Evanston’s surveillance camera plan stirs mixed reactions

Evanston resident Sarah Hanson looked at the tan brick apartments on the corner of Church Street and Maple Avenue and considered the prospect that a surveillance camera might soon be taking in the same view.

"I don't really think it's a very good idea," she said.

Cameras are not always accurate, Hanson said. For what they cost, they are not effective enough. And residents of those apartments might worry about their privacy being violated.

But a couple blocks away, at Clark Street and Maple Avenue, resident Pattie Lorusso recalled a report of a 10-year-old girl being attacked near where Lorusso catches the train every day. Cameras might make the area safer, she said.

"It doesn't bother me," she said. "I'm not too concerned about privacy."

Police are considering both street corners as locations for cameras after the Evanston City Council voted April 26 to expand the city's surveillance network. The proposal will add cameras throughout downtown Evanston and the city's south and west sides. A $341,000 federal grant will cover the cost of installing the additional cameras and fund maintenance for three years.

Police and city officials are trying to finalize how many cameras they will install and where exactly the city will place them. Meanwhile, responses from residents have ranged from relief to frustration. Camera supporters say skeptics will change their minds after they see the cameras at work. But opponents question whether the cameras will really fight crime and say they worry about infringements on civil liberties.

MAKING THE CASE FOR CAMERAS

Evanston is no stranger to surveillance cameras. The city already has six cameras in its Fifth and Eighth Wards, Evanston Police Department Chief Richard Eddington said. And Northwestern University Police operate more than 220 cameras on NU's campus.

"If you have an understanding of how many cameras you have out on Northwestern's campus, this is not exactly groundbreaking," Eddington said.

The cameras the city currently operates have already helped reduce crime, Eddington said. After police installed a camera in Brummel Park in 2007, calls for police service in the area dropped 39 percent over the summer, he said.

Eddington said he thinks the new cameras will be even more effective. They have better optics, are easier to control and will give police real-time access to footage, he said. Police will be able to obtain images of suspects immediately, before they have time to change their clothes, he said.

The cameras will also help the police force cope with Evanston's budget crisis, Eddington said. Eighty percent of the police budget pays for personnel costs, and the force can't afford to hire more staff.

Though the grant runs out in three years, funding the cameras will be relatively cheap, Eddington said. He estimated all six current cameras combined cost less than $3,000 a year.

Ald. Coleen Burrus (9th) also voiced support for the cameras both as a cost-cutting measure and a safety tool.

"We do have a lot of crime downtown," she said. "I don't think people always realize."

Residents of the Fifth Ward will be happy to see more cameras installed, Ald. Delores Holmes (5th) said.

"The residents in my community have asked about cameras, mainly because of crime," Holmes said.

But not all residents of the ward feel similarly.

Betty Ester, an activist in the Fifth Ward, questioned whether the west side needs more cameras. Crime there has been decreasing, she said.

"The people I've talked to want to know, ‘OK, why are they bringing them here?'" Ester said.

When police installed a camera on Dodge Avenue in the Fifth Ward several years ago, they held a community meeting so people could voice their thoughts on the issue, Ester said. This time, however, police did not seem to solicit community input.

"You didn't come and talk to people to see, ‘Did you want them?'" she said.

Eddington said police are consulting with aldermen to find out which locations most need cameras.

Ald. Don Wilson (4th), who voted for the cameras, said although he has heard mostly positive responses, he has received negative feedback as well.

"I've had a few comments," he said. "People worry about Big Brother watching."

WHO WILL WATCH THE WATCHMEN?

The camera network provoking fears of Big Brother in Evanston looks miniscule compared to Chicago's.

An estimated 15,000 cameras monitor Chicago's streets, said Rajiv Shah, a University of Illinois at Chicago professor who researches the city's surveillance network. The network comprises a core group of 2,000 cameras but can also tap into cameras at public schools, O'Hare International Airport and private companies.

Evidence that such camera systems reduce crime is mixed at best, Shah said. Studies have found cameras most effective when used in a concentrated manner.

"When you spread them around a city and have 10,000 cameras, nobody's watching 10,000 cameras," Shah said. "The bad guys quickly figure out nobody's watching the cameras."

Chicago Police Sgt. Antoinette Ursitti said the city's cameras have been effective even though they are part of a large network. They have produced 4,500 arrests since their installation in 2006, she said in an e-mail. Ursitti gave a much lower number of cameras than Shah, saying there are "over 800." Attempts to reach Ursitti by phone for clarification proved unsuccessful.

Chicago's cameras have been used to solve a few high-profile cases, Shah said. When the body of the Chicago school board's president washed up on the banks of the Chicago River last November, footage from cameras proved his death a suicide rather than a murder.

Based on Shah's studies, crime tends to decline most when police install surveillance cameras in areas with high crime rates, he said. But this is likely because police devote more resources to the areas in general.

"It's probably not because of the cameras," Shah said.

The camera network Evanston is currently planning matches the concentrated model Shah described as most successful.

But residents should consider whether it might someday evolve to look like Chicago's system, said Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.

"Frankly, even the beginning of a system today that doesn't look as far-reaching as the city of Chicago's could be that in a very short time," Yohnka said.

The cameras should come with open dialogue about how they will be used, he said.

"When a city like Evanston begins to dip their toe in the water, there really ought to be some space in that for public discussion," Yohnka said.

To protect civil liberties, Evanston must set a policy for handling potentially thorny issues such as data archiving, NU public policy lecturer Jonathan Schachter said.

"There are legitimate privacy concerns," Schachter said. "How long are they going to keep the video data? A day? A week? A month? A year?"

Yohnka cited Pittsburgh as a city where camera use is being monitored appropriately. Its privacy commission includes a variety of community members, including the head of the FBI, he said.

At the meeting in which the City Council approved Evanston's new cameras, Evanston resident Richard Katz echoed Yohnka's privacy concerns. He spoke against the proposal, saying it would infringe on residents' rights.

But a month later, Katz said talking to Eddington and Burrus had changed his mind. He would be worried if more cameras were being installed in residential neighborhoods rather than downtown, he said.

"I was against the idea of increased Big Brother surveillance," he said. "My concerns were based upon a different deployment of them in other areas with different purposes."
He dismissed the idea that the city might someday expand its network to the size of Chicago's.

"Evanston isn't going to," he said. "They don't have money."

LOOKING TOWARD THE FUTURE

Eddington did not rule out the possibility of Evanston installing more cameras. That choice will depend on how effective the new ones prove to be, he said.

"We have the opportunity to establish this system, utilize it and then make a decision," he said.

He understands residents' privacy concerns, he said. Though he said police officers have not abused current cameras, he encouraged camera critics to keep asking questions.

"Public scrutiny of the Police Department's actions is completely appropriate," he said.

But surveillance cameras are now a standard part of criminal investigations throughout the country, Eddington said.

"I think there is an expectation in a jury's mind that we'd have video evidence at some point," he said.

He emphasized that Evanston's camera network would remain small even with the additions and that the police do not have the manpower to watch the cameras constantly.

"This isn't James Bond," he said. "We don't have a bank of 50 monitors and 50 people watching them."

Like Eddington, Burrus said the city would consider more cameras if the new ones proved useful.

"We'll see how they work," she said. "Are they helping us catch criminals?"

For now, the city is still outlining the plan's details. Evanston has not yet decided the cameras' exact locations or their number, Eddington said. Council members have said they want 20 cameras, but the final number will depend on what he determines the cameras will cost.

"I may come back and say we only have money for five," he said.

Eddington met with Ald. Ann Rainey (8th) recently to discuss where her constituents wanted the cameras, he said.

"If you look at the rest of the world, there comes a realization that this is going to be a part of the security system in the U.S. and elsewhere for the foreseeable future," he said.

Yohnka, the ACLU spokesman, agreed.

"Evanston seems to be following a pattern we see in other communities," Yohnka said. "These camera systems seem to have become the ‘in' thing to have."

rebeccacohen2013@u.northwestern.edu