Editorial: City’s surveillance proposal worth effort, price

Big Brother doesn’t always bite. And neither do the city’s recent hopes…

Big Brother doesn’t always bite. And neither do the city’s recent hopes of installing a legion of surveillance cameras, even considering the public price tag.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon and the Community College of Allegheny County jointly filed requests for $12 million to $14 million in federal stimulus money to install a new system of police surveillance cameras.

They plan to use the funds to purchase 220 cameras and develop the software and wireless networking systems that run them. These networking systems would bring wireless Internet into Pittsburgh police squad cars and end the police’s expensive contract with Sprint — potentially saving thousands of city dollars — and of course, improve at-a-distance monitoring.

When examined on a case-by-case basis, security cameras offer a clear advantage in hastening the judicial process. Just last Thursday, security camera footage aided officers in apprehending two teenagers charged with murdering a retired firefighter, the Post-Gazette reports. Police hope the expanded surveillance system will lead to more successes, and such hope has solid grounding.

When comparing the costs of their installation with resultant reductions in crime and court costs, however, cameras have had a more difficult case to make. In fact, little comprehensive research on the effectiveness of modern public surveillance exists. One of the prominent studies, released in 2005 by the British Home Office, put cameras’ benefits in doubt. Collecting data over one year at 13 English municipalities possessing high concentrations of cameras, researchers could attribute crime rate reduction to the surveillance system in only one town. For cameras to have actually fought crime and not run a deficit, the study said, they had to be placed in hard-to-replicate conditions.

But evaluators of Pittsburgh’s camera initiative shouldn’t be discouraged — there are stark differences between the crime dynamic of English boroughs and that of large metropolitan areas. Despite rising skepticism abroad, police departments of major U.S. cities such as Phoenix, New York and Chicago have increased their surveillance capacities over the last decade, according to Howard A. Stern, Pittsburgh’s chief information officer.

Chicago’s camera system recently underwent its own cost-analysis study by the Washington-based Urban Institute this past year, and according to a March 30 ABC7 report, Chicago cameras are effective crime fighters. “[For] every dollar spent on cameras, there was over a $2 savings in terms of the money that was averted for the crimes that were prevented,” Dr. Nancy LaVigne, director of the institute’s justice policy center, said.

With Pitt police cameras already overseeing the Schenley Quad and campus buildings, spreading more cameras across Pittsburgh shouldn’t be too intrusive, and neither would they infringe upon constitutional rights. And as long as city officials collaborate with their Chicagoan counterparts, the proposal could potentially create jobs, reduce crime and save money over time.