Smile! You’re On A Covid-$ Camera

The streets have eyes — an additional 266 and counting, to be precise — now that several million dollars in one-time federal aid have translated into a trove of new police surveillance cameras watching out for crime across the city.

Those cameras come courtesy of an Elicker administration plan that won approval from the Board of Alders back in December 2021.

City alders unanimously signed off on Mayor Justin Elicker’s proposal to spend $3.8 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) pandemic-relief funds on purchasing and installing 500 new police surveillance cameras at crime hotspots around New Haven.

The mayor, acting police chief, and camera plan supporters argued at the time that surveillance cameras deter crimes from being committed because people know they’re being watched, and they help cops solve cases by providing video footage when potential witnesses don’t come forward to talk.

Critics cautioned the city against spending ​“once-in-a-generation” federal funds related to recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic on police technology upgrades that might not make the city safer, and that could be covered by the city’s capital budget.

Two and a half years later, the vast majority of New Haven’s roughly $115 million in one-time ARPA aid has been allocated and deadlines loom for that money to be spent. What’s the latest with that police camera plan? Did the city spend the money it said it would to buy the number of cameras it intended to? And how are they working out?

Mayor Justin Elicker told the Independent that, since winning permission from the alders back in December 2021, the city has purchased 324 new police cameras so far with these funds; 266 of those new police cameras are currently up and running, with the rest still waiting to be installed.

The city’s latest monthly financial report shows that the Elicker administration has spent a total of $2,293,604.31 so far in allocated ARPA aid on buying and installing these police cameras. Elicker and Police Chief Karl Jacobson said that the city still plans on buying a total of 500 cameras with these funds, and is working to finish buying and installing the cameras as planned.

“It’s a game changer,” Jacobson said about having these several hundred new cameras up and running and available to city police. ​“Everything from stolen cars to violent crime, it gives us the tools we need” to gather evidence and solve cases. ​“I think we’ve made way more arrests on homicides and shootings with the implementation of the cameras. … We’ve [also] recovered way more stolen cars than we have in the past.”

Jacobson said that the police department’s general orders cover how this camera footage can be used. ​“Officers can only use what they’re using at work. … There has to be a ​‘law enforcement nexus.’ ”

The footage is also available only to officers working in the police headquarters’ ​“real-time crime center.” In the future, he said, ​“we will do random audits to make sure people aren’t using [this camera footage] for random purposes” other than those allowed for while doing investigative police work.

Jacobson said that the police department uses ​“crime data” related to everything from shootings to car thefts to illegal dumping to inform where these police cameras are put up.

And while it’s public information as to where these police cameras are located, Elicker and Jacobson cautioned against publicizing their exact locations.

“For obvious reasons, we don’t want people that are going to be committing crimes to know they’re on camera,” the mayor said. ​“At the same time, it’s not secret. You look up on the poles and see the cameras.”

Jacobson added that, when he first started talking about license plate reader cameras owned by the police department, ​“literally we had two shootings where people took their license plates off.” Translation: Disclosing with too much detail as to where each police camera is located could make it much easier for people looking to commit a crime to just do so where they know there’s no camera. ​“People should just assume, in an area where we have a lot of shootings, in an area where cars flee” by on and off ramps to the highway, that police have the ability to watch.

Why should the city be reticent about publicizing the locations of police cameras, when there’s been such a public process around where proposed new red light and speed cameras should be located?

Elicker said that the police and traffic cameras serve different purposes: The latter are for automated enforcement (that is, drivers caught speeding or running red lights are automatically sent a ticket and fine). The former are for police investigative work.

Elicker pointed out that New Haven still has far fewer police surveillance cameras than do other city police departments in Connecticut. Back in 2021, top city officials said that the Hartford Police Department had 1,200 cameras and Bridgeport’s had 1,600.

City police spokesperson Officer Christian Bruckhart said that the police department now has 190 regular cameras and 183 license plate reader cameras, adding up to 373 in all. Some locations have four cameras in a single enclosure to provide a 360-degree view, he said. ​“As with any tech, some cameras are occasionally malfunctioning, or become obsolete, so while some of these cameras are ​‘new,’ they may be replacements for existing units.”

Bruckhart described the cameras as one among many tools that can aid in investigations, along with ShotSpotter, rapid DNA testing, forensic analysis of spent bullet casings, and canvassing of an area to speak with potential witnesses to a crime.

As a recent example of how these cameras have been put to use, he said, back on April 16, there was a ShotSpotter activation in the area of Orchard Street and Edgewood Avenue.

Responding officers found ​“ballistic evidence” on scene, while officers assigned to the ​“real time crime center” immediately reviewed video, saw that a city camera captured the shots being fired from a car and were able to get a plate for the vehicle, along with the make and color.” Cops then tracked the car down to Meriden, where they found it parked and unoccupied. They subsequently towed it to the police garage for processing as evidence. ​“Thankfully no one was injured in the attempted assault.”

Beaver Hills Alder Brian Wingate, who chairs the local legislature’s Public Safety Committee, concurred with city police and the mayor that cameras are just one tool — albeit an important one — in contributing to a safer city.

“I never want to be in a place where people’s everyday lives are [under] surveillance” all the time, he said. But, as for these particular cameras, they’ve been ​“strategically put up around the city. These are not monitored to just watch people. These cameras are really just to solve crime and give us a safer city.”

As for whether or not these cameras’ exact locations should be widely publicized, ​“that’s a hard one,” Wingate said. ​“If you’re really trying to stop crime, you don’t tell the criminal” there’s a camera right there. But, on the other side, ​“you want to be transparent. It gets to what is the camera really for: the person not doing anything, or the person” committing a crime. It’s kind of a ​“catch 22.”

Wingate recognized that cameras of all kinds are everywhere. Nearly every phone in every pocket comes with a camera.

So, for now, in regards to these police cameras, his message is: ​“If you come to New Haven and do a crime, you might just be on camera.”