The Dallas Police Department is in the initial phase of installing 34 cameras at “major flash points” for activity in the central business district, paid for by a one-year, $840,000 grant from the Meadows Foundation, and they have the approval of the city council’s public safety committee. The police can't wait to expand the program and create a surveillance net across the city.

The glitch? The evidence is there that police cameras are an expensive boondoggle that don't reduce crime.

“We have a lot of crime happening late at night in the central business district. We think these cameras are a way to address these problems,” said Dallas Police Lt. T.W. Lawrence, head of the CBD division.

The cameras to be installed are wireless, line of sight cameras mounted on traffic signals in self-contained pods. The cameras are capable of pan, tilt and zoom functions, and provide long-term image storage, not just live monitoring.

Plano-based Virtual Surveillance provided 15 cameras for free in Deep Ellum from December 2004 to March 2005. Lt. Lawrence cited crime reduction rates in the area, but admitted they couldn’t be directly attributed to the cameras.

The city plans to complete bid specifications by the end of February, with all bids deadlined on April 15, and contract award by April 30. The city hopes to start installing the cameras by May 15, with the system on-line and operational by October 1.

The police department is on record saying it wants to expand this project to other areas of the city as funding becomes available.

“We’re trying to put in place something we can quickly expand,” Lt. Lawrence said.

He also expressed a desire to link the DPD camera system to private business camera systems.

Councilmember Leo V. Chaney, Jr. expressed serious concerns about how these cameras would be used, and what their limits would be.

“People have serious privacy concerns,” Mr. Chaney said. “How do we address this – the privacy issues, the civil liberties issues? I’m not taking one side or the other, but people are concerned.”

Houston itself has gone camera happy, and the police chief there, Harold Hurtt, suggested last week installing police cameras in private businesses, apartments and even private homes.

In case you think that’s a joke, click here.

Houston isn't alone in being camera happy. The mayor of Chicago is radically proposing requiring cameras inside and outside every business open for more than 12 hours.

“Today we are looking strictly at cameras on public property,” Councilman Steve Salazar said. “We can address that at another time” he said, speaking of Mr. Chaney’s desire for a policy limiting police camera use.

Council Member Dr. Elba Garcia was likewise supportive of the downtown Dallas program.

“I know people are concerned about Big Brother, but the reality is that most of the studies where cameras are used they do help reduce crime, people feel safer and businesses tend to do better,” she said.

Except that’s not the case at all.

The problem is that evidence shows that surveillance cameras really don’t have any effect on crime.

As our “go to” legal affairs blog, Grits for Breakfast astutely notes, London, England is the most surveilled city in the world, with more police surveillance cameras in public than any other city.

And yet the British Home Office last year released a long-term study on the topic, which admitted that surveillance cameras didn’t reduce crime, confirming previous research.

The report's author, Professor Martin Gill of the University of Leicester, said: "For supporters these findings are disappointing. For the most part CCTV did not produce reductions in crime and did not make people feel safer."

The only one of the 14 schemes found to be a success was targeted at car parks, where it led to a significant drop in vehicle crime. Other schemes in city centres, residential areas and hospitals produced no clear benefits.

Councilman Gary Griffith said he hoped the next step in the expansion would be locations like the parking lot at White Rock Lake, an area about which he receives regular complaints.

Others on the public safety committee were more cautious.

“I have serious concerns, but I’m pleased to hear we have very tight controls, and I look forward to ensuring we have safeguards for this,” said Council Member Angela Hunt.

Scott Henson, who has been covering the issue of police surveillance for years in Texas and serves as author of Grits for Breakfast, thinks Dallas is going the wrong way.

While cameras may not make us safer, there's no question they make us more exposed to possible privacy violations. … To quote a past Grits commenter, "There's no replacement for boots on the ground - none."

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