Fighting Crime From Above?

According to WJZ.com Baltimore officials are convinced crime will go down if criminals know police are watching them. The city calls it's surveillance system "CityWatch" and installed 76 downtown cameras in 2004 and is increasing the camera count to 500 across the city today.

So far, CityWatch has captured five homicides and a dozen shootings. Cameras also caught an early morning drug deal back in 2007 that turned into a robbery. As the victim tried to run away he's shot in the back. Police used the tape to convict the suspect.

The City Watch Surveillance Center has helped make more than 900 arrests a year.

These statistics sound pretty good, however, the crime counts at citi-data paint a different picture. The crime counts show a general decline of crime from 2000 – 2007 and there is no additional significant drop in 2005, the year after the cameras were installed. This trend implies crime has been in decline and this pre-existing trend needs to be taken into account when Baltimore officials make blanket statements like "crime will go down".  Baltimore officials should really state "convictions will go up".

But just which type of convictions?

The article also states cameras "captures homicides and dozens of shootings". Does this statement mean they merely captured the footage, or apprehended the criminals?  The city states 900 arrests are made a year – are all of these arrests from footage from the public cameras, or does it include from footage from privately owned cameras? What was the breakdown of of those arrests based on charges? Was it Vandalism, drug dealing, jaywalking, or robberies, etc?

After a slight increase in crime at the Inner Harbor last month city police beefed up the number of patrols and undercover officers.  Now the department is expanding its surveillance system to catch crime in action.

The city seems to be talking out of both sides of the mouth. Crime is down, wait, crime is up! Why has crime increased in Inner Harbor? Has Baltimore tested to see if the downtown cameras are merely displacing crime to this location? Displacement is a very real phenomenon and it's my belief that high impact large area surveillance systems like gun shot detectors merely push crimes like murder into the next town. If displacement is occurring, public officials cannot make claims that cameras are effective. They simply push crimes to other areas.

From the Baltimore Crime Beat:

Burns said the cameras are catching a lot of nuisance crimes, such as people smoking marijuana, leading to arrests that she says "are being thrown out at a high rate." She added, "I think the jury is still out. I think the public wants some conclusions. They tell us, 'Rather than a blue box, we'd like Officer Friendly on the street. We do hear that often."

The problem isn't in what the cameras do or don't do, but how the program was sold. We love to tout new toys, especially expensive ones, and the city police surveillance program was initially sold to us as a way to prevent crime, keep people safe and help put bad guys in prison. The report shows that in San Francisco, the cameras don't prevent violent crime and witnesses and cops are still need to put criminals away.

While the city is claiming success, Baltimore really needs qualify a lot of their statements.
I don't think the verdict is out and the city really needs to open their crime counts to some academic institutions so they can perform a unbiased effectiveness report on the whole system.