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.
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.
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.
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.
Jonathon Simon over at Governing through Crime also adds his thoughts. Commenting on the latest drops in crime big cities, he speculates on the top three factors underlying the crime drops:
1. Bottoming out of the de-industrialization of American cities that began in 1946 and continued through the 1980s. Even if new economic engines of prosperity have not exactly re-emerged in many cities, the process of losing existing assets has run its course.
2. Demographic diversification of urban neighborhoods through immigration and in-migration of suburbanites fleeing unsustainable lifestyles.
A video demonstration showing how HP’s photo tracking software doesn’t work with an African American. The video is pretty funny and a nice example of how technology is far from neutral (but instead can treat particular groups of people differently). Another similar example was how a voice recognition technology, developed in Massachusetts, wouldn’t work for people with a southern accent.
We are working with our partners to learn more. The technology we use is built on standard algorithms that measure the difference in intensity of contrast between the eyes and the upper cheek and nose. We believe that the camera might have difficulty “seeing” contrast in conditions where there is insufficient foreground lighting
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.
One of the concerns about surveillance cameras is the potential for government abuse. One form of abuse is using the cameras to target a political group. A historical example is the Red Squad. In this article, it claims the police added vehicles to a watch list because they attended a political protest. Once added to the watch list, a vehicle is going to be pulled over and searched. ANPR (license plate recognition) technology is used to identify a vehicle.
I hope the facts are wrong in this story. But its a chilling example of how surveillance systems can impinge on the freedom of citizens.
And, of course, police officers are less than discriminating about who they add to this list. For example, “Catt, 50, and her 84-year-old father, John” were added to the list because a police officer noticed their van at three protest demonstrations. And now Catt and John get pulled over by the police and searched as terrorists.
. . .
Officers have been told they can place “markers” against the vehicles of anyone who attends demonstrations using the national ANPR data centre in Hendon, north London, which stores information on car journeys for up to five years.
Chicago’s surveillance cameras were used to track Chicago School Board chief Michael Scott from a convalescent home to a lonely downtown spot along the Chicago River. By using the cameras, the police believe that Scott didn’t meet up with anybody else during that time.
This investigation highlighted the vast network of surveillance cameras in Chicago. Chicago has approximately 15,000 cameras at its disposal. Two thousand cameras are used for fighting crime by the CPD. The rest can be found at the CTA, airports, Park District, McCormick Place, public schools, and private cameras that have joined the city network.
Despite concerns about big brother, the current network is totally inadequate at monitoring every possible location. As I have previously pointed out, the current network of cameras covers only 5% of the city. (This does not include private cameras that are not networked to the city’s camera network.) Nevertheless, the city’s network is large and impressive.
To illustrate the camera network in Chicago, I am publishing a data set of 1,200 cameras used by the police. I believe this is useful to help educate people about the camera network in Chicago. I also hope that this data can find other innovative uses. I am very curious how this data will be viewed, used, and manipulated to other ends.
The data set can be viewed within either Google Earth or Google Maps through the KML file.
I will keep readers updated on how this information is used.
Update 1: I have also published the mapping data at GeoCommons, see the Chicago Surveillance Cameras layer. This should allow more people to use the data in additional formats, e.g., Shapefiles.
James Loudermilk II, a senior level technologist at the FBI, said “the agency sees no point in facial recognition.” I believe part of the problem is that facial recognition doesn’t work as effectively as other biometric technologies for the FBI.
Facial recognition would be the killer application of biometrics, Loudermilk told the hundreds of conference delegates, and the FBI would dearly love to be able to use facial recognition in its fight against crime. It can not, though. The algorithms just do not exist to deliver the highly reliable verification required. This is even though the FBI has been evaluating facial recognition technology since 1963, he said. It did not invest then. It is not investing now.
Instead, the future strategy for the FBI focused on iris prints and existing fingerprint and DNA databases. In another presentation, Loudermilk noted several other biometric measures. These included “facial, retinal, population comparison studies, voice patterns, etc.”, with the use of near real time matching.
As an example, consider how the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) operates. Currently, 18,000 law enforcement agencies contribute fingerprints and DNA samples to the FBI’s databases and, at their peak, they submit 200,000+ identity verification queries a day. IAFIS database contains the fingerprints and corresponding criminal history information for more than 55 million people.
This older presentation offers some interesting statistics on the IAFIS system. The average response time is 15 minutes in FY07 and 98% are done within 2 hours. IAFIS processed 26.1 million submissions in FY07 (44% Criminal, 56% Civil) and 92% are received electronically. 85% of fingerprint checks handled without human review. Facial recognition can’t claim the same level of efficiency.
An article on ShotSpotter mentioned an independent study on gunshot detection.
In 2008, Peter Scharf, a criminologist at Tulane University in New Orleans, conducted a study for the National Institute of Justice about an early competitor of ShotSpotter, called Secures, in two Virginia cities. He found the system frequently sent the police on wild goose chases by reporting false positives, had an inconclusive effect on response time and, crucially, had little impact on arrest rates.
The report is very well done. Some of the interesting findings include how the gunshot detection system was negatively affected by radio frequency interference and fireworks/bottle rockets.
The report also discusses the tradeoffs between false positive and false negative error (an unavoidable part of these systems). The report found that “2/3 of SECURES®-related dispatches were “but-for false alarms” – both not a confirmed gunshot and no call corresponding call for service.
Recent Comments