Blue lights indicate a crime has been called in.
My last post introduced the controversy of police security cameras in the neighborhoods of Chicago. While one of the main issues of debate revolves around the issues of privacy, a second main issue centers around the effectiveness of these cameras.
Within a year of installing the cameras, Chicago Police said that crime had decreased within a block of each camera. Officials detailed their statistics by stating that narcotics calls were down by 76% while other minor crimes had decreased by 46%.
But do these statistics really mean what the Chicago Police want us to think that they mean? An interesting issue that often makes the public wonder if these crime cameras are effective is called “Displacement.”
Displacement is a term used to refer to the idea that crime has not actually been decreased. Rather, it is simply being pushed to other locations where cameras cannot capture the actions. This issue is continually a topic of debate, as there are not cameras on every corner just yet.
Another theory for the ineffectiveness of Chicago’s Police cameras is simple maintence. Smart Cameras Blog reports that at any time, 5% of the city’s cameras need to be fixed. This translates to 750 cameras out of 15,000 total cameras that are down. ChicagoTalks has also investigated this issue.
If the survellience camera program that cost Chicago millions of dollars is not poving effective, was it worth installing them at all? This has been a hot topic of debate– especially when crimes occur in a camera’s distance and the camera does not record the crime.
-Monica
