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Video Surveillance Cameras Fight Crime

There are smart criminals, and then there are the not so smart. In the instance of one New Orleans hoodlum, he found out the hard way that it’s not easy to outsmart today’s video surveillance technology.

When New Orleans police first installed video surveillance cameras in high-crime areas—well, let’s put it this way—word spread quicker than a southern California forest fire in the middle of those Santa Ana winds. Every thug around began looking over his shoulder, and one in particular decided to do something about it.

Armed with a heavy-duty paintball gun loaded with Mardi Gras beads, this thug decided to neutralize some surveillance equipment. He thought that the two video surveillance cameras he had selected for termination were just like the ones you would find at the local convenience store, and that destruction of the cameras would render their tapes useless for identification purposes. That mistake proved costly. Being that the video surveillance cameras were IP-based digital devices, all the recorded images ended up on a PC hard drive at police headquarters, where they could be retrieved at a moment’s notice. “You should have seen this guy’s face when we marched him in and showed him the video. He was absolutely dumbfounded,” said the arresting officer.

New Orleans has always had its share of criminal activity. The city is a major port and a popular convention site, and it is teeming with tourists year round. The architecture, cuisine, and music make this metropolitan area a magnet for break-ins and robberies—a fact that led to aggressive action by city departments in 2003 to do something about violent crime. One city official summed it up, saying, “When your homicide figures are higher than New York’s, and there’s a drug dealer on every corner, it’s time to do something about it.”

It was the city’s mayor that originally floated the idea of video surveillance cameras, explained an aide with the mayor’s Office of Technology. The mayor had attended several conferences dealing with urban needs and assessments and concluded that video surveillance was a necessity, not an option, for deterring crime.

Even before the pilot video surveillance program was completed, the city had determined a 57 percent reduction in murders for the same prior period and a reduction in car thefts of some 30 percent. These startling results have fueled massive support from more than 160 business, church, and neighborhood associations—leading to an adopt-a-camera video surveillance program whereby these groups can pay a $5,000 fee to have video surveillance cameras installed at a location of their choosing. “We’ll pass the plate as many times as we need to raise the money for this stuff,” one church elder joked. “This gives us a chance to take our streets back and to make them safer for our children.”

Again, the mayor’s push to install this system had been validated on multiple occasions, leading him to say in a news conference, “These video surveillance cameras not only document the crime, they are witnesses that nobody can tamper with.”

With such a successful pilot project, the city is now planning to expand the benefits that video surveillance cameras can provide. The Technology Office has in mind turning police cruisers into mobile wireless hot spots—a perfectly logical decision with all of the Wi-Fi in place. This gives field personnel immediate access to data and imagery of crimes in progress. Plans are also underway to expand the video surveillance network from New Orleans’ mid-city First District to the Sixth District. There the cameras can monitor bridges, railroads, and other potential Homeland Security targets. “There can never be enough eyes and ears on the ground,” a beat cop said. “Apprehending perpetrators can be challenging, and these video surveillance cameras are just the thing to slow down criminal activity.”

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