Photo by M.V. Jantzen Mayor Fenty, Chief Lanier and Ward 1 Council member Jim Graham today showed off the new Closed Circuit Television camera that’s been installed at Kalorama Road and Champlain Street NW. The intersection has been the site of several recent violent crimes, including an officer involved shooting in which a suspect was fatally shot and two police officers were injured. “This technology is instrumental to our work as we continue to…

Photo courtesy WMATA Exterior surveillance cameras have been installed at 12 high-crime Metro stations, WMATA announced this morning. Most of the cameras are at stations inside the District of Columbia, with a few in Fairfax County; those two jurisdictions paid for them to be installed. Stations with exterior cameras now include: Rhode Island Avenue-Brentwood, Congress Heights, Deanwood, Minnesota Avenue, Fort Totten, Takoma, Brookland-CUA, Columbia Heights, Georgia Avenue-Petworth, Tenleytown-AU, Vienna/Fairfax-GMU and Franconia-Springfield. The idea behind…

The AP has a short-on-details report on news that a program called Safe City, funded by Target and Sprint Nextel, has decided to purchase crime cameras for the Trinidad neighborhood. Trinidad will apparently receive nearly 30 privately funded crime cameras, with installation beginning in May. Presumably the Safe City cameras will be monitored the same way the MPD’s existing cameras are. On its web site, Safe City describes itself as “a community based initiative that…

The Washington Times has the story this morning on how the District government is handing over the keys to a network of 5,200 closed-circuit cameras to the Metropolitan Police Department. The cameras are normally used to monitor traffic, schools and public housing, and in addition to the 92 crime cameras police already monitor in high-crime neighborhoods, will give D.C. one of the largest surveillance networks of any major city in the United States. The initiative,…

We mentioned it earlier today, but it’s worth discussing further — the District’s crime cameras. According to the Post, a study by D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier released to the D.C. Council argues that the city’s 73 crime cameras have helped lower violent crime in the areas where they have been installed: The report, prepared for the D.C. Council by the office of Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier, says violent crime increased about 1 percent…