Articles
This month, the New York Police Department is busy quietly launching a strategy to combat crime and terrorism: the installation of wireless video cameras high above the ground on streets throughout Brooklyn, Lower Manhattan, and parts of midtown. This surveillance system is modeled after the London financial district’s “ring of steel” security.
The newly installed crime cameras are the first of 500 surveillance systems to be installed using a $9 million budget. Hundreds of other cameras will be installed once the city receives a requested $81.5 million in federal grants.
NYPD officials believe this is money well spent, given that members of terrorist groups have already cased the New York Stock Exchange and other financial buildings, not to mention what it took them to carry out the 2001 attacks. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly says, “We have every reason to believe that New York remains in the cross-hairs, so we have to do what it takes to protect the city.”
New York City currently has approximately 1,000 cameras installed in their subway system, with another 1,100 expected to be in operation by 2008. Currently, over 3,000 cameras oversee city housing projects in an effort to reduce crime.
New York is not the only city embracing the surveillance approach to stopping crime. Chicago has spent about $5 million to install a 5,000-camera system across the city. Near the Capitol, the Department of Homeland Security plans to spend nearly $10 million for surveillance on the rail line in the area. Philadelphia and other major cities are also using crime camera with increasing frequency.
Officials with the New York Civil Liberties Union and other privacy advocates say the city needs to implement better safeguards to protect the public from racial profiling and voyeurism. Police insist that law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear. They have hired four defense attorneys to advise them on the legality of their surveillance strategies.
Other critics of the crime camera plan note that this surveillance cannot stop or prevent crime or terrorism, it can merely help identify suspects once a crime has been committed.
“It is not a cure-all,” says former NYPD captain Timothy Horner, “but we really want law enforcement to use whatever tools they can to keep us safe.”
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