We mentioned it in the morning roundup, but the District’s decision to “fast-track” the purchase of additional street cameras is worth some additional discussion — particularly in light of recent events that cast further doubt on the cameras’ usefulness.
The expedited procurement process isn’t worth getting upset about in and of itself. The purchase was approved back in October, but MPD guidelines require that competitive bids be obtained from vendors and evaluated before a purchase can be made. That process is in place for a reason, but making an occasional well-publicized exception doesn’t strike us as a big deal.
However, throwing good money after bad — in this case, $1.7 million — is a big deal. We’ve gone back and forth and back again over the abstract idea of cameras; most folks seem to agree that the diminished expectation of privacy on public streets makes them an idea that’s at least worth trying. But now that we’ve got them, there’s good reason to think that D.C. is wasting its money on these electronic eyes.
NBC4 examined the cameras’ effectiveness back in October and found it lacking. More recently, FOX5 reported on the cameras, revealing that in order to examine the recorded video a letter must wend its way up and down the MPD chain of command — and there’s not much evidence that relevant video is being examined at all. Residents on the Adams Morgan Yahoo Group have expressed similar concerns: videotaped evidence isn’t much use if no one ever looks at it.
But the cameras still might be, if they exert a deterrent effect on crime in the areas where they’re placed. Sadly, this past weekend has offered grim evidence that this isn’t the case: a fifteen year-old girl was shot in the chest at Seventh & O — right under a surveillance camera’s metaphorical nose. It may not be time to scrap the camera plan just yet, but it seems safe to say that we’d prefer to have the city use its money to acquire crime-fighting eyes that are powered by donuts rather than electrons.
Image by Flickr user takomabibelot, used under a Creative Commons license. If you’ve got a shot of a D.C. surveillance camera, consider geotagging it and adding it to the D.C. Surveillance pool.
