicago Police Department was determined to make it work,” Tarach says. “With a few tweaks and adjustments we found we had a working system that could scan license plates from a video stream.” Tarach adds the Chicago police now have two EyeNet readers which can easily process real-time video streams from any of the city’s wireless POD cameras.

ALPR is also installed on the street sweepers. The system photographs license plates of illegally parked vehicles that block the path of the street sweeper, and a violation notice gets sent to the vehicle’s owner. The entire operation is fully automatic, requiring no training or action from the operator. I am not sure how extensive the street sweeper program is at this time.

rshah ALPR, Chicago

The city of Chicago has tested gunshot detection technology for the last few years, previous posts on this can be found here and here. The CPD tested systems from ShotSpotter, PSI (their SECURES technology was acquired by ShotSpotter in April 2009), and Safety Dynamics. According to an article in the Sun-Times in Oct 2009, the city conducted three separate tests of gunshot sensors between 2003 and 2007 in the West Side’s Harrison Police District. Only on one occasion did the detection system send a warning prior to a person calling 911 to report the shooting. As a result, the city felt the gunshot detection systems were too expensive at a cost of $200,000 a square mile.

This mixed success concurs with a similar study on the effectiveness of SECURES gunshot detection system (not ShotSpotter) released in 2008 (based on data from 2005-6).

Despite the lackluster results, the city is going forward with installing the technology in the Loop. It will cover all two square miles. The technology will allow for real time updates on shooters, while distributing this information remotely. The cost is expected to be around $400,000.

rshah Chicago, Gunshot Detection

[From CTA adds cameras to 24 Green Line stations :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Transportation]

The CTA is busy adding cameras as mentioned a few months ago. The CTA has now installed 1,657 cameras, with 73 rail stations covered. Part of this is a high definition camera at the all the entrances.

Cameras already are on CTA buses. Besides installing cameras on train platforms, CTA President Richard Rodriguez said each station will have a high-definition camera to capture the image of everyone who walks into the station. “We’ll be able to identify what time someone entered, and their facial features,” he said.

The cameras are seen as a deterrent to crime. Robberies went up 77 percent on CTA trains, platforms and buses between 2006 and 2008. Here are the funding numbers:

The CTA received $22.6 million in federal funding to expand its security and surveillance network. The Green Line project cost about $4 million, and the CTA plans to use another $9 million to add at least one high-definition camera to every rail station by this summer, as well as more cameras across the system — beginning with the Red and Brown lines. Remaining funds will be used to further improve the security network.

rshah Chicago

[From Chicago homicides drop for 2009 - chicagotribune.com]

Here are the stats:

2003 – 598

2004 – 448

2005 – 448

2006 – 467

2007 – 445

2008 – 510

2009 – 453

While cameras were mentioned last year as a strategy to drive down crime, they received no credit in the Tribune article. The CPD highlighted its city gang teams, use of informants, and analyzing crime data as the best explanations for the reduced crime.

rshah Chicago, Crime

[From Red-light cameras: State legislators having 2nd thoughts -- chicagotribune.com]

Now that legislators have seen how the cameras are used, they are not as supportive:

The chief author of the 2006 Illinois law that green-lighted suburban red-light cameras is now pushing a legislative revision that could effectively undo his original bill. The proposal, from Rep. Angelo “Skip” Saviano, R-Elmwood Park, would ban the use of cameras to ticket motorists for rolling right turns on red, a significant limitation that would strip away the financial incentive for municipalities to install the devices.

By some estimates, up to 90 percent of infractions flagged by cameras involve failures to make proper stops before turning right on a red light. While illegal, such maneuvers rarely lead to serious accidents.

. . .

But Saviano said the practical impact of the cameras has become distorted. “It went from a safety issue to a revenue issue,” he said. “The bottom line is people can’t afford to pay the gosh darn fines. They are grumbling.”

Saviano’s measure is one of several proposals to rein in the use of red-light cameras that have been filed by Illinois lawmakers in anticipation of the legislature’s 2010 session.

rshah Chicago, Red Light Cameras