In response to vandalism and thefts, Atlanta will pay $350,000 per year for three years to install security cameras to help police officers monitor park facilities, including pools, recreation centers and other areas that host after-school programs.
A resolution authorizing the contract with GC&E Systems Group Inc. and Convergint Technologies LLC., a deal worth more than $1 million, was approved by the City Council on Monday. The contract will eventually allow for the installation of cameras in 27 recreation centers that currently lack them.
By this fall, the plan is to install cameras in all 11 recreational centers that have after-school programs.
At the Adamsville Recreation Center in west Atlanta, staffers were able to stop several vehicle break-ins by catching the would-be thieves on camera and calling police, George Dusenbury, commissioner of Atlanta’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs, told Channel 2 Action News.
Meanwhile, at the Dunbar Recreation Center southwest of downtown, cameras monitor a new computer room and the dozens of computers in it. Dunbar is one of six recreation centers that already have new cameras.
Eventually, the city plans to connect the cameras to the Atlanta Police Department’s Video Integration Center, the same idea Mayor Kasim Reed has said he wants for all of the city’s public schools.
“We need to get eyes on the campus as soon as something happens,” Reed said recently. “So when officers get a call to come and support safety staff on campus, they have a sense of what they were walking into.”
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