August 30, 2010 in City

Surveillance cameras help deter crime, manage traffic

And in the Spokane area, they are becoming ubiquitous

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Dan Pelle photo

Mike Hill keeps an eye on security monitors at the STA Plaza in downtown Spokane on Friday.
(Full-size photo)

Maybe Rockwell’s 1984 song “Somebody’s Watching Me,” about the fear of being watched, foretold the future of surveillance.

The chorus, “I always feel like somebody’s watching me. I have no privacy,” is certainly true in places like New York and Chicago, where manned surveillance stations keep an eye on hundreds of square miles. It isn’t too far from reality in downtown Spokane, either.

With Pig Out in the Park starting Wednesday at Riverfront Park, people will be flooding the downtown area. If a person does something criminal, embarrassing or even heroic, chances are it will be caught on camera.

“Video surveillance is in homes … businesses … it’s growing,” said Frank Harrill, FBI supervisor for Eastern Washington.

Security cameras now keep watch around the River Park Square mall and inside its garage, Spokane City Hall, the Spokane Transit Authority Plaza, the Federal Building, the post office, KHQ, The Spokesman-Review buildings, the Pavilion in Riverfront Park, and numerous businesses in between.

Traffic management cameras are focused on nearly 50 intersections in Spokane County, including the Monroe Street Bridge and Interstate 90, Second and Monroe, Second and Browne, Third and Maple, and Third and Washington. The video feeds, which are not recorded and are intended to make drivers and incident response crews aware of accidents and slowdowns, can be viewed online at www.srtmc.org.

The mere presence of a camera can be a crime deterrent, said Marla Nunberg, vice president of the Downtown Spokane Partnership, a member-supported nonprofit with a goal of revitalizing the downtown area.

In the downtown core, “because the cameras are all used in private businesses or on private property it’s not an invasion of privacy,” Nunberg said.

While some people feel more secure knowing a camera may snap a picture of someone stealing their car, others believe all the monitoring is an incursion.

The Cato Institute, a nonprofit, libertarian research foundation, says it’s an invasion to capture a person on camera multiple times a day without his or her knowledge.

Those videos could be misused or not properly interpreted, a Cato Institute article says. A video of a man changing his shirt in New York’s Times Square was broadcast nationally and went viral online because officials thought he could have been connected to a car bomb plot in May. He wasn’t.

“When it comes to deterring crime and terrorism, police on the beat are still the sharpest tool we have,” the article states.

Images of suspects in convenience stores or from ATMs have led to many arrests, authorities say. Earlier this year, surveillance footage helped police identify and arrest a suspect in the slaying of Douglas J. Klages, whose body was found in a cave in the Dishman Hills Natural Area.

“Surveillance has been adopted in banks, and that change has resulted in many arrests in those instances,” Harrill said.

Seven comments on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  Montauban on August 30 at 1:52 a.m.

  Not only public videos are monitoring the US public at large, but did you know in some state’s, the FBI or CIA or other law enforcement entities can actually be justified in going into your yard at night and place a GPS device under you car?

  The State of California Supreme Court judge said that “rich” people are “exceptions”. Why? Just because they have locked gates, that’s why, so no person can enter their driveway at night. So this translates that the others who do not have locked driveways, allow egress to the mailman, garbage collectors, the newsboy, the meter-reader, etc., even dogs and cats. It’s allowable, then.

  But, really, I have no problem at all with someone monitoring my activities. Because I’m clean. Although this is a fact, even people who are “clean” as well, can have themselves duly monitored in all ways possible; phone taps, surveillance, GPS locator’s, etc, just because they “know” someone who is suspected of a criminal act, or has done criminal acts, or is being surveilled for something out of character which brings attention to national law enforcement entities.

  Orwellian society? Yup. It’s here already! Get used to it.

• 

  lewis8457 on August 30 at 7:47 a.m.

  Your clean and the cops clean are two different things. You can be well inside the law and still get shot by police.

  there is no clean anymore any one of us can be a victim, just like that.

  I still don’t want to lose what privacy i have because if my so called safety. When that in reality is a lie.

• 

  SpokaneLiberal on August 30 at 7:57 a.m.

  Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither. (and get neither….)

• 

  ChefGus/ John Olsen on August 30 at 8:33 a.m.

  I too am not worried “personally” about being watched… or monitored… if I was I’d not be on these blogs… or show up in the courtroom in such instances as the trial for one of the RiverFront Park Fourth of July demonstrators. I am quite sure that my “File” is deep and wide…..

  There is a balance here with regards safety… and our Constitutional right to Privacy and freedom of movement. The perception by most folks is that cameras make us all “Safer” is on the surface of it a reasonable deduction… however most “Crime” occurs in seconds or minutes… so a response other than one’s own personal ability to fend off the offender is the ONLY thing that will make a difference.

  I guess it does offer employment to many many government and police state workers…. but my view is that having those same folks out on the beat as community workers… in a COPS sort of mode would make a real difference.

  We have the roving downtown patrols of brown shirted men…. better that they were women than men.. as it is shown that female police officers often resolve conflict and untoward interactions between two citizens in a non combative and less visceral way.

  In a large crowd like Pig Out.. which I have worked six days of six several times as a political booth staff person you truly are dependent on the “Kindness of Strangers”….. and not the jack booted scary swat team guys walking around looking mean and changing the mood of the whole celebration of end of summer.

  John Olsen Spokane

• 

  mikeln on August 30 at 9:41 a.m.

  I just don’t see a drop in crime. If we really want a drop in the crime that has been hurting us lately, put a few cameras in the corporate boardrooms.

• 

  eagleproducer on August 30 at 9:55 a.m.

  Perhaps the final lines of the Pledge of Allegiance need to be changed: …one nation, under surveillance, with liberty and justice surrendered to cowards and fear.

  I”ve seen “the other,” and it’s me. Or will be soon enough.

• 

  PlanB on August 30 at 10:05 a.m.

  The article is exceptional in that there is no evidence whatsoever that all this surveillance has deterred crime. In the case of the ATM, it has helped solve a crime.

  Seems like we are paying a high price for the perception of safety.