ELYRIA — Cameras monitored by police will surveil people downtown by March.
Members of the City Council’s Community Development and Finance Committee were briefed Monday on the six cameras, which will be paid for with $22,000 in federal taxpayer money. Tamela Grubb, program director of Main Street Elyria, a nonprofit downtown improvement group that is spearheading the increased surveillance, said her group would “definitely look to increasing” the number of cameras after police decide how to best use them.
Grubb said her group has selected a company that will demonstrate the cameras today and has solicited bids from other companies. March is the deadline for the city to spend the Community Development Block Grant money. The locations for the cameras have not been decided.
Grubb and Police Chief Duane Whitely said after the briefing that cameras would deter crime and help catch those who commit it. Downtown crime in categories like assaults, burglaries and robberies this year through Oct. 31 is on a pace to be about the same as last year and 2009.
However, a few shootings and rowdy behavior outside downtown bars the last two years along with car break-ins have created a perception of an unsafe downtown, Grubb said. She hopes the cameras will reassure people reluctant to attend events and shop downtown.
“It’s not meant to be Big Brother,” Grubb said referring to “1984,” the George Orwell novel in which a facist police-state constantly surveils its citizens to crush dissent.
But who watches the watchers, wonders Christine Link, American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio executive director. While Whitely said there will be restrictions on the cameras viewing private homes downtown, Link said some police officers nationally have abused surveillance cameras.
Unlike some European nations, Link said there are few privacy guarantees in public places in the U.S.
“Here, privacy is something we talk a lot about, but you really have very little right to it,” she said.
Link said the Police Department would be better off spending the money on overtime for community police patrols in which officers abandon their cruisers and walk or ride bikes through neighborhoods, developing cooperative rather than adversarial relationships with residents.
“What a waste of money,” she said. “Invest in your police force, not in the gadgets.”
Contact Evan Goodenow at 329-7129 or egoodenow@chroniclet.com.
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