In June 2007, the San Diego Police Department (SDPD) began a nine-month project in the Belmont Park area of Mission Beach, installing a five-camera security system at a cost of $107,000 after four University of San Diego students were brutally attacked in a nearby condo.
Now a La Jolla committee recently voted to install a similar set-up at a nearby beach and park.
Lt. Brian Ahern of SDPD’s Northern Division, spearheaded the Mission Beach effort, which consists of mounted cameras on area light poles. An injured or “light duty” officer monitors the feed from a nearby city facility, Ahern said.
Because the cameras are “monitored by a peace officer, they can recognize illegal behaviors and deploy an on-duty resource,” Ahern said.
To date, Ahern calls the cameras “very effective,” although the department only collected some data, comparing the area around the Belmont Park cameras to the rest of Mission Beach, and officers used a six-month period from June 2007 through January 2008, comparing the data with the same time frame from the previous year. According to Ahern, total crime in Mission Beach is down 13 percent.
Near the cameras, reported crime is down 20 percent, and calls for service went down 15 percent. While these figures aren’t conclusive, Ahern said he’s just happy crime didn’t increase near the cameras.
The SDPD wants to use the camera technology to seek people violating the law, Ahern said.
“We want to recognize a crime in progress and we want to apprehend that offender,” he said.
Members of the La Jolla Shores Association (LJSA) recently voted to install cameras at La Jolla Shores’ Kellogg Park. La Jolla board members proposed something similar to the Mission Beach project, saying La Jolla receives more people per square foot than any other place in San Diego ” between 20,000 to 50,000 people visit the area during summer months and 2 million to 3 million a year, said Mary Coakley, La Jolla Shores Association board member.
A number of car break-ins and auto thefts have been reported in the area, and various other criminal acts have LJSA board members asking for a solution.
“There have been incidents in the area,” Coakley said. “A [La Jolla] Beach and Tennis Club employee was assaulted at the restroom.”
On an adjacent street, a couple was robbed at gunpoint, and there were robberies of businesses, she said. But the cameras won’t cover that area. The board is also concerned with graffiti and drag racing, Coakley said.
“I think if it was the same situation two or three years ago, there would be a big push against [the cameras], but there have been so many problems it seems like the only alternative,” Coakley said. “The police are so stretched they can’t provide the coverage that’s needed.”
“Law enforcement can rattle statistics about crime in camera areas, but they can’t point to serious studies showing that cameras were responsible for the crime reduction,” said Kevin Keenan, executive director with the American Civil Liberties Union, San Diego.
Keenan points to studies that show cameras move crime just outside the camera’s view.
According to a report titled “Under the Watchful Eye…” issued by ACLU affiliates that cite several studies, including one from 2002 by the British Home Office, known for its proliferation of cameras, the authors found a reduction of car crime in parking garages but not in violent crime. In another British study, some crime increased while some decreased, the report said.
In La Jolla, tourists and locals converge, forming one of the most popular beach parks in California.
“What you’re seeing in this case is that instead of going after crime they know exists, they want to do preventative policing and go after people they think are going to commit lower-level offenses,” Keenan said. “They’ll be able to target folks who have their beer or wine or a cigarette and think they’re getting out the bad influence.”
The best way to keep a neighborhood safe is to increase the police presence, Keenan said.
“Whenever new technology is being implemented, we like to ask, ‘what is the goal?'” said Melissa Ngo, senior counsel and director of the Identification and Surveillance Project, established in Washington, D.C., in 1994 with the goal of informing the public about civil liberties and the First Amendment.
Like the ACLU, Ngo said studies show that cameras do not reduce crime. Both Keenan and Ngo said the police do not catch people in the act of committing a crime. The main argument the police have, Keenan said, is they can prosecute an offender after the fact. But better lighting has been shown to prevent car crimes more than cameras, he said.
Keenan said the ACLU believes the SDPD would be much better off if it invested in its police and not in the surveillance system.
“It’s certainly not cheap to hire police officers, but it provides real security as opposed to a false sense of security like the cameras,” Keenan said.
The Shores Association tried unsuccessfully to employ a park ranger before voting on the camera surveillance system, Coakley said. Both Coakley and Ahern said crowd control is another major issue for Kellogg Park.
“I don’t think it’s for crowd control,” Ngo said. “I think it’s a way to identify everyone. We’ve experienced this during protests. They can zoom in on protesters. That’s one way in which crowd control can be used.”
And many local beaches, including La Jolla, have people that continue to drink although San Diego imposed an alcohol ban, Ahern said. Kellogg Park at La Jolla Shores is an alcohol-free area, he said.
“But people continue to drink there,” Ahern said. “Significant crowds go to that park and cameras will assist with preventing or being proactive in potential problems.”
Once you think cameras are a way to fight crime, Keenan said, law enforcement is going to creep in. The ACLU is concerned about the slow, steady march toward a surveillance society, he said.
But according to Ahern, the LJSA requested the police department’s help. The board asked the police for assistance and would like a police officer to monitor their camera feeds, Ahern said.
“If a tsunami or wildfire occurs, then public safety officials can pull up all the cameras operating in the city. Even at a water treatment facility or a camera in a [scrap] yard,” Ahern said.