Pubdate: Wed, 26 Apr 2006
Source: Chicago Sun-Times (IL)
Copyright: 2006 The Sun-Times Co.
Contact:  http://www.suntimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/81
Author: Fran Spielman, City Hall Reporter
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/af.htm (Asset Forfeiture)

SEIZED ASSETS PAY FOR SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS

Assets seized from drug dealers have been used to buy 70 more  
surveillance cameras that will be installed over the next two weeks  
in high-crime areas and near high schools, Mayor Daley announced today.

Fifty of the new cameras are what Daley called "the next generation"  
of surveillance technology.

They weigh 35 pounds and cost just $20,000 apiece, compared to 100  
pounds at $34,000 each for the old model. Both versions have zoom  
lenses, night vision capability and the ability to rotate 360  
degrees. Twenty-five have gunshot detection technology capable of  
"triangulating within 20 feet" the location of a shooting.

The new cameras bring to 170 the number of "Operation Disruption"  
cameras installed in high-crime areas with microwave antennas that  
beam pictures back to the 911 emergency center and district stations.  
Roughly half are monitored around the clock.

Technology that allows police officers to monitor cameras on their  
beat from their squad cars is still being developed. The city is also  
still testing sophisticated software capable of spotting "suspicious  
and unusual behavior."

"Eventually, as the technology gets better, you'll have more and more  
cameras in communities -- for the safety of people and prevention,"  
said Daley, who has embraced a radical plan to require every licensed  
Chicago business open more than 12 hours a day to install indoor and  
outdoor cameras.

"If you have children playing in the playground, around a school or  
outside your home, people want to feel safe. If people who live in  
high-rises have doormen and cameras, people inbungalows, two-flats  
and apartment buildings would [like the same thing]. The want to feel  
safe. Whether it's riding the L, riding Metra or in a community,  
cameras are very, very effective. They prevent a lot of crime."

Police Supt. Phil Cline said it's not enough to "simply install a  
camera" in a high-crime area.

Video surveillance needs to be conducted in tandem with other crime  
reduction strategies -- like flooding an area with personnel from a  
"targeted response unit" or conducting special undercover operations  
to disrupt open-air drug markets, he said.

"When we put up a camera, that means we're also implementing  
strategies to ensure that crime simply doesn't move down the block or  
around the corner," Cline said.

"We've installed cameras in areas where gangs, guns and drugs are  
most active with one idea: to hit the gangbangers in the pocketbook  
by disrupting their narcotics trade."

The mayor was tight-lipped about where the latest round of cameras  
would be installed.

He would only say that some would be located near high schools, based  
on an assessment now underway to determine the CTA routes that  
students use to get to school and the paths they walk to and from bus  
and L stops.

One of the new cameras was installed at 56th and Loomis in Englewood  
to serve as a backdrop for a mayoral news conference that was  
ultimately moved indoors because of heavy rain. That's a neighborhood  
- -- with seven cameras already -- still grieving from the shooting  
deaths of two young girls gunned down in the safety of their homes.

"The greatest compliment I received was from an 82-year-oldman who  
lived on a corner where a camera was [installed]. He came to me  
crying and said, 'This is the first time I've ever been able to sit  
on my porch,' " said Englewood Ald. Shirley Coleman (16th), after  
joining Daley at a news conference at Libby Elementary School, 5300  
S. Loomis.

"The camera has that kind of effect. It gives people a sense of  
security."

But Coleman said she was concerned to learn that not all of the  
cameras are being monitored around the clock.

"I don't want to see any dog-and-pony-show cameras in my ward. If  
something happens, God forbid, they [can] say, 'Well, this one was  
not monitored.'I'm not interested in props for the community. We have  
to have the real stuff," Coleman said.

Two years ago, Chicago became a world leader in Big Brother technology.

With help from a $5.1 million federal homeland security grant, the  
city announced plans to install 250 cameras at locations at high risk  
of a terrorist attack, link them and 2,000 existing cameras to the  
911 center and equip them all with sophisticated software capable of  
spotting "suspicious and unusual behavior."

City Hall is now finalizing a contract for "Operation Virtual  
Shield," Daley's plan to link 1,000 miles of "sometimes stand-alone  
fiber" into a unified "homeland security grid"--complete with sensors  
capable of monitoring the city's water supply and detecting chemical  
and biological weapons.

The city also made an unprecedented offer to the private sector.  
Businesses that agreed to pay an undisclosed fee for the privilege  
would have cameras outside their entrances and even in their  
stairwells monitored by the 911 center.

Last summer, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that Boeing Corp. had  
become the first Chicago business to join the camera network.

On Tuesday, City Hall disclosed that 50 corporations -- ranging from  
utilities to companies in the LaSalle Street financial district --  
have also signed on. Officials were tight-lipped about the fee and  
the precise number of cameras.
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MAP posted-by: Jackl