Bellows Falls' plan to deploy cameras troubles residents

Rutland Herald/Daniel Barlow | January 26 2006

BELLOWS FALLS — Local firefighter Michael Empey sees the proposal to install 16 surveillance cameras throughout the village as a tool to combat vandalism and protect community property.

"If you're not doing anything wrong, then you shouldn't have anything to worry about," he said.

Andrew Smith, an industrial technology consultant, sees it as a slippery slope toward increased governmental surveillance and an uneven trade of privacy for a little bit of security.

"Surveillance cameras don't belong in the public square," he said. "No one should be keeping tabs on where I'm going and when."

Bellows Falls, a village of 3,200 along the Connecticut River in southern Vermont, has found itself embroiled in a great debate after Bellows Falls Police proposed installing 16 surveillance cameras in the village, including the high-traffic main square and its water treatment facility.

The program — once on the fast track for a summer installation — has been put on hold as village leaders consider scaling it back or putting the issue forward to the voters to decide. The Bellows Falls Trustees are expected to come to offer a direction at its first meeting in February.

"It definitely gave me a lot to think about," Trustee President Charlie Jarras said after he was presented with a petition signed by 500 Rockingham residents asking the board to reconsider its December 2005 decision.

More than 100 people attended a forum Tuesday night on the surveillance system, with an overwhelming majority speaking against it. The debate may have been intensified by recent reports of a federal wiretap program that bypassed court warrants, and of a Pentagon program to spy on peace groups.

"If we allow it, we are no longer America," Michelle Clayton said Tuesday.

The surveillance system would be funded through a $98,000 U.S. Department of Justice grant earmarked by Sen. James Jeffords, an independent. Police Chief Keith Clark said his department has made strides against thefts, assaults and vandalism recently, but added that surveillance cameras could be the tool to make continued improvements.

Dispatchers at the police station could view the footage in real time, although it will likely only be used to investigate crimes after the fact or to supply first responders with information on a breaking situation, Clark said. All footage would be deleted after seven days.

Strict policy on how the cameras are used will be enforced and residents should not worry that officers would be snooping on them, Clark said. He joked that residents could refer to him as "Big Brother."

"Ladies and gentlemen, you are not that interesting," Clark said Tuesday night. "I'd like to say you are fun to watch, but I have other things to do."

But Allen Gilbert, the executive director of the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said Bellows Falls residents should ask themselves what they are getting in exchange for giving up their feeling of privacy in public places.

Because some of the proposed cameras could be used to zoom in on one person, Gilbert said the system could be challenged in the courts. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that surveillance cameras "that do no more than what a police officer would" are constitutional.

He warned that recent national media coverage of the surveillance plan will make Bellows Falls known as the "Orwellian village around the country." Washington Post and ABC's Good Morning America have reported on the Bellows Falls proposal.

"In the post-9/11 world, we are putting in security that is not worth as much as what we are paying for it, which is the loss of our privacy," he said.

The grant can only be used for technology that would make local law enforcement more efficient, according to Clark. He said the funds could be used to bring computers into cruisers, for example, but not used to hire more officers for the eight-member department.

"I do not have a Plan B right now," Clark said.

Clark said he still believes the system will help fight crime in the village and that it has the support of a majority of the residents. But it "would be silly" to follow through with the program if the residents don't want it, he added.

"I'm going to let the trustees think about it and wait until they provide me with some direction," he said. "I don't want to follow through with something that the community disagrees with."

Proposed locations for the surveillance cameras include the police/fire station, the pumping station, Red Light Hill, the public pool, water treatment facility, waste treatment facility, the Buckley and Hardy parking lots, train station, Great Falls Medical Center, and at least three in the village square.

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