Friday, January 25, 2008

Dallas police surveillance cameras may not reduce crime

By Scott Henson of Grits For Breakfast

So which is it: Is Dallas one of the most crime-ridden cities in the country with robberies of businesses on the rise, as the Dallas Morning News tells us ("Banks continue to cope with spate of robberies: 2007 total falls just below record, business breakins rise 10%," Jan. 9), or have surveillance cameras miraculously reduced crime in Dallas' business district by 28% in their first year, as the Downtown Dallas Association told the Austin Statesman this week ("Acevedo wants to put police cameras in key areas," Jan. 24)?

I'm betting the Dallas News' sources are a better reflection of the real overall crime rate. Whaddya think? (There's a vigorous debate on the subject of surveillance cameras already occurring, btw, on the Statesman's blog.)

Even if crime has decreased that much, I personally doubt surveillance cameras had much to do with it. The best longitudinal camera studies say they do little or nothing to reduce crime when used for general public surveillance, as Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo proposes, and are more frequently used for leering at attractive women on the street than preventing crime. (When used on specific, high-value assets like car parks, and when they're monitored, they're more useful, but not just out in the street. See prior Grits coverage of a landmark study by the British Home Office finding little crime reduction from camera surveillance.)

I've argued previously that instead of "multiplying" officers' ability to monitor crime, even when they "work," surveillance cameras usurp police management decisions by over-allocating scarce resources to monitored areas.

While cameras in public spaces do little to reduce crime, they open up easy avenues for abuse. As I've written previously:

There's another problem with camera surveillance for crime fighting purposes that's seldom discussed. Cameras can be defeated with inexpensive, low-tech means, like sunglasses, hats, hoods, minimal disguises, or a six cent paintball pellet. So it's very easy to thwart the cameras, but whenever a crime occurs, officers have to watch hours and hours of video, usually with little benefit to the case. And while they are doing that, they are not investigating crimes.

That last bit about cops wasting time watching video isn't just me talking. I borrowed the notion from a "world-weary" London cop/blogger who wrote in 2006 that "CCTV viewing occupies a disproportionate amount of police time with very little tangible result. This fact is well known to street criminals."

When both cops and the street criminals know cameras don't actually combat crime, the only reason left to favor cameras is to fool the public into thinking you're doing something as a PR stunt.

RELATED: Pink Dome has some questions for the Chief that can't be answered with more government camera surveillance.

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• Crime
• Politics and Government > City Government > Dallas > Dallas Police Department

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