Smart Cameras Blog

[From Surveillance with privacy in mind - Security Systems News]

To make surveillance more palatable, Brookline Massachusetts has installed Situcam cameras with a “physical lens cover that opens when the system is in use and closes in an obvious way when the cameras are not operational.” It is a very interesting idea, especially to convince people the cameras will not be used outside of defined times. In this case, the camera policy “mandates that the cameras only be on between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., or during an emergency situation.”

Here is some detail on the covers:

“The covers are reassuring,” DeWitt said. “You can see the cameras are not on, and that alleviates concerns that the cameras could be remotely controlled and that the operator might manipulate them into residents’ windows or something. So having the covers makes it abundantly clear that they can’t be used for other than safety purposes.”

Are the lens covers as much for public relations as anything else? “They’re redundant,” he admitted, as the software alone can control when the cameras are on or off and who has access, “but they’re crystal clear. The teachers or town workers know there’s no chance they’re being monitored.

The lens covers and software work with many camera types (it was a Bosch system here in Brookline), and while SituCon did the integration here as one of its first big customers, Cirker said the company is looking for dealers and partners to help make the technology more widely available and known.

I am a fan of this idea and want to point out it came out of citizen involvement in polices for the use of the cameras:

How has Brookline come so far in its willingness to accept public surveillance? A lot of hard work by a citizen oversight committee that developed policies for the use of the surveillance system that made sense for the community, with a helping hand from the Constitution Project and technology provided by SituCon.

rshah Applications, Other Cities

[From The Associated Press: NJ city leading way in crime-fighting technology]

East Orange, NJ is a city with high crime that has decided to fight crime with new leadership and technology. The question is how much credit is due to the technology. The AP article highlights some of the technologies East Orange is using:

• Database for crime data instead of using paper reports
• Wireless computer system for all patrol cars
• Video surveillance cameras in high-crime areas
• Virtual community patrol system for residents to report crimes via text message
• Grid showing patrol cars’ locations
• Gunshot detection system that tracks the source of shootings.

The article next mentions the next generation smart camera technologies that East Orange is adopting:

The sensors, which work in concert with surveillance cameras, are designed to spot potential crimes by recognizing specific behavior: Someone raising fist at another person, for example, or a car slowing down as it nears a man walking on a deserted street late at night. Each new crime recorded is programmed into the database.

“They know what is normal behavior,” said Tarik Hammadou, whose Australian company, Digisensory Technologies, makes the sensors. “And when there is abnormal behavior like an assault, we annotate it and say to the sensor, ‘This is an assault,’ so the sensor will always remember the pattern.”

When the sensor raises an alert, an officer sitting in the department’s nerve center can zoom in on images to see if a crime is in progress. A computer program sends the information to a laptop in the patrol car nearest to the scene. The whole process takes seconds

As the article notes, the effectiveness of these technologies is questionable.

rshah Other Cities, Vendors

[From The Daily Northwestern - Evanston’s surveillance camera plan stirs mixed reactions]

A nice article on the discussions to install cameras in Evanston. I talked to the reporter and shared some preliminary insights in our research on the relationships between crime and cameras in Chicago. Read the article if you want the insights, otherwise by late summer, Jeremy and I will have the paper ready to share.   

I am working on statistical results/reports for this study and a red light camera study that will be released in early June. Sorry for the slow down in postings.

rshah Other Cities

[From Baltimore Crime Beat: Police, prosecutors fight over cameras - Baltimore, Maryland crime news, blogs and video - baltimoresun.com]

In Baltimore, the camera system of 500 cameras has helped arrest 759 people last year, of which 207 were found guilty of crimes and another 214 have cases pending in the courts. However, prosecutors dropped more than 300 for reasons “ranging from legal insufficient to police officers FTA (failure to appear in court). Most of the criminal cases the cameras are used in are misdemeanor narcotics cases. There are only a few gun violence cases charged.” Of the 229 guilty findings from cameras, 228 were related to drugs and one was related to a murder.

I would suspect similar results in Chicago. I would be curious how often cameras are used in gun violence and murder cases rather than drug convictions.

rshah Other Cities

[From L.A. Consequential - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com]

In a column in the NY Times, Tim Egan’s writes about the crime drop in LA. The LA murder rate is down 50% from 2 years ago. Omaha, Nebraska has a higher murder rate than LA.

Los Angeles is on a pace for about 230 murders this year, in a city of nearly 4 million people. And the department clears — solves and prosecutes — more than 80 percent of the homicides, well above the national average for big cities.

So what is the explanation for the drop in crime? As Egan notes, there are lots of possible factors:

A high-tech mapping strategy, where police move on crime hot spots in something close to real time, was pioneered in New York and mastered here (give praise to William Bratton, who oversaw the departments in both cities, for that effort); the stuffing of prisons with career criminals also gets much of the credit; the role played by legalized abortion, according to the authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner in their book “Freakonomics,” in preventing a generation of unwanted children from being born; and the settling down of the drug trade, the source of so much violence during the formative years of narcotic fiefdoms, to such a degree that in many parts of the city there are now more medical marijuana dispensers in Los Angeles than Starbucks outlets (regulated retailers creating an ecosystem of nonviolence).

Interestingly, LA has accomplished this without a reliance on surveillance cameras. Unlike Chicago, where cameras are given prominence, I believe cameras play a tiny role in the LA police strategy. While this is quite anecdotal, it does pose the question of whether cameras are the most effective tool for fighting crime. LA’s successful strategy has focused on using Compstat and hiring more police officers in the last few years.

rshah Crime, Other Cities

[From Taipei Times - archives and Taiwan News and China-Taiwan News]

Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin announced on April 8 that his government would spend NT$1.6 billion (US$50 million) to install 13,000 “intelligent,” high-performance cameras in the city. Of the 13,000 cameras, 1,500 will be high-resolution one-mega-pixel models. The city is replacing 12,000 existing security cameras.

Here are the scenarios for the smart cameras:

Closed-circuit television (CCTV) technology is so far advanced nowadays that it’s possible to search for certain actions in recorded video. For example, when investigating an ATM crime, police can set a search condition for “a person staying near a machine for longer than 10 minutes” and the system will find all video meeting the criterion.

It’s also possible to have the system to alert police automatically when a car matching a previously entered description appears in the camera lens, helping to solve car thefts more quickly.

The article notes there are still concerns about privacy and how footage will be used.

Asked whether the new equipment would mean a further erosion of residents’ privacy, Hau said that no one will be given access to the recorded tapes without a justifiable reason. He added that all the video footage will be recordings of activities on public roads and will not infringe on people’s privacy in their homes.

According to police executives, the new cameras, linked to a computer terminal, will be able to home in on suspected targets and will have the ability to detect cars thefts by reading the number plates of vehicles and sounding alarms.

rshah Other Cities

[From Are Indy's police surveillance cameras worth it? | IndyStar.com | The Indianapolis Star ]

Indianapolis has a small camera network, I first mentioned it last year. For background, they have spent over a million dollars and are at 54 cameras with another 40 coming online this year.

The problem noted in the article is the city doesn’t keep any data on the effectiveness of the cameras. As a result, taxpayers and police don’t know if these cameras are really helping to address crime. The article notes recent studies show cameras have limited effectiveness, e.g. San Francisco. The article also states that Chicago “reported that neighborhoods with cameras operating for more than six months saw a 30 percent decrease in crime and a 60 percent drop in drug incidents.” However, Chicago, unlike San Francisco, has not made public its data or analysis for these statistics.

The lack of data will probably not hamper the growth of camera networks. Unlike many other technologies, people believe in their guts that cameras can make a difference. In the absence of data, they will probably prefer cameras. However, for the policy wonks and those that care about the long term, the lack of data will mask the true value of cameras. We won’t know if money should be spent on cameras, officers, other police technologies, or for other strategies.

rshah Chicago, Other Cities, Policy

[From A Chance For Input On 3,000 New Police Cameras- City Limits: News for NYC's Nonprofit, Policy and Activist World]

Ali Winston has another good story on the cameras in NYC. (The details of this network came about from a lawsuit filed by the NY Civil Liberties Union.)

Modeled on London’s 10,000 camera system, called the “Ring of Steel,” the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative (LMSI) – which has attained the same nickname – will consist of 3,000 networked cameras monitoring 1.7 miles of area south of Canal Street. One-third of the cameras will be city-owned, with the other two-thirds belonging to private businesses, termed “stakeholders” in the guidelines. Automated license plate readers and environmental sensors will also provide data to the police. The cameras will be monitored by officers at a coordination center on Broadway, which opened last November. The system is expected to cost $89 million in local and federal funds. [More info at Danger Room]

The NYC network is a study in contrast with Chicago.

First, the NYC network is much more geographically focused system. Using my previous estimates, if lower manhattan is 4 square miles, then it would need about 5000 cameras to ensure a camera is every 50 yards. So the network is highly likely to complete saturate the area. In contrast, Chicago is far from evenly covering the city and even the downtown area which has a much higher concentration of cameras is not near this density.

Second, we know something about the NYC network. Through the NYCLU and NYPD, the public knows about the camera system and is being asked for their input. (The NYPD is asking for comments on its privacy guidelines, something Chicago has never done).

Third, the NYPD is putting into place policies for how the surveillance technologies (cameras and ALPR) will be used. The policies make it seem the focus of these technologies is counterterrorism and not crime prevention. As a result, there are procedural safeguards to using the surveillance data for other purposes. In Chicago, the city has never publicly stated what its policies are regarding security and privacy of surveillance data.

From my view, I am just heartened that the NYPD is publicly developing such a policy.

rshah Other Cities, Policy

[From How useless are the D.C. Police Department's CCTV crime cameras? - Cover Story - Washington City Paper]

An investigative piece on the cameras in DC. It offers a nice bit of history on the DC cameras which has grown to 5,200 cameras which can be monitored live. I once considered DC a model for other cities based on its openness in regards to polices with cameras. However, as the article shows, the city has become more secretive and aggressive in its use of cameras.

The article discusses the lack of effectiveness of the DC camera network.

In the fall of 2007, in response to a FOIA request by the ACLU, the police admitted that surveillance footage had never been used to make an arrest from the start of the program to March 2007 (when the request was filed). Hughes subsequently insisted the cameras have been useful since then—they provided evidence that contributed to two arrests.

The department’s 2007 annual camera report, released early in 2008, says investigators viewed images 532 times and recovered 144 useful bits of video. One camera captured images the report says became “vital evidence” leading to the arrest of a murder suspect.

The department has not yet released an annual camera report for 2008—not that the year didn’t provide some camera moments worth reporting.

The final bit I liked was the view of citizens for the cameras:

The department’s cameras are good for at least one very significant thing: public relations. Residents routinely demand camera installment near shady alleys and troubled side streets in the wake of crime waves. Last year, the mother of a man who’d been shot to death demanded that the mayor apologize for the city’s failure to catch the perp. If the city can pay for traffic cams, it can pay for crime cams, the woman said.

“What’s the difference in the price to put a camera up to catch someone speeding and putting a camera up to catch a killer?” she asked the mayor.

“Regular citizens want those crime cameras up,” says D.C. police union boss Kris Baumann, who never hesitates to criticize the department. Because citizens like cameras, Baumann says rank-and-file cops like them, too. A new camera and its accompanying signage give citizens a tangible piece of evidence that the department is trying to help the neighborhood.

rshah Other Cities

[From Baltimore Crime Beat: Police surveillance cameras - Baltimoresun.com]

Some comments from Baltimore regarding their surveillance system, which were inspired by the study of San Francisco cameras. Here are some snippets:

Issue of image quality:

Yes, cops love to release videos showing crimes, and we call watch and are horrified. But it’s often hard to identify an acutal suspect from the video, and more often than not, only a part or the aftermath of a crime is caught on the tape.

That leaves attorneys to argue and jurors to decide what actually happened. In one case city prosecutors described to me, a witness testified to being one place on the street when the video clearly showed her standing someplace else when she saw one man shoot two other men. Defense attorneys seized on this to question her integrity, but did convict in the end.

Cameras or Cops:

“When the cameras were announced by then Mayor O’Malley and brought into the city, no one consulted with our office on how to use the cameras effectively to bolster prosecutions,” Margaret T. Burns, the spokeswoman for the city State’s Attorney’s Office, told me. “They were viewed by the administration at the time as a quick fix to violent crime.” Cooperation has improved, but Burns said questions remain. She said community members continue to tell State’s Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy, “We would just like another police officer.”

Cameras as investigative tools:

“Our preliminary results are similiar to the preliminary results in San Francisco. The cameras are not always relevant to the violent crime that is being prosecuted. They are helpful investigative tools. The footage is often used to point us in the right direction. Whether or not they have an overall affect on violent crime in the city, whether or not they are cost effective, are things we can’t speak to, but they are questions that have been raised.”

Role of Live Monitoring:

In addition, Baltimore’s live monitoring has made the cameras an effective tool to engage in targeted enforcement and to capture and sometimes even prevent violent crimes in progress. I think the San Francisco study says that camera footage was only used to help solve or prosecute 5 or 6 cases of violent crime since 2005. Baltimore has been far more progressive in that area.

rshah Other Cities, Policy