Someday very soon, if you stroll through Piedmont Park, travel the Downtown Connector, hit one of the bars or restaurants in Midtown or visit the Georgia Dome or the Philips Arena, you’ll have an invisible companion: the Atlanta Police Department.
This spring, the department will open a video integration center designed to compile and analyze footage from thousands of public and private security cameras throughout the city. Images from as many as 500 cameras in downtown and Midtown are expected to be flowing into the center by mid-summer.
Several metro Atlanta police agencies use cameras to bolster public safety, but the city’s new venture, which will integrate data supplied by private entities such as CNN, America’s Mart and Midtown Blue as well as public agencies such as the Federal Reserve, MARTA and the Georgia Department of Transportation, represents a whole new level of electronic surveillance.
Atlanta Police Chief George Turner pointed to the case of Charles Boyer, gunned down outside a Virginia-Highland apartment building in November, to show what cameras can do. Footage from a security camera, which captured images of men refueling a vehicle similar to one described by witnesses to the shooting, contributed to the arrest five days later of the three men charged with Boyer’s murder.
“How successful were we in solving that crime because of the video we had?” Turner asked in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “That’s an example of how this will work.”
In fact, the technology installed in the new center will be capable of much more, according to David Wilkinson, president of the Atlanta Police Foundation, which funds a camera network operated by the private security agency Midtown Blue.
The foundation raised a half-million dollars to supplement the $2.6 million in federal funds the city will use to build its new center. The federal money came from Homeland Security grants and Justice Department seizure funds.
Wilkinson said the center will use software that can identify suspicious activity and guide officers right to the scene of a crime as it’s occurring. In effect, the software will multiply the eyes and ears of the five to seven people per shift who will initially monitor video footage around the clock.
“Monitoring is somewhat of a fallacy,” Wilkinson said. “Analytics will help control the cameras.”
The software includes a program called “Gun Spotter,” which automatically cues up cameras in the vicinity of the sound of gunfire, so dispatchers can get a quick jump on what happened. Other software will send images to the officers’ in-car computers and even to the screens of web-enabled smart phones.
“The real goal is to prevent the crime,” Wilkinson said. “You do that by setting up police patrols, cameras, things that deter criminal from ever committing crime.”
Facial recognition systems, license plate reading and automatic tracking programs also are available, although cities such as Chicago, which has pioneered citywide video surveillance, has reported those technologies are not yet ready for prime time.
Atlanta is modeling its surveillance network after Chicago’s, which integrates data from a 10,000-camera network. This week, the Illinois ACLU issued a report demanding a moratorium on further expansion of Chicago’s system on the grounds that it represents an unacceptable threat to personal privacy.
“Cameras do not deter crime, they just displace it,” said Adam Schwartz, a lawyer for the Illinois ACLU. “It’s difficult to see where the benefits of using cameras outweighs the costs — including a vast amount of money, potential privacy invasion and a potential chilling of free speech.”
With the promise of integrated surveillance capabilities in the hands of Atlanta police, Georgia’s ACLU is voicing similar concerns.
“We always hope for strong oversight and regulation to make sure there are no violations of privacy,” Georgia ACLU attorney Chara Fisher Jackson said. “But until we see it [at work], we won’t say what actions we might take.”
Greg McGraw, who lives in East Cobb and works in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward, isn’t too worried about police looking over his shoulder.
“People expose themselves so much on Facebook, privacy is a joke,” McGraw said. “If it’s going to make people safer, I’m for it.”
Megan Larion, who lives in Buckhead and manages a Virginia-Highland apartment complex, is OK with the cameras, too, especially when she thinks about Boyer’s slaying.
“I guess those folks who think these cameras mark the end of the world will be upset, but that’s all,” Larion said. “I think it’s a good thing. It’ll improve our industry, and people will feel more safe.”
For a preview of how Atlanta’s proposed network will function, you just have to look at the nearly 50 video screens that flicker above the front office of Midtown Blue. When someone calls in to report suspicious activity, a video dispatcher can remotely pan, tilt or zoom any one of the $13,000 cameras, tracking the suspect and directing an officer to the spot.
“When you have a dispatcher sitting here, you can actually catch crimes before they occur,” said Col. Wayne Mock, a retired Atlanta policeman who manages Midtown Blue.
If a crime does occur, the cameras make excellent witnesses, he said. “The video tells you what actually happened and doesn’t get excited like the average witness might.”
Other local police agencies also are using cameras to bolster the impact of their officers.
“We were convinced that this was an effective force multiplier,” said Lilburn police Chief John Davidson.
But cities in other states have encountered glitches. Cincinnati is currently on its second video surveillance network; the first system, started in 2005, proved ineffective. And Orlando’s system failed to deliver on its promise when the city ran short of funds for the necessary software.
In Chicago, even with cameras on every corner, as Mayor Richard M. Daley famously said he wants, video has its limits, said Jonathan Lewin, managing deputy director of the city’s emergency management office.
“It provides an overall positive effect if you can saturate the area,” Lewin said. “But it’s not going to provide the panacea that will completely eliminate crime.”
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