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City mulls moving cameras to streets

Few arrests by city police directly linked to surveillance camera use in four parks over the past four years is leading the city administration and some on City Council to contemplate relocating the spyware to residential streets.

“My understanding, there’s been fewer than five arrests directly attributed to the cameras in the parks,” said city police Chief David J. Young, who took office last April.

The footage showed an arrest linked to the cameras resulting in a charge of simple assault, the capturing of footage of witnesses that solved crimes, and vandalism, he said.

The images from the cameras equipped with pan, tilt and zoom capabilities are sent from Roy A. Flanigan, Memorial, Newberry and Lose parks. To date, they have shown no shootings or violent crimes, Young said.

Councilman Don Noviello said he’s upset with the fact that the cameras in the parks have produced so few results.

“After six years, we’re not sure we’re getting nearly $500,000 worth of value,” Noviello said.

The cameras and system were bought by the city using a $450,000 COPS technology grant from the U.S. Department of Justice in a project that actually began seven years ago. It wasn’t until four years ago that the cameras were in the parks and the system was up and running.

Personal privacy was an issue with City Council when it adopted a resolution in January 2010 limiting the cameras to use in city parks and public facilities. That resolution prevented the cameras from being installed on city streets in high-crime neighborhoods, as Mayor Gabriel J. Campana had hoped.

“Do the people want to see reductions in crime or not?” he asked this past week. “We will follow the laws and will not violate privacy rights.”

Meanwhile, the use of cameras in streets is working in Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, according to Young, who spoke to the privacy issue.

“You are guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution with the expected right to privacy in your home or on your private property,” he said. “No one is guaranteed any expectation to privacy once they are in the public domain.”

Whenever any police surveillance occurs on private property, a search warrant is obtained first from the courts, Young said. “We would never look into a private residence” without a court order, he said.

Councilman Joel Henderson, at council’s public works committee meeting this past week, cautioned his fellow council members against any haste to abandon the cameras at parks, saying that deterrence can’t be measured and the cameras also work to provide footage after-the-fact that police might be able to use.

Henderson said the city must differentiate between the different forms of use before completely removing them from parks because of cost considerations.

Councilman Clifford “Skip” Smith, chairman of the public works and public safety committees, asked the police department to produce a written report for council on the best use and cost of the camera system.

“I want to see the cost of maintenance since Sept. 1, 2016, and reasons that relocation to streets would be more beneficial to the public safety,” Smith said.

The city does not have a maintenance agreement for the camera system.

There has been a need to replace some parts in recent months and pay for maintenance and those costs have been too high, Smith said.

Campana told the committee the report would be forthcoming.

“I’ve given the department four weeks to produce the report,” Campana said, adding he’d like to see at least one camera remain in each of the parks.

Young said the report would be prepared using information from the department’s records-management system and from actual patrol.

The records-management system can pinpoint crimes, using a virtual pin on a map of the city, narrowing the area to as close as a city block, and can be used to detect traffic patterns and where the most vehicle accidents are occurring, Young said.

The information also may allow officials to add signs or help engineers to redesign intersections to improve public safety, he said.

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