[Infowarrior] - NYPD flips on surveillance cameras to fight crime and terror

[Richard Forno]

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NYPD flips on surveillance cameras to fight crime and terror
By TOM HAYS
Associated Press Writer

April 16, 2006, 11:32 AM EDT

NEW YORK -- Along a gritty stretch of Knickerbocker Avenue in Brooklyn,
police this month quietly launched one of the nation's most ambitious plans
to combat street crime and terrorism.

And there were no cops in sight.

Peering down from lamp posts about 30 feet above the sidewalk were three
wireless video recorders, each emblazoned with "NYPD" and equipped with two
zoom lenses.

The cameras were the first installment of a high-tech surveillance program
to place 500 cameras throughout the city at a cost of $9 million. Hundreds
of additional cameras could follow if the city receives $81.5 million in
federal grants it has requested to safeguard Lower Manhattan and parts of
midtown with a surveillance "ring of steel" modeled after security measures
in London's financial district.

Officials with the New York Police Department _ which considers itself at
the forefront of counterterrorism among U.S. cities since the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks _ claim the money would be well-spent. They say revelations
that al-Qaida once cased the New York Stock Exchange and other financial
institutions shows terrorists have a fixation on Lower Manhattan.

"We have every reason to believe New York remains in the cross-hairs, so we
have to do what it takes to protect the city," Police Commissioner Raymond
Kelly said in remarks last week at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy
School of Government.

Law enforcement and transportation agencies already have about 1,000 cameras
in the subways, with 2,100 scheduled to be in place by 2008. An additional
3,100 cameras are monitoring city housing projects.

The department believes its 500 security cameras on the street will deter
crime in busy commercial districts once potential robbers and burglars
realize they could be caught on videotape. The plan for Lower Manhattan, if
funded, would rely on a more sophisticated closed-circuit system that would
allow officers to monitor live feeds inside a command bunker.

New York's approach isn't unique: Chicago spent roughly $5 million on a
2,000-camera system. In Washington, D.C., Homeland Security officials plan
to spend $9.8 million for surveillance cameras and sensors on a rail line
near the Capitol. And Philadelphia has increasingly relied on video
surveillance.

Privacy advocates in New York have depicted the NYPD's camera binge as Big
Brother run amok. The plan, they say, needs more study and safeguards that
would preserve privacy and guard against abuses like racial profiling and
voyeurism.

The department "is installing cameras first and asking questions later,"
said Donna Lieberman, executive director the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Police officials insist that law-abiding New Yorkers have nothing to fear
because the cameras will be restricted to public areas. The police
commissioner recently established a panel of four corporate defense lawyers
to advise the department on surveillance policies.

"The police department must be flexible to meet an ever changing threat,"
Kelly said. "We also have to ensure whatever measures we take are reasonable
as the Constitution requires. That's the only way to retain public support
and preserve individual freedoms."

Lieberman, while conceding cameras can help investigators identify suspects
once a crime has been committed, argued they can't stop crime in the first
place. She cited a 2002 study that concluded that closed-circuit systems
used in 14 British cities had little or no impact on crime rates _ just as
it didn't keep terrorists last year from bombing the London subway system.

"The London experience shouldn't be misconstrued that the 'ring of steel'
prevents terrorism," she said. "But that's how it's being pitched."

Police in New York were impressed last summer by reports that their British
counterparts drew on 80,000 videotapes to identify and retrace the routes of
the suicide bombers and the suspects in a failed follow-up attack. NYPD
officers were dispatched to London last September to study a system which
photographs virtually every person and car entering the City of London, home
to the financial district and landmarks like St. Paul's Cathedral.

In Lower Manhattan, police envision a closed-circuit system that would
monitor a series of fortified check points leading in and out of a roughtly
one-square-mile district south of Chambers Street. Another set of cameras
would read license plate numbers so they could be cross-checked with a
database listing cars that have been stolen or linked to criminal or terror
suspects.

Timothy Horner, a specialist with the Kroll security firm and former NYPD
captain, said the measures make sense.

"It's not a cure-all, and the department is not thinking that way," he said.
"But we really want law enforcement to use whatever tools they can to keep
us safe."

Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.