Street Cameras Praised

Intelligencer Journal
Lancaster New Era
Jul 31, 2009
Lancaster, PA

Freda Hall Stewart draws a distinction between herself and those who have raised their voices against surveillance cameras in the city.

"The people who are speaking out are people who were never victims," said Stewart, who went to the 300 block of South Prince Street on Thursday to voice her support for the cameras and the Lancaster Community Safety Coalition, the nonprofit group that operates them.

That block was where her son Tyquan Hall, 19, was shot to death in March 2007.

The shooter, a 22-year-old Philadelphia man, had fired into a crowd on the sidewalk following a house party. A surveillance camera captured the moment on film and followed the shooter into a house down the street, where he changed his clothing and shaved his beard.

Stewart said the shooter attempted to alter his appearance because the police — alerted by the camera operator — had surrounded the house.

The cameras didn't save her son's life, but they helped capture his killer and may have saved his next victim, Stewart said.

"I don't want to see another family go through what I went through," she said.

Stewart's comments came three days after a meeting at Bethel AME church on Strawberry Street, where the church's pastor, the Rev. Edward Bailey, said the heavy concentration of cameras in the southeastern part of the city was racist.

"I think it's getting blowed up to more than it is," Stewart said. "They say they're stereotyping the Seventh Ward. It's not that they are stereotyping the Seventh Ward. It's that's where the crime is."
Stewart brought with her Diane Johnson-Williams, whose daughter, Mary Johnson, was shot and killed in January at Pershing and Chester streets, where there were no cameras.

"Had there been a camera there, maybe the police could have gotten there faster, and maybe she would not be dead today," Johnson-Williams said of her daughter, who died about six hours after being shot.

Still, the city needs more than cameras to solve its crime problem, Johnson-Williams said.

The cameras are a tool, but people can't rely on them, she said. Rather, the people need to stand up and take back the city's streets.

Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray has previously cited the Tyquan Hall case as one of the things that allayed his initial skepticism of the cameras.

Police officers have told the mayor that hundreds or even thousands of hours of investigating time would likely have been expended if Hall's killer had been able to change his appearance and slip away.
Gray cited several other examples of how the cameras have been used.

In one case, the cameras provided an image of a purse-snatching suspect. Officers showed that image to neighborhood residents and found people who could identify the man.

In another case, a woman claimed someone had assaulted her, yet cameras showed that she was in another part of the city at the time.

Yet despite the cameras' effectiveness as a crime-fighting tool, Gray said he understands the concerns of people who decry the loss of privacy and erosion of civil liberties.

"I think it is incumbent on us to address some of those concerns so the abuses they are talking about don't happen," the mayor said.

He said he'll be proposing changes to the policies and procedures of the Community Safety Coalition and that he hopes the safeguards will protect against invasions of privacy and breaches of confidentiality.

He also said he is opposed to the expansion of the use of the images and the adoption of facial recognition technology that could be used to identify people on the city's streets.
Those have been issues raised by the nascent Lancaster Coalition for Sensible Security, a grass-roots group that wants the camera network dismantled.

As of Thursday, there were 134 cameras in operation, Community Safety Coalition Executive Director Joe Morales said. Installations are continuing, with plans calling for as many as 165 cameras.

E-mail: bharris@lnpnews.com

"I support the use of video
cameras as an important tool
that law enforcement and residents
can rely upon to enhance
public safety."

Mayor J. Richard Gray