NY police consider putting up surveillance cameras

Reuters | May 31 2005

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York police are considering plans to place hundreds of video cameras throughout the city to help fight crime and combat terrorism, the New York Police Department said on Monday.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly wants to put up some 400 surveillance cameras on high-crime and high-traffic streets to record action to be reviewed later if a crime occurs in the area, the New York Post said in a report on Monday.

"Plans to use surveillance cameras in the city are being considered," a police spokesman told Reuters.

Locations for cameras have not yet been finalized but areas likely to be targeted for surveillance include Manhattan's Herald Square, Times Square and 125th Street in Harlem as well as busy thoroughfares in the city's other boroughs.

The primary goal of the program would be to drive down crimes such as assaults and robberies, a police source said, adding that extra scrutiny in high-profile areas could also be a deterrence to terrorism.

The New York Civil Liberties Union criticized the proposed initiative.

"The plan to install 400 surveillance cameras around the city has all the earmarks of Big Brother and puts us even closer to becoming an all-out surveillance society," NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"The only possible use of them is to spy on people and to help gather evidence after the fact."

Lieberman said New York had a bad record in protecting video evidence, citing a suicide captured on tape by a hidden camera at a housing project that ended up broadcast over a sadomasochistic Web site, and a spy camera set up for security at last summer's Republic National Convention that zoomed in on a tryst in a private roof garden.

"Video surveillance is tempting as a quick fix to all our problems, but it isn't," she said. "As a society we want to prevent crime and that can be better done by officers on the street, not with cameras."