The Seattle City Council came to Capitol Hill Monday to find out what the community had to say about the surveillance cameras currently operating — but not being utilized by the police — in Cal Anderson Park.
The Council’s Parks and Seattle Center Committee held a meeting Monday evening at the Miller Community Center and invited the public to comment on the Cal Anderson surveillance program. Council member Sally Bagshaw, Chair of the Committee and Council member Tom Rasmussen, the Vice Chair of the Committee attended. Council member Bruce Harrell, a Committee Member, was absent. CHS counted 10 non-media audience members, about half of whom were present to discuss Seattle Center design.
The first person to speak on the cameras was Jim Pugel, SPD’s Assistant Chief and head of the Investigations Bureau. Pugel spoke in favor of utilizing the cameras, arguing that the October 2009 evaluation had been premature and that a longer period of study was warranted. He cited three recent instances where CCTVs had been crucial to police in identifying and arresting suspects: 1) London Tube Attacks in July 2005; 2) the South Park murder of Teresa Butz and the assault of her partner; and 3) the slaying of SPD Officer Tim Brenton.
Council members Bagshaw and Rasmussen focused their remarks on the costs of the surveillance cameras. Though Pugel had stated that the costs of (re)training and/or dedicating Parks personnel would be “de minimis,” he said that ultimately, it would fall under the Parks budget, not SPD’s.
Phil Mocek, a CHS contributor, spoke against extending the pilot program and utilizing the cameras. Mocek argued that the CCTVs are ineffective in deterring and/or preventing crime. In addition, he offered that cameras in the park were an unwarranted government intrusion on privacy.
Brian Alseth of the ACLU also spoke. He noted that three cameras offered little in the way of deterring and/or preventing. The other choice Seattle has, Alseth posited, is to follow the London model (i.e. cameras on every street corner). He concluded by stating the Cal Anderson surveillance cameras had been authorized as a pilot program. And the October 2009 study showed that the pilot program was ineffective.
In June 2008, the City Council passed Ordinance 122705, which authorized a pilot program to place a total of 12 surveillance cameras in four Seattle parks: Cal Anderson, Hing Hay, Occidental Square, and Victor Steinbrueck. Due to City budget constraints, only three of the cameras were ever installed, all in Cal Anderson Park. The pilot phase of the surveillance camera program concluded in late January 2010, and the City Council is now seeking input from the community to inform their decision on the future of the camera program. The City Auditor’s Office conducted an evaluation of the pilot program in October 2009. The evaluation concluded that the cameras had not been effective at deterring criminal activity and the only documented time SPD utilized any footage was during the investigation of reports of a roving gang attacking people in the park in August 2009.
Bagshaw’s committee must decide on whether to continue the operation of the cameras and, if so, under what circumstances and from which budget. We’ll check in with Bagshaw’s office to find out how the committee will proceed.
I consider myself a pretty liberal person, but I actually like the ideas of cameras in certain places… but only if they are using them when crimes happen.
3rd and Bell, 3rd and Pike, and that park in Pioneer square that no normal people hang out in would be a good start.
Alseth did not say that the cameras had been authorized by the public as a pilot program. And they weren’t. He said the 4-park camera surveillance program was intended and implemented by former Mayor Nickel’s office to be a pilot program. The cameras were vetted in the Cap. Hill community only once, at a meeting with Cap. Hill Chamber and Cal Anderson Park Alliance members in Sept. 2007, and that group rejected the camera program. The 3 cameras were installed 4 months later without further discussion with either City Council or the community, as promised.
The cases cited by the deputy chief were all after the fact, how about we spend money on preventative measures instead? Cameras are only good at catching people in narrow fields of view, ATMs, entry points, etc. The distances in the park will yield poor image quality.
I wonder if the cameras have caught a single incident since they’ve been installed? Making that footage public would go a long ways towards garnering community support. If they haven’t as I suspect, they are a waste of time and money.
Better lighting, SPD foot patrols, and community involvement is what’s needed.
I don’t recall Alseth going into the history of how the pilot program initially got funded. I do recall Rasmussen recounting the history. I have removed “by the public” however.
SPD’s Pugel has to reach to London to find an example? Let’s not go down that path. Admit it, Pugel, SPD would like to see a surveillance system similar to that of the British, with cameras lining every street.
“only if they are using them when crimes happen.”
Would these cameras magically turn on and off as needed?
“3rd and Bell, 3rd and Pike, and that park in Pioneer square that no normal people hang out in would be a good start.”
Ah, but not in your backyard. I frequent all of the places you mention, and find no real problems. The idea of police surveillance makes me much more uneasy than any problems I might find there now.
Cameras recently helped in Times Square.
Stealth, I agree with what you say about “not in your back yard.” True, I wouldn’t want cameras in my neighborhood, but that’s why I live in a “good” neighborhood. Take that as you will.
But you misunderstood my comment about use. “Only if they are using them when crimes happen.” Doesn’t have to mean they are turned on and off only when crimes happen but that they are on all the time and they actually take the time to review the footage if a crime happens in the park.
As far as you not seeing “any real problems” on 3rd and Pike and such,… really? Maybe you should take a closer look.
But I do agree it’s a fine line between security and big brother.
How did camera help in Times Square? Just because you see a picture on TV doesn’t mean cameras helped solved the crime.
An inept terrorist is the only thing that prevented the loss of life in Times Square.
I’m glad you think everything can be solved by luck or ineptness. Let’s see how long that works for you.
My question again his how do you think cameras helped? I see a complete failure in public safety here, an amateur with a truck full of explosives was able to drive and abandon it in what is the densest population center of our country. And no, he was not prevented or apprehended by cameras or law enforcement at the scene, he was able to arm his (failed) bomb, and leave the scene. If not for a street vendor noticing the smoke who knows how long the truck would have been there.
I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. Why are we calling these spy cams when they are not hidden or secret? Sure, they’re surveillance cameras, but not spy cams.
Secondly, there’s a lot of complaint about using funds for this that could be going elsewhere. How much it it really costing the city to run some cameras? I have a hard time believing it’s all that expensive.
Very high cost, camera hardware alone is in the 10’s of thousands for high resolution pan/tilt/zoom cameras in housings. Getting power and network connectivity to these locations probably involved street crews and city electricians and contractors. These jobs get cheaper with the economy of scale, and with only 3 cameras there’s none of that here.
My guess was around 100k, looks like it was 144k. Ouch.
They may not fit your criteria for “spy”, but they aren’t well-advertised, either. Good “deterrent” cams would be well-labelled and prominent, to …you know… deter crime and put potential criminals on notice. These are rather out-of-the-way and far far above the line of sight.
hey hyphenhyphen: “the cams helped in times square”
huh? So did the car registration and tracing the email responding to the craigslist ad for the car-for-sale. The cameras did not actually bring justice… good detective work did.
Ltrain: $144,000????? please cite your source. That’s amazing.
It would almost seem the crime we should be worried about is someone stealing the ‘gold-plated’ CAMS themselves!
Found it in another caphill blog post:
http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2010/03/23/two-years-later
I’m not an expert in surveillance, I did have a (now defunct) company that installed surveillance systems in local bars and for a couple municipal and federal governments, so I’ve seen how the cost of installation can get away.
For each camera, trench work needs to be completed, wires need to be installed, conduit and measures to safeguard need to be installed. If the cameras are mounted high then a basket needs to be rented at a cost of several hundred per day. This is the physical part of the install, the technical aspect of engineering and delivering a working system can also be expensive in design work, network engineering, etc.
Cameras are only what you see, these systems also have control center equipment with controllers, servers, and network equipment to keep it all running. A camera is useless w/o something to save the images. For a municipal installation these should be redundant systems to ensure if there’s a murder or act of violence in the cameras field of view it is captured and usable as evidence.
Surveillance, especially in large open areas, is a very expensive undertaking.
Considering the cameras are already installed and that cost has already been assessed, one would assume that me asking about “the cost to run” them would only apply to “the cost to run” them.
The cameras gave them a potential suspect. It does not matter that he wasn’t the actual criminal, it was a suspect. You can look up the difference. It provided a lead and detectives follow up on leads.
Cameras provide help in identifying people all the time.
While I did speak against extending the pilot program and use of the cameras in general, I did not argue “that the CCTVs are ineffective in deterring and/or preventing crime” (though I believe that to be the case). Nor did I say “that cameras in the park were an unwarranted government intrusion on privacy”. While I do think there is some reasonable expectation of privacy in the park (we don’t expect cameras to be looking up skirts or microphones to be recording quiet conversations between two people who are not near other people), I’m not going to argue anything about privacy in a public park. What I said was that I oppose government surveillance of people when there’s not a specific reason to do so. That there are a few bad people among us does not justify treating the rest of us like we’ve done something wrong.
I said:
the Seattle Channel video is awkward):
Well said. Thanks, ACLU-WA, and thanks, Brian.
For more on the ineffectiveness of public surveillance cameras, see the following articles and studies, a printed copy of each of which I provided to the City Council Parks Committee at their February 18, 2010, meeting:
S.F. public housing cameras no help in homicide arrests
Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
CCTV ‘not a crime deterrent’
Wednesday, 14 August, 2002, 14:35 GMT 15:35 UK
THE SCOTTISH OFFICE CENTRAL RESEARCH UNIT
CRIME AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE RESEARCH FINDINGS No 30
The Effect of closed circuit television on recorded crime rates
and public concern about crime in Glasgow
CITRIS study on SF public cameras released
Faulty edit, there. What I tried to write between the first and second block quotes was that Brian Alseth’s point about the London system seems to have been missed on the author of this post, and that the following was what he said at the meeting (roughly, because it was difficult to transcribe from the Seattle Channel video).
And what happened to all my links? I sure wish we could preview before submitting comments. I’ll try again:
S.F. public housing cameras no help in homicide arrests
Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/14/
CCTV ‘not a crime deterrent’
Wednesday, 14 August, 2002, 14:35 GMT 15:35 UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2192911.stm
CCTV ‘fails to reduce crime’
Friday, 28 June, 2002, 14:41 GMT 15:41 UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2071397.stm
ACLU: What Criminologists and Others Studying Cameras Have Found
June 25, 2008
http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/expert-findings-s
http://www.aclu.org/files/images/asset_upload_file708_35775.
THE SCOTTISH OFFICE CENTRAL RESEARCH UNIT
CRIME AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE RESEARCH FINDINGS No 30
The Effect of closed circuit television on recorded crime rates
and public concern about crime in Glasgow
http://www.scotcrim.u-net.com/researchc2.htm
CITRIS study on SF public cameras released
http://www.citris-uc.org/news/SFcamerastudy
http://www.citris-uc.org/files/CITRIS%20SF%20CSC%20Study%20F
CCTV CAMERA EVALUATION
The crime reduction effects of public CCTV cameras in the City
of Philadelphia, PA installed during 2006
February, 2008
http://www.temple.edu/cj/misc/PhilaCCTV.pdf
In addition to adding a preview capability, we shoud also add a character limited. I assume you are a lawyer because you are long-winded.
Short, concise, and to the point wins the game.