St. Louis gets ready to install surveillance cameras downtown

ST. LOUIS -- Police will begin installing a network of surveillance cameras downtown in an effort to curb crime.

The eight wireless video cameras, to be mounted from elevated vantage points, can pan 360 degrees and tilt in any direction.

They can zoom in close enough to magnify a license plate, and record outdoor footage 24 hours a day.

"The cameras are not silver bullets," St. Louis assistant chief Stephen Pollihan told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "They do not take the place of a police officer, but they do add another layer of security."

Others believe the cameras could invade privacy if not used correctly.

"To the extent that those cameras are in place to enhance public safety, we don't have an issue with that as long as [police] don't cross the line in training those cameras in areas where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy," says Redditt Hudson, racial justice manager for the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri.

St. Louis police have used portable surveillance cameras for at least two years at special events where large crowds gather, such as Mardi Gras in Soulard and Fair St. Louis.

The police are pouring about $300,000 into the downtown project.

The cameras will be highly visible, permanent fixtures that feed images to a monitoring station downtown. Inside, civilians will watch television screens and call police when they see suspicious activity.

The Downtown Partnership will pay staff to monitor the cameras by day and during events downtown. The not-for-profit's Ken Gabel assured the cameras would be used appropriately.

Cities such as Chicago, New York and Los Angeles have surveillance cameras numbering in the hundreds. This summer, the New York Police Department announced an anti-terrorism surveillance program that would install 3,000 cameras in lower Manhattan at a cost of about $90 million.

Various agencies have given the cameras mixed reports.

The U.S. Department of Justice claims the cameras are better at combating property crime than violent crime and can help police investigations. But British researchers said they have had little overall impact on crime.

Melissa Ngo, director of the Identification and Surveillance Project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, says police need to evaluate whether camera surveillance is worth the cost. She says the money can be better spent on manpower.

In the coming months, St. Louis police will evaluate the cameras' performance by comparing crime data downtown with statistics from the same time period in the previous year. Then police will consider whether to expand the surveillance program to other neighborhoods.

"It's not a bad tool for police to use, especially if it's well-publicized," said Timothy Maher, associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. "Will it really impact crime levels at any great level? Research suggests that it probably won't."