“BIG BROTHER" WATCHES TV cameras scan main street

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32803, 31 December 1971, Page 10

“BIG BROTHER" WATCHES TV cameras scan main street

(From RICHARD BEATTIE in New York)

Television cameras that can see in the dark have been installed in the New York City dormitory town of Mount Vernon to deter criminals and help police catch thieves on Main Street.

Critics of the cameras complain they are an invasion of privacy, but the police point out that in the first six months they were in place crime in the area dropped by a third.

The cameras, which have been installed as part of a Federal anti-crime experiment, have so far proved to be “very effective from the standpoint of deterrence” but only “moderately effective” in catching criminals.

Dr Irving B. Guller, associate professor of psychology at the John Jay University in New York City, has come to these conclusions after studying the effectiveness of the new cameras for the State Crime Control Planning Office.

The main street of Mount Vernon is an avenue of tightly packed small and large shops that have until recently been the targets of the town’s petty criminals.

Iron grilles Ugly iron grilles across store fronts were in place on dozens of the shops until the installation of the new cameras made the avenue a less vulnerable area, So far two cameras have been installed on inconspicuous 22ft high poles. They can be controlled, by police several blocks away in a headquarters monitor room.

Each camera can be turned 335 degrees, zoom in and out for . seyeral blocks, tilt straight up and down and even focus on a distant licence plate. Wet weather equipment is complete with remote-con-trolled windshield wipers that have their own cleaning fluid applicators, sun-shields for bright summer conditions and heaters to combat winter ice and snow.

Ratrolman Tony Pane recently showed the press how the cameras work at night. Near midnight he was watching the monitor screens when he spotted a man looking suspiciously up and down Fourth Avenue.

Zoom lens Using the push buttons on the control panel in front of him Pane zoomed in to watch the unsuspecting man who was standing near the door of a pizza shop in the middle of the block. Since the cameras have been installed no foot patrolmen have been posted to the street, but squad cars are constantly nearby and in direct contact with the monitor room.

A police car raced round to the shop just as th e man was beginning to walk away from the recessed door. They found it had been forced open.

The suspicious - looking character was arrested less than 50 yards from the store and charged with attempted robbery.

Special cameras The cameras used in Mount Vernon were specially developed for the project by the Sylvania Corporation to convert very low light intensities, such as a lone neon sign or a few stars, into electrical energy. The tiny amount of light, which might be barely visible to the human eye, is amplified and converted back to light energy for a bright picture.

Although television monitor cameras have been installed in some American cities to control traffic, the Mount Vernon cameras are the first in the United States designed solely to control street crime.

Their installation of the surveillance system has started some controversy. Opposition to the cameras has come mainly from the Westchester County Civil Liberties Union, which says they are an invasion of privacy—the first appearance

of George Orwell’s “1984” all-knowing Big Brother. Negroes in Mount Vernon have complained that the cameras are potential racist symbols. Sidney Jones, the acting chairman of the residents’ council of the Model' Cities programme in Mount Vernon, said that there was no doubt that the cameras at least imply a sense of white superiority and of racism. “They do monitor the white-owned businesses on the black side of the tracks,” he said. . Jeremiah Gutman, the chairman of the local civil liberties union, said that the organisation would soon take court action in an attempt to have the cameras banned. He said that one lawyer in the area of Fourth Avenue already had complained that his clients were balking at visiting his office, where they could be watched by the police cameras.

The local police public safety commissioner, Mr Thomas J. Delaney, disagrees with th e cameras’ critics. While Mr Gutman says the system “is an unequivocal invasion of privacy,” Mr Delaney says that “it helps to liberate people because in a public thoroughfare it will deter muggers, purse snatchers and other undesirable people.”

Police and public both say that they are pleased with the effect of the system after its seven-month trial.

George Orwell’s predictions still have 13 years to come true. The ever-present television eye might just be installed by 1984.