Chicago Surveillance Cameras to be Fitted With Listening Devices

Chicago Tribune | April 7 2004

Chicago will augment its camera surveillance of high-crime areas with a new listening device that can detect the sound of gunfire and lead to quick dispatch of police to the location, officials said Tuesday.

The announcement came as Mayor Richard Daley declared the test installation of 30 surveillance cameras a resounding success and said 50 more devices are on the way. Daley said he would like to see even more citywide, though he revealed no specific plans.

Technology being added to the new cameras and retrofitted to the older ones will alert police immediately to gunfire and allow simultaneous transmission of video images to the 911 emergency communications center and police headquarters, officials said.

The expansion and upgrades will bring the cost of the Operation Disruption surveillance effort to about $3.5 million, all of it funded by money seized from drug dealers, they said.

"This means, in essence, that the dope dealers are paying for the police to watch them and disrupt their activity," said police First Deputy Supt. Dana Starks.

"This new equipment has proven to be a strong crime deterrent," Daley said. "Through a combination of good police work, new technology like Operation Disruption and community involvement, we can make our children and our neighborhoods safer."

In the seven months since the 30 cameras were installed on light poles, calls to police relating to narcotics from the immediate areas have declined by 76 percent, and serious crimes have dropped by 17 percent, Starks said.

Arrests on the police beats covered by cameras rose by 60 percent, officials said.

Video images from the bulletproof boxes containing the cameras so far have gone only to laptop computers in nearby squad cars. More eyes now will be viewing them at the 911 center and police headquarters with the addition of microwave transmitters attached to the boxes.

Officials acknowledged that the transmitters could be knocked out by bullets, but Assistant Deputy Supt. Ron Huberman said it would take "a great lack of intelligence to want to shoot at these things" because of the gunshot-detection sensors that will be added inside the steel boxes.

Alert in 5 seconds

The sensors will alert dispatchers to shots within five seconds and will transmit the location of the gunfire to within 20 feet, allowing speedy dispatch of officers to the scene, Huberman said.

Without the sensors, police must depend on a citizen to hear gunshots, decide to make the call and dial 911, often with only an approximate location of the incident.

The sensors will detect the acoustic signature of a bullet traveling through the air rather than the sound of the shot, and the alarm will not be triggered by such things as backfiring autos or fireworks, Huberman said.

Beginning in September, the new cameras will be deployed at locations based on crime data and intelligence, officials said. All of the devices will be moved to different locations as needed, officials said.

Not everyone likes the new devices, however.

Sen. Rickey Hendon (D-Chicago) is attempting to push through legislation in Springfield that would limit the cameras to one per block and require the city to remove their distinctive flashing blue lights.

If Hendon had his way, the cameras would be eliminated altogether because, he said, they stigmatize neighborhoods as crime-ridden ghettos--now called "blue-light districts"--and are an intrusion into privacy.

Hendon said that numerous businesses had complained to him that the lights were driving customers away and that residents said they flashed in their home windows and kept them up at night.

Calls plan racist

Hendon also said that the city's plan was racist because the cameras are installed in mostly black and some Latino neighborhoods and that police seemed to be using them as a substitute for adequate officers.

"They're giving us a different form of police protection than they're giving white residents," he said. "We do want police protection. We do want to reduce crime. But no one should be forced to just give up and say, Hey, since we can't get it, we'll settle for the cameras."

Ald. Isaac Carothers (29th), chairman of the City Council's Police and Fire Committee, said he originally shared many of Hendon's concerns but now believes the cameras have reduced drug trafficking and other crime. He has received relatively few complaints from residents, he said.

West Side residents who appeared with Daley and Starks at a police headquarters news conference voiced their support.

"I welcomed them with open arms," said Nellie Joyce Carter, who lives in the 800 block of North Harding Avenue. "People don't want to be seen on camera if they are doing something wrong. ... We are very safe. Before, the kids couldn't play outside."
www.chicagotribune.com/technology/

If it hears you swear does an alarm go off and a nearby terminal spit out a ticket?

Of course it doesn't. Are you crazy? That's not until version 2.0, which won't be out for AT LEAST 6 months.

Be scared when someone suggests this is a good way to deter domestic violence.

Another thought, this isn't likely to cut crime much, but to relocate it to places where there aren't cameras.

In a way, there is a slight parallel to the "piracy" issue, or more specifically marketing and sale of counterfeit CD's, DVD's etc.: that is, one reason why there doesn't seem to be as much emphasis on busting such street sellers (or marketers) other than the occasional high-profile bust as there is in ruining thousands of poor and working families who use P2P networks and "upload" music, may have something to do with the "racial profiling" issue as that raised by Sen. Rickey Hendon viz the matter of surveillance in the Chicago neighborhoods in question. That and the power of the immigrants' lobby.

We hear: "Attention KKK-Mart shoppers!"

We need to hear: "clean-up in isle 9"

...Daley, you just pissed me off bigtime.

Shmoo

"The sensors will alert dispatchers to shots within five seconds and will transmit the location of the gunfire to within 20 feet, allowing speedy dispatch of officers to the scene..."

...two hours later.

What happens if someone's piece-of-shit car backfires and lets a big bang go offscreen. A false alarm that takes emergency personnel away from a real problem.....great thinking at work there.

i live in england and weve got cameras all over the place, they just sit and rotate looking at different parts of the streets, its quite funny to look at a camera point then run as if youve done something bad, bout 30 seconds late cops will be there.

not related but in england swearing is punishable by police, some kid saw a cop car pretended to be scared and they said "dont be an idiot" then he shouted "fuck shit piss shit fuck bollocks" etc etc and then said "you cant arrest me for that" so they did!! 2 hours later he was taken home!!

What happens if you speak out against the "US", isn't that against the law now as well?

Thank your congressmen and the president for that law.

"bollocks"? Here, they'd ask you what accent you're speaking!

haHaHaHaHaHa that kid deserves a award of some kind LMAO ROFL so hard it hurts. sounds like something off jackass.

whew that was funny just had a vision of that kid in some kind of commercial saying that and then trying to wriggle away from them and the screen frozed at the bottem was a closed caption that read( See free speech this is what happens to you after free speech) as the car is being driven away the kids still cursing in the back seat lol.

while the laws and equipment are new, I don't think that the direction is very funny. I hope the system gets hacked, and taken advantage of, and that the hack is important enough to make someone reconsider the idea. Any decent public official would take advantage of that situation and make tea.

Sorry I know my posts were unrelated to the subject but you know I wish I could do a music Video using that as well as inserting anti-RIAA stuff I think it would be kinda cool, anyways the subject at hand will most definatly will be scrutinized by the ucla at some point someones gonna use that to sue for invasion of privacy I know I would.
But then again we live in a time of camaras at intersections or camaras monitoring traffic taking pictures of peoples licence plates for speeding violations.

Since there is no expectation of privacy on a public street (just ask the guy who films those Girls Gone Wild tapes - if you're drunk & on the street, showing off the goodies is fair game for someone with a recorder), this is less an invasion of privacy & more of just a dog & pony show by a Big City mayor so deep in hypocrisy & questionable dealings, to prove he's for the public interest.

The gang bangers will just have to beat their victims to death with bats and lead pipes in the privacy of a deserted building.

BTW: the satellite dishes on the boxes aren't bulletproof.

Hey, they're just putting them in the neighborhoods with the highest crime rates. Just coincidence they're black & Latino neighborhoods. Message to residents of those neighborhoods: Clean up the crime in your neighborhood & we'll remove the cameras.

In Austin, about a week ago, a guy was busted using his phone camera to shoot upskirt photos and charged under "improper photography" ordinances or laws....
the same kind I think they use to go after people who shoot peeping tom shots or put hidden cameras in showers in apartment complexes.

I've got it, why don't we just place curfew's on everyone, put tracking devices on them and if there are any violations, we'll just put them in prison camps. ahem Citizen Reformation Clinics. You laugh now, just wait...in the name of safety...in the name of reducing crime.

so let me get this right..
crime has gone down in neighborhoods where these cameras are installed? They are predominantly black and hispanic? Is there a connection? Yes.
The connection is the downturn in crime and the cameras. NOT the neighborhoods. I have to wonder how many of the OTHER places these cams were put have fared? Were they predom. White? If so, how were the statistics affected?
Why don't any of the studies show EXPLICITLY the affects on white neighborhoods? It would seem to me (being the Oliver Stone nut I am) that all we ever hear about is the effects of these things on minorities, and then it all gets slanted out of proportion. Why don't we ever hear about what goes on in the white population? I think it's because the media loves a fight, and they pick fights with inflamatory stories about how "repressed" minorities are. Well.. how about the other side?
ttmmm

Who is watching the folks on the other end of the camera? The news should be, SHOULD BE. If the control of the camera was granted to any government official, and that shared to everyone else at the same time, I would feel totally cool about it. As someone else said there really isn't anything private going on in the street.

But the fact is that it isn't a public service.

I can't log into that camera and hear everything that is going on.

And I'm not able to judge for myself if thier reaction to the information is appropriate.

Of course most of these services will be sitting on top of every ATM.