City Council wants bids to have security cameras all around the Downtown Mall, after a spate of assaults have have occurred just about everywhere downtown but the Downtown Mall, the Progress reports. Police Chief Longo has proposed 30 cameras for $300k, though it remains to be seen what the bids determine is feasible. I’m fond of Tim McCormack’s proposal that, fine, we put up the cameras, but that all the video be streamed real-time to the internet.
I’m assigning reading to City Council: Jeremy Bentham‘s “The Panopticon Writings” or Michel Foucault‘s “Discipline & Punish,” which explores modern applications of Bentham’s theories on surveillance. We really can’t have a proper discussion of the merits of becoming a surveillance society without getting the decision makers up to speed.
10:30pm Update: Jennifer McKeever attended last night’s Council meeting, and provides each councilor’s stated position. Apparently Dave Norris cited Tim’s suggestion of putting the video online, and Chief Longo supports it. Wonderful.
I can`t square on line feeds with the cries of “Big Brother”. It (on line feed) won`t happen.
The cameras were a done deal on the day the downtown business community said “Yea”.
Digression coming up: Probably a better idea than increasing fines on traffic violations that aren`t enforced anyway. We must have tons of traffic laws on the books that cops won`t (can`t ?) enforce.
It did occur to me the millions of dollars, that the Commonwealth intends to raise from the increased fines, indicates what lousy scoff-law drivers we are to generate that much cash. If we add out-of-state drivers to that, we can have double deck highways with the additional money. Of course we will also find out whether we could have enforced the laws all along and not only during this (dare I use the word) “Surge”.
I wonder if some of the money generated will be used to add additional cops so as to write more tickets to generate more money to add more cops …………………….
Digression intentional.
I believe America is slowly turning into a police state. The good/bad news is that it isn’t just coming down from the Federal government, we’re sabotaging our freedoms at the local level too.
Quoth the Daily Progress:
Waldo, that doesn’t sound like an entirely warm reception to the “on-line feed” idea.
Thanks for the link. I agree the Council did not favor the internet cameras. Chief was merely relaying a conversation, not agreeing. The rest of the conversation really veered to law enforcement use only. Which begs these questions…
Who can have access to them for courtroom purposes? MY hypothetical is a domestic dispute on the mall where both parties swear out warrants against each other, the tape will prove who actually assaulted who but can the litigants have access to this evidence? Can a private citizen use the evidence to support an neglect or abuse on a child in a custody case- not in a criminal context?
I hope serious debate continues and the powers that be pay attention…
It’s a fait accompli.
Council caved to Longo.
You average citizen walking in broad daylight on the downtown mall should have no objection to the cameras. I mean what could they possibly be doing that they wouldn’t want filmed? We are all being watched now anyway, so what is the difference? This is for thugs preying on innocent people in the dark of night. It is an excellent idea! JC
can someone pls explain why they are talking about cameras ON the mall, when the recent assualts have all been OFF the mall? thx.
JC, it depends on how much you value your right to due process, even if you don’t think you need it.
I’d rather we spent half the money on an additional police officer’s training and salary for a few years to patrol the areas where the attacks are actually taking place. As for the other half, just don’t spend it.
Cameras will not stop assaults. All that cameras will do is provide a grainy image of some guys beating a dude up after the fact. And the suspects will be questioned, maybe charged, and then one way or the other be back on the street beating people up within a matter of weeks or months. We already generally have an eyewitness in the form of a victim.
The 2 things that can stop the assaults (short of dramatic social change) are more police officers right there on the spot to intervene and an aggressive prosecution of the guilty parties, either putting them in prison or otherwise preventing them from re-offending.
Waste. Of. Money.
It is so comforting to realize that the city has an extra 300K lying around for this. For this stupid idea that probably will not deter any crime at all. Oh wait-I forgot-this will make the cops LOOK like they’re trying to do something rather than hiring some more police and actually having a beat cop on the mall 24/7.
I understand now. Crystal clear.
Oh wait-MORE money to monitor the cameras.
So let me lay it out.
Approx. $300K for cameras (I assume this includes all labor, equipment etc. for the installation and monitoring equipment?)
Are they night vision cameras (since most attacks are- well- at night)
How much for the cops to hire a few people to monitor these cameras-if not in real time then a few times a day at least. 100K a year? More? Whose job will the monitoring of these cameras be?
So after the cameras are around for a while, and the city is still paying the debt for the original $300K, it’s fairly possible that the criminals will figure out where the cameras are and simply take their criminal activities away from the camera’s view. So then can we move the cameras around to follow the criminals?
How abut 911 phones-like UVA has all over Grounds- at strategic locations around downtown-like in the parking garages, all floors, in the side streets, at both ends and in the center of the mall. Anyone ever think about that? Rather than a bystander or the assaultee having to whip out their cell phone and dial 911. Which by the way, usually takes about 3 calls to get a cop to respond (according to some vendors I’ve talked to).
The way I see it is none of this is set up to actually help someone being assaulted. It appears to be a determent, which is fine and good, but the criminals will always find away around determents.
These are excellent, excellent points, Jan.
It seems like having video tape of a crime would help in identifying the perpetrator and aid prosecution. Sometimes witnesses have hazy memory or are not able to talk to the police. After all, the desicriptions of muggers around the mall are all the same: kids in white t-shirts. A videotape can be shown to the community in hopes of positive ID. That makes a lot of sense if you’re talking about private property or small space being monitored.
Is this what Longo argued? Does anyone know how reliable video surveillance is in prosecution?
I’d have to agree that adding more officers is the way to go. It seems that the police department is already recruiting, so do we really know that the cameras are a replacement for more officers? Also, weren’t cameras mentioned before the attacks started happening? Did the council specify a direct link between those attacks and the need for cameras?
It just seems like there wasn’t any study or research that went in to this decision. Once the downtown foundation said go for it then it was off and running. By the way, if the downtown foundation is so crazy about this idea then how about they throw in some money for it? Like split the costs with the city? And I bet you a million dollars if merchants and offices and banks were asked to contribute for the cameras/and or monitoring they’d say no.
Did the downtown foundation poll the merchants or the rest of us who rent offices and work on the mall? Funny I didn’t get a call asking my opinion.
Oh, I forgot. Virginia is a nanny state now. The DF, the city council and chief Longo know what’s best.
Jack, I really agree with your post above. This seems like a waste of money. Wouldn’t 1 more cop on a bike constantly biking the downtown area be a better deterrent? What about cameras on the Belmont Bridge, Avon St, Garrett St, etc. There is very little chance of an attack directly on the mall or in front of the transit center, but just turn a dark corner off any part of the mall and you’re in real danger. We just need to catch the offenders and punish them. Is there anyway to stop this camera proposal?
Citizens can stand up and speak at the city council meeting. But they’re going to do it no matter what folks think.
In the couple of threads on this topic, several people have said something along the lines of “it won’t stop assaults, it will just record them”
I’m not sure that’s true. People tend to commit crimes when they expect they won’t get caught. I think its the reason we’ve seen assaults at night on less traveled streets rather than on the downtown mall in the daylight. Now, if people knew a camera would be watching them even when there weren’t people around to watch, then I would think they would behave better due to the much higher risk of getting caught.
Obviously there must be a study out there somewhere that could tell us how these kinds of programs have worked out in other places. Anyone know of one?
I’m all for cameras. There’s some investment up front, but it could allow one officer to monitor several areas at once rather than a single one on foot – and video is a much better record of events than human memory.
Lastly, several posters are right on when they say shy the downtown mall when the crime is happening elsewhere. I think its just the path of least resistance – start the program where you can get it done easily, then expand to the problems areas later. If we proposed cameras on garrett street from the start, someone would scream profiling.
Since we know the crime problems haven’t been on the mall, then we know this isn’t about that crime issue. I’m guessing that this is more about providing more police monitoring of possible crimes to downtown businesses. If that’s the case, then the downtown businesses can already do this for themselves. That is, they can have cameras looking just outside their stores as well as inside, and tie them all together for centralized monitoring. Why should the tax payers pay for this service to the downtown businesses?
If this is instead a service for the community, then the cameras are in the wrong place as everyone has said. And what’s more, the community would be much better served by money being spent on other things like more police and other emergency measures.
It sounds like a knee-jerk reaction by the police and the city council to want to monitor the citizens more closely because some crime has happened and they are all scared. This is not that different than the sort of things that have happened at the federal level of reducing our liberties in the name of more security. In that case of course, as we loose more liberties the terrorists win. In our case as we loose more privacy the punk criminals win.
I’m not sure what we can do about it though. Perhaps talking to the ACLU and other organizations may provide some ideas. Perhaps they have dealt with these issues and know where the boundaries are. Maybe if nothing else a case can be made to force more open access to the camera feeds.
Oh, and while we’re on the subject, some have mentioned video tape. Um, it’s not the 70’s anymore. The feeds would be digital and the recording would be digital. Current off the shelf systems can be programed for motion detection and can even be programmed to build up a library of people via face detection, cataloging when the same people have been seen. It’s also not the early 2000’s anymore, face detection is now above 90% in accuracy and now better than what humans can do.
So the police can ask the system to show them every movement of JC Clark over the lifetime of the system to see if he has ever looked suspicious, and correlate that with anything suspicious he has ever said, and with anything any neighbor has ever said about him, and correlate that with anything ever recorded in his phone conversations and email. All it takes is for JC to have done one thing in his lifetime that looks questionable, and we have him. But I’m sure he won’t mind being monitored in all these ways and having systems be able to look for patterns automatically without human intervention, and without any reason to do so. Because after all, he has nothing to hide.
“Downtown business leaders lauded the council’s decision to solicit bids for the cameras, and said the technology would help dispel the notion that downtown can be dangerous.” -DP 7/18/07
Ah. There it is. The cameras are being pushed through because downtown business owners are afraid of losing business. Of all the reasons to install cameras, I think this is the one that will probably make it happen.
Why does it seem that normally reasonable and stout progressive Democrats have a tendency to cave when confronted with security (particularly the “homeland” variety) fear pressure tactics from “authority figures,” be they police chiefs, generals, or presidents? They always talk a good game about civil rights, privacy rights, and ending wars, but they just can’t seem to bring themselves to actually DO anything about it.
Even the logic is faulty. The purpose of security cameras is to show danger, which accomplishes the opposite of the stated goal of “dispelling the notion that downtown can be dangerous.” If downtown were not, in fact, dangerous, then business owners wouldn’t want cameras.
If we’re serious about reducing crime in Charlottesville, a significant step would be for the police to make crime data available online, updated regularly, with the block number, date, time, and nature of the crime. This information is already being tracked and stored by the city police, so it should be a snap to release publicly. If downtown business owners believe that downtown isn’t dangerous, they should be eager to see these data made available, so that they can demonstrate that crime is not as bad as it’s being made out to be.
If we’re serious about reducing crime in Charlottesville, a significant step would be for the police to make crime data available online, updated regularly, with the block number, date, time, and nature of the crime.
Except few would care about that information. Just not the way it works, it’s easier for them to say “throw up some cameras” rather than go data mining.
I don’t care if people on Garrett Street claim profiling, if that’s where the crimes are, put the cameras there. Cameras on the mall itself is a waste of $ when the attacks are largely taking place off the mall.
They should have alotted some funds from the 6 million dollars they wasted on the bus terminal, which looks like a cross between an abandoned horse barn and a fish tank. I mean has that thing really made such a dramatic difference in the city? At least it found a good home next to the Pavillion which resembles a baby bonnet. JC
I have wanted this for years. All they have to do is release the data -the City and County – and we could have a brilliant resource for residents and homebuyers, a la ChicagoCrime.org.
I disagree strongly, Chad. Every neighborhood group in the city would care. Obviously, the downtown merchants would care. Media outlets would care. Realtors would care. Insurers would care. Organizations that are interested in particular types of crime (SHE, Take Back the Night, anti-gang groups, etc.) would care.
Right now we’re flying blind. Have assaults increased downtown? Or are we paying more attention to them? What’s the trend across the city? Where, specifically, have these assaults taken place? We have no way to answer these questions.
Rather than expect the police to do this work, the police should provide the raw data and let community groups mine it.
JC, that was paid for using federal transportation funds. It would be illegal (and rightly so) to take money from that project and spend it on security cameras.
Sounds like “security theater,” to me–the illusion of steps being taken in order to reduce the perception of risk. The technology will help to “dispel the notion” that there is a high risk of crime downtown rather than dispel the crime itself. Geez, could they just put up cheap toy cameras and save a lot of money and achieve the same illusion?
I disagree strongly, Chad. Every neighborhood group in the city would care. Obviously, the downtown merchants would care. Media outlets would care. Realtors would care. Insurers would care. Organizations that are interested in particular types of crime (SHE, Take Back the Night, anti-gang groups, etc.) would care.
I’m much more jaded than you are obviously. Merchants are looking for the easiest solution, and that solution is to put up cameras to make people *feel* safe, regardless of whether it’s true or not.
Their goal is to keep the mall viewed as a safe place. Having something overt as cameras will make the majority of the public feel safer, even though I think the proper action to reduce crime is getting more cops and/or putting cameras on Garrett / Belmont Bridge.
I misspoke. Merchants aren’t looking for the ‘easiest’ solution, rather they are looking for the best way to make the public feel safe on the mall and keep patronizing their shops.
Bottom line is it all comes down to $, just as most things in life do.
We`ve had horse patrols, bike patrols, beat officers, yada, yada, yada.
I would very much likt to see Longo`s annual budget request which presumably will show what he thinks he needs to properly police the City.
If it is a good budget request it will show what he thinks is needed. It might be interesting to see what he has requested and what has been approved and denied. Better than grasping at each “straw in the wind” which blows by.
A few comments from one city councilor…
Although there was a consensus to move forward with this – get bids and more detailed information – as I expressed at the council meeting I have some serious concerns. Nothing has shown me that this proposal will prevent crime, but rather it will at best help investigate and prosecute crimes already committed. I would like to see examples of how this tool would have helped in previous cases.
And the mall is not where we are having problems, but off the mall where it would be difficult to fully cover with cameras; I am concerned this is a symbolic way of reassuring the public. And I think the recent episodes are isolated – ie, a handful of resentful, frustrated teens – and that the police department will ID and end this problem.
Most important for me is that I do not want to contribute to the steady erosion of privacy and freedom that we have seen with the Patriot Act and the Bush administration.
What we need is a fully staffed Police Department. All communities struggle to recruit and retain officers, and I would rather put this funding into incentives and salaries.
Finally, even though at the moment I disagree with Chief Longo on this, he is a progressive and thoughtful Police Chief, and I am very much a supporter of his.
Thanks very much for your comments, Mayor Brown — they’re mighty useful right now.
FWIW, I really like having a police chief (and a police force) push this sort of thing. That is, I don’t want police who are libertarians. It’s their job to want to reduce crime and catch the bad guys. They should be asking for tools like this and generally seeking to be more invasive. And it’s Council’s job (and the public’s job) to push back, when we think they’re asking for more than we should give up. It’s that tension, the tension that’s created by all of us doing our jobs and advocating honestly, that should result in a balance between privacy and safety, freedom and security.
Mr. Brown,
It is good to hear that you are skeptical of this proposal. Once the cameras are up it will be impossible to take them down.
And I am also reassured that you have a reasonable handle on the recent “episodes”.
I wish that you would communicate that to your Police Department. Because with all their “task forcing” and certain officers media preening about the “episodes”, they are scaring the bejeus out less savvy folk in the county.
More and more people think it’s not safe to go Downtown, and think that the city is in the grip of some kind of crime wave perpetuated by black kids.
Per the Progress this morning,19 July, the reporting included a statistic that although there has been some increase in incidents downtown , it is not significant. Despite this, in addition to reenforcing mall foot patrols, it is contemplated the Police Department will add plainclothes officers to this Task Force to combat this insignifcant rise in the mall incident rate.
This comparitively massive effort and redirection of police assets, to combat an insignificant increase in “episodes” ,makes one wonder how an understaffed Police Department can respond in such a manner, without weakening other efforts. Possibly overtime funded.
Remove the downtown business interest in maintaining a serene shopping center, and their accompanying cries for protection, there appears not to be a strong case for allocation of assets from an overburdened force.Perhaps a review of the situation is required before a headlong rush to rescue the business atmosphere.
Waldo,
I wasnt aware that the bus terminal was completely funded by federal funds. Are you telling me that not a single cent is being covered by the citzens in Charlottesville via taxes?
I can’t tell you that “not a single cent” was covered with local tax dollars — it’s within the realm of possibility that a city-funded piece of paper was run through a laser printer. But the project cost $10.9M, with $10.1M of that coming from ISTEA funds and $700k coming from state funds, as I’ve explained here. This was not a local project, and it would have been a felonious misappropriation of funds to use any of the money to install security cameras throughout downtown.
I disagree with Tim Longo on this but at the end of the day I agree that he has been a very good, effective Chief of Police for Charlottesville. Perfect? No. But nobody really is.
Even though I think this camera idea is pointless I do appreciate that he’s not just sitting there like a bump on a log. He’s actively looking for ways of improving security and presenting unprompted ideas to the city. I like that.
What you’re describing is a mixture of high-end systems and science fiction. Face detection is still extremely poor, with very high false positive and false negative rates, especially when the target is not in good lighting or directly facing the camera.
And the part about being better than humans is completely untrue (so far).
How long will face detection remain “extremely poor”?
Another 2 years?
5 at tops
How long will it take the high end systems to become cheap?
Remember when 1 mb digital cameras sold for about $1700? What, was that 2002?
Waldo,
So one day did someone call up the feds and say “hey can we have 10 Million for a bus terminal?”? I mean how does that work? Personally I don’t see that it has had such a major impact on anything. I mean the bus system loses big money every year. Maybe I don’t see the big picture… JC
See for example: face.nist.gov/frvt/. Download the report on that page and take a look. In the report they say:
“…The FRVT 2006, for the first time, integrated measuring human face recognition capability into an evaluation. Performance of humans and computers was compared on the same set of images. The FRVT 2006 human and computer experiment measures the ability to recognize faces across illumination changes. This experiment found that algorithms are capable of human performance levels, and that at false accept rates in the range of 0.05, machines can out-perform humans.”
The algorithsms are getting quite good. I of course exagerated things a bit. But with very high resolution cameras, and with subjects to match scanned in good conditions (say if they’re ever booked), you’ve got a very accurate system. And even wtih less than ideal conditions for initial entry, operator intervention can be used in a recognition learning system so that the system can get better and better at any face or other object over time.
The high end cameras needed for this are in the quite bloated price range of the police estimate. This latest software might be out of that range right now, but it won’t be for long.
JC – this is off-topic, but CTS Director Bill Watterson is crediting the Downtown Transit Center with helping to keeps buses on time. You can read his comments on Charlottesville Tomorrow here.
Also off topic, but I really like the design of that transit center. What are those relaly cool metal panels? Are those copper? So spiffy.
@DandyTiger: I suspect we are talking about two different scenarios. Biometric identification systems are indeed quite good at face recognition when they are being used for authorization (often alongside iris scans and fingerprints). However, I also recall a study concluding that face recognition was not worthwhile for say, spotting a known terrorist in a crowd at Disneyland. There were far too many false negatives, and the project was abandoned.
I hear you about the price range, though — $300,000 can buy some pretty sweet cameras.
The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA, pronounced “iced tea”) is administered by the Department of Transportation. The purpose of it is to provide funding to metropolitan planning organizations for intermodal transit, or the use of more than one means of getting from point A to point B. A bus transfer center is precisely the sort of thing that ISTEA is meant to fund, because it’s where people move from travel on foot to travel by bus, or from bus to car, or train to bus, etc. Getting that funding requires sending a grant proposal to the DOT, providing detailed plans for the project and requesting a specific amount of money, as is necessary to complete the project. In the case of this project, the city went back three times for more money, as the project expanded, and the DOT approved the requests each time.
You know what loses really big money? Our road network. We pay $0 to use it, but it costs us billions each year. Our bus system looks like a brilliant idea compared to driving cars.
Waldo: theoretically, the hefty sales taxes you pay on each gallon of gasoline goes towards paying for our road network. My share is about $2500 per annum. Plus another $1300 in gilmore-no-more-car-tax.
Looks like mayor Brown is at least thinking about this, according to the story in today’s Progress. So they are having more police presence and cameras. So I guess I’m cool with that.
You’re right, those gasoline taxes do offset transportation costs, but actually our gasoline sales tax is among the lower in the nation. The national average is significantly higher than what we pay. (See a chart prepared by the state of California’s energy department. We’re about 4/5 of the way down the list.)
The result is the transportation funding crisis that’s facing us right now — come 2018, the annual cost of maintaining our existing road network will exceed the total annual road budget. We won’t have a penny available for new construction and, every year after that, we won’t have enough to maintain our existing infrastructure.
My point is that people aren’t seeing the whole picture when they look at trains and buses and say “hey, it’s a money loser — it’s propped up by tax dollars.” That’s right, it is, but the difference is that there are user fees for every trip. But the entirety of the automobile network, save for the odd toll road, is based on tax dollars. Nobody demands that our road networks break even. I can’t see why it should be any different for our buses.
Stores, shopping malls and the like usually have security cameras. If the downtown businesses want something similar then fine they should get it. But they shouldn’t expect the city of Charlottesville to pay for it or the police department to staff it. Do like regular stores and indoor mall’s have to- hire a private security company. Stop expecting government to fix everything.
As people have already pointed out the problems are occurring “off” the downtown mall. And they are most likely occurring because it’s summer and school isn’t in session and these lazy parents don’t have anyone to do their job for them (meaning schools / government).
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want more cops around. This is the real world, and cops can’t be everywhere. So why have more around to stop me when I’m sparking a fatty in the Bank of America parking lot? Or sneak-fuckin’ in the Market St park? Or crossing the railroad tracks to get home? If someone’s gonna mug me, they’re gonna mug me, and their mugging is not likely to be interrupted by a cop. Even if there’s the same number working the streets at 3am as there are at 3pm. The world is not a prison yard with bulls watching our every step ready to sniper out anybody who busts a move. Remember elementary school? That place was fuckin’ *surrounded* by authority figures at a ratio of 1 of them to 20 of us, yet fights and bullying still happened. What makes you think the adult world can expect any better?
The real problem is that a lot of cops in general are concerned to AGGRESSIVELY enforce and stop blacks because if one of them whines then there is a fullblown “investigation”.
While I do not condone police heavy-handedness there has been excessive “caving in” to hoodlums by many police administrators and many cops feel that they are not supported fully by their leaders. We don’t need cameras, we just need cops to get their balls given back to them.
Jeeperman:
Do you personally know or have a reference to any kind of information supporting the idea that cops feel that they cannot perform their duties because of the alleged perpetrator’s race?