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Indybay Feature

Secret Video Surveillance Cameras in Fresno

by Mike Rhodes (MikeRhodes [at] Comcast.net)
The Fresno Police Department wants to get a Department of Homeland Security grant to place video surveillance cameras at four undisclosed locations in Fresno.
dhs_0001.jpg
Secret Video Surveillance Cameras in Fresno

At the Fresno Police Department (FPD) budget hearings (held last week), it was reveled that they want a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grant for $400,000. The purpose of the grant would be to set up video surveillance cameras at four (4) locations. Police chief Jerry Dyer refused to reveal the locations where those cameras would be set up. My question is: where in the heck do you think these cameras will be installed?

1. In North Fresno to watch developers as they bulldoze over agricultural land while putting in new housing developments? Maybe the cameras will be in City Hall watching the developers talking to city council members as they lobby for zoning variances so the building industry can make more money, foul our air, and exploit immigrant labor.

2. The Outdoor Drunk Tank at the Rescue Mission to make sure the American Taliban is not ranting at the prisoners?

3. Perhaps the new cameras will be located in hidden locations to capture evidence of police misconduct. Since the city council refuses to establish an Independent Police Auditor, could this be the city council’s secret project to protect citizens from police abuse?

4. What about watching those cookie eating Peace Fresno folks? The police have priors spying on them.

Let me know what you think. Where the heck in Fresno do you think the DHS and FPD want to put these cameras?

By the way, budget hearings resume on Thursday, June 22, 2006 at Fresno City Hall. For background about these hearings, see:

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/06/15/18280912.php
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/06/15/18280787.php
and
http://www.indybay.org/news/2006/05/1825069.php


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§Video of Dyer before the Fresno City Council
by Mike Rhodes
Copy the code below to embed this movie into a web page:
This clip shows Fresno Police Department chief Jerry Dyer telling the Fresno City Council that his department is seeking a grant from the Department of Homeland Security but that he will not tell them where the cameras will be installed.
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Comments (Hide Comments)
by SCP-New York
figure $20,000 per camera -- that's 20 cameras, ie, a lot.

by San Francisco Bay Guardian
Put away the cameras

EDITORIAL The rate of violent crime in San Francisco, including murder, is climbing, and it's way past unacceptable. Progressives aren't generally known for their crime-fighting plans, but in this case the left flank of the Board of Supervisors, led by Ross Mirkarimi and Chris Daly, has offered a real, functional plan: an increase in community policing and additional funding for violence-prevention programs. However, Mayor Gavin Newsom and the cops are against that, and they helped knock it down on the June 6 ballot.
So what does the mayor want to do? He wants to put surveillance cameras — perhaps as many as 100 new surveillance cameras — all over the city, recording everything that happens in big swaths of public space, 24 hours a day.
The American Civil Liberties Union is urging the mayor to drop the plan. We agree.
For starters, there's no evidence that cameras deter crime. Studies in England, where crime cameras are ubiquitous, show no decrease in criminal activity that can be linked to the cameras, and even studies in the United States suggest that criminals aren't deterred by them. It's possible cameras will help identify killers, particularly in neighborhoods where it's almost impossible to find witnesses willing to talk — but it's also possible (even likely) the bad guys will know exactly where the cameras are and either move somewhere else or wear masks.
And in exchange for this dubious benefit, San Franciscans will give up an immense amount of privacy.
We already live in a society where surveillance is an ugly fact of life. Credit card customers, grocery shoppers, cell phone and FasTrak users — almost all of us have our names and other details of our lives in electronic files, controlled by private firms and (as we've seen in the post–Sept. 11 era) easily accessible by government agencies.
The cameras offer such a huge potential for abuse. Will local or federal authorities use them to monitor political protests? Will they become a tracking device for people the feds consider a "threat"? Will they be used to monitor and suppress perfectly legal political activities and private associations?
No matter what the mayor and the San Francisco Police Department say, those cameras will be recording in public spaces, and those video files will exist somewhere, and even if they're regularly erased (and given the SFPD's record on following its own rules in other areas, we don't trust that for a second), all it takes is a visit from the Department of Homeland Security to overrule all the safeguards. And anybody who thinks that won't happen has been utterly out of touch with the state of the body politic in the past six years.
Another possibility the ACLU raises: Those videos could be considered public record in California — meaning stalkers, angry ex-spouses, and people planning violent crimes will have access to the daily movements of their potential victims.
The supervisors have, to their credit, tried to come up with rules to limit the potential abuses. But these sorts of technologies have a way of expanding, and law enforcement agencies have a way of avoiding oversight and scrutiny. There are much, much better ways to deter and fight violent crime. The best solution here is to simply cut the funding for the mayor's cameras from next year's budget. SFBG

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