Spy cameras fail to focus on street crime

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Surveillance cameras like those authorized by the D.C. Council for police investigations and now being put in place have shown limited success in decreasing violent crime in other cities.

Baltimore, for example, set up about 80 cameras in May 2005 in high-crime neighborhoods. Volunteers and retired law-enforcement personnel monitor the images in real time, but the cameras have not helped put criminals behind bars.

"Generally, the State's Attorney's Office has not found them to be a useful tool to prosecutors," office spokeswoman Margaret Burns said. "They're good for circumstantial evidence, but it definitely isn't evidence we find useful to convict somebody of a crime."

Miss Burns said Baltimore prosecutors kept detailed statistics from the first nine months of the camera program. Most of the 500 cases forwarded to prosecutors were quality-of-life crimes, she said, and 40 percent of those cases were dropped by prosecutors or dismissed by the courts.

"We have not used any footage to resolve a violent-crime case," she said.

Miss Burns said police sometimes misidentify suspects because the cameras produce "grainy" and "blurry" images.

"We have had that happen more than once," she said.

The D.C. Council, faced with a sharp increase in crime, passed emergency legislation July 19 that allows the Metropolitan Police Department to use surveillance cameras in neighborhoods as part of an emergency plan.

D.C. workers on Thursday began installing the first four of an expected 47 cameras throughout the city. Officials said the four cameras are temporary and will be replaced by permanent ones later this month. About 24 cameras will be deployed by the end of August, and 23 more will be added in September, police said.

Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey is required to notify only two persons about plans to place a camera in any given neighborhood: an advisory neighborhood commissioner and the appropriate council member. The cameras will operate 24 hours a day, but police will review the images only when a known crime may have been recorded.