police officers

For every municipal story I've written in the last year, I've heard the same thing, over and over: Budgets are being slashed. And it's only getting worse. But those same stories involve municipal security folks spending money on security, right? It's true, there are plenty of case studies out there about the deployment of wireless video surveillance systems or an improvement to communication networks, but many of those projects are funded through federal grants. The government has spent money on security since 9/11, but will that money start to dry up soon?

Yesterday, I spoke with the panelists for an upcoming presentation at TechSec Solutions called "Look Ma, No Wires." This presentation will focus on wireless technology and address issues including when to implement a wireless solution and what type of solution works best for certain deployments. But something that caught my ear as I was listening to Ralph Bell from Motorola was in regards to the work they do with municipalities. Basically, he reiterated that municipalities often have the money needed for an initial deployment, but don't have the financial resources or in-house expertise to maintain the infrastructure or pay for upgrades to the system. It's my understanding municipalities often receive federal grants, which are often designated for initial deployments, but rarely can be used for maintenance or repairs and the municipality must pay for that from its own funds.

And budget woes aren't going away any time soon. I just read an interesting Q&A article with the mayor of Newark, N.J., Cory Booker, about his approach to budgeting. Here's the link from the Huffington Post. Like many elected officials, he understood the importance of police, fire and other public safety agencies. As a matter of fact, here's his original approach to budget cutting:

"Squeeze everything else but police and fire."

But, according to the article, last year, the city laid off 164 officers, about 13 percent of the force. The reporter asked how it came to that. Here's his answer:

Look, budgets across the country -- 60 percent of American cities have had reductions in their forces of public safety. And, so, this is not something that's unique to Newark...So, we have dramatic losses in revenue. And public safety, frankly -- police and fire -- make up the significant majority of our budget. We were squeezing and starving every other area of our city. Furloughing employees, cutting staff. But it came to a point where we couldn't cut enough to make up for the tremendous budgetary shortfall.

He goes on to address having to put older police officers back out on the streets in order to maintain the same police presence before the cuts, but also notes that such budgetary restrictions have impacted the reduction in crime in the city. Of course, he also spins it as actually putting more experienced officers back out on city streets - he's a politician after all.

What do you think? How worried are you about the correlation between budgetary cuts and public safety? Are we over the worst of it or is the worst yet to come?

It's hard enough to get public support for municipal security projects without giving people good reason to reject it. When I read this story about the mess New Orleans has made of its surveillance project, I couldn't help but cringe.

In mid-October, the New Orleans Inspector General released a report that found that 41 of 211 cameras, fewer than one in five, actually worked. A review of the program's finances from May 2009 through April 2010 revealed the city paid nearly $190,000 for equipment it never received and another $200,000 that didn't go through proper approvals.

That's not good.

But, this isn't the first time there has been a problem with the city project. In March 2009, the inspector general found that $4 million had been wasted in association with the city's video surveillance project. The 2009 investigation launched a criminal probe and led to the indictment of the technology chief of the city as well as the contractor who sold the city the cameras, reported the paper.

These findings have prompted Mayor Mitch Landrieu to stop paying for the crime-camera program, which may have cost the city as much as $10 million since 2003 with little crime-fighting impact, according to the publication.

But is that really the best solution? Scrapping the whole project means the city has really wasted that money, whereas it may be quite possible that the system can be salvaged and it can be a useful tool for police. There are plenty of other cities that have implemented strong surveillance systems and found them to be quite beneficial for fighting and deterring crime.

And just to be clear, this isn't a failure of technology. I would chalk this up to irresponsible leadership and poor project management on the part of vendors and stakeholders. If nothing else, this is a good example for other municipal security leaders about how NOT to run a project. Geez, New Orleans, stop making everyone else look bad.

I am a huge fan of public transportation, but subways freak me out. It's a combination of too many people in a small place mixed with traveling several stories underground. Plus, this job hasn't helped at all. It's made me all too aware of security threats (to the point that I check my shower stall when I come home, just to make sure someone didn't break in and is hiding in there. Is that paranoia? It might be, but you trying being a single female living alone on the first floor).

Anyway, I'm always on guard in subways, and apparently for good reason. This New York Daily News article found that the NYPD requested surveillance footage from NYC Transit more than 2,000 times last year.

There are now more than 3,100 cameras installed throughout the subways, with 900 of them just installed this June. Plus, there are more cameras on the way. The MTA said 1,000 more will be installed by the end of next year.

While the article found that crime in the subway is at a historically low level, with less than six felonies a day in the 468-station system, it still makes me nervous. Video surveillance, as those in the industry know, can be great forensic tools (if they're properly installed and working correctly, which all too often they are not). But, because those cameras are often not monitored, they contribute little to preventing crime. And frankly, that's what I'm looking for. And with that in mind, I'd say it's probably a good thing for me to stay here in Maine where we're forced to just drive everywhere.

In a recent blog I wrote that the public dislikes red-light and speed-enforcement cameras, but apparently that's just not so (actually, my point was that the public didn't like the idea of using such technology to raise revenue, and the solution I offered was for people to stop speeding and running red lights).

But that aside, this USA Today article published some real numbers regarding the public's perception of cameras and other traffic-enforcement policies. A recent survey by the Center for Excellence in Rural Safety at the University of Minnesota found that the public actually doesn't hate this technology as much as expected.

Apparently, 64 percent of Americans support the use of automated speed enforcement using cameras and radar systems. I think that's pretty high, really. (P.S. I'm not sure if it's relevant or not that this study focuses on "rural" safety and not "urban" safety. I would think the number would be lower for city dwellers who drive in a lot more traffic and probably go through a lot more lights, but I've been wrong before.)

This study also surveyed the public's perception of things like alcohol ignition interlocks, mandatory helmet laws, sobriety checkpoints and seat belt laws, and found generally high approval ratings for such policies.

And I'm not the only one surprised by these numbers:
"We were surprised by the level of support for these strategies," says Lee Munnich, director of the center, established by the 2005 federal transportation act and sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration to research rural road safety. "In many states, it's been difficult to get legislators to pass some of the tougher restrictions."

But, there is still a significant amount of resistance on the part of many states. According to this article, there are a number of states restricting the use of cameras:

At least six states — Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire and West Virginia — prohibit camera enforcement, according to Anne Teigen, a transportation policy specialist at the National Conference of State Legislatures; Nevada exempts cameras operated by an officer or installed in a police vehicle or facility. Arkansas, New Jersey and Wisconsin prohibit speed cameras. Illinois, Missouri, Louisiana and Tennessee are considering bans on camera enforcement, she says.

Perhaps legislators in these states should start listening to their constituents. Plus, enforcing a lot of these policies does bring in additional revenue and who can argue against more money?

The debate about video surveillance being used to identify and automate traffic crimes continues to be hot news in the mainstream media. This article in USA Today discusses how some states are dealing with this controversy.

First up is red-light cameras. These are mounted on traffic lights and identify and ticket vehicles that run red lights. Basically, the camera snaps a picture of the license plate and automatically mails the offender a ticket. To me, that's a great use of technology. It's the same as having a police officer patrolling every intersection, right? And they're becoming fairly common:

Red-light cameras are used in 441 communities in 25 states and the District of Columbia and speed cameras in at least 56 communities in 12 states and D.C., the Insurance Institute says.

And apparently they're effective:
A federal study found that red-light cameras cause a 25% decrease in broadside crashes and a 15% increase in less deadly rear-end crashes.

So that means less people are running red lights and smashing into oncoming cars, but more people are rear-ending each other, likely out of fear the cameras will catch them if they try to make it through the yellow light.

The public doesn't love red-light cameras, but really have it out for speed cameras apparently. In some places, these cameras are ticketing drivers going 10-15 miles an hour over the limit and people aren't happy about it. For example, in Ridgeland, S.C. where the state's first speed cameras will be installed this summer the average ticket will be $130 for 10-15 mph over the speed limit, according to the publication.

There are several other examples of states and cities using and/or banning such technology, but one of the primary issues the article focuses on is that these cameras are only being put in place to generate revenue:

"In principle, I think photo enforcement is valid if it's done right. You can't have a cop everywhere, and yet the law is supposed to be enforced everywhere," says Robert Poole, director of transportation policy at the non-profit, libertarian Reason Foundation, which researches public policy. "The problem is a lot of times, cities go into this looking mainly at revenue rather than safety."

So what if cities are making a little bit of money with these installations? Good, it's about time there's some real ROI for security applications and wow if they can actually make money from it. It's not like municipalities are exactly rolling in dough these days. If you, as a citizen, don't want to contribute to that fund, I suggest you not speed or run red lights and if you do, know you're taking a risk. People always knew they were taking a risk when doing such illegal activity and I think they're just upset because there's a better chance of getting caught.

So here I am at the Portland Jetport for the fourth time in the last five weeks. I've been doing some crazy traveling lately, but this trip is something I've been anticipating for months now. As part of ASIS International Seminar & Exhibits, scheduled for Oct. 12 -15, I get to participate in a media preview event where they basically take us media all around the host city, showing us some of the cool things the city has to offer. It's one of the few perks of the profession and I must say, I do enjoy it.

As I'm sure many of you are aware, ASIS will be held in Dallas, Texas this year. I've been to Dallas a lot since beginning my security career (largely because it was the former home of TechSec Solutions), but to be honest I've never loved the city. However, I'm hoping this trip will be different. As part of the media junket, ASIS folks have scheduled some seriously awesome security tours. The one I'm looking forward to most is the behind-the-scenes security tour of the new Cowboys Stadium. Now, I'm not a huge sports fan and have no affiliation with the Cowboys, but I've heard a lot about their new stadium and I'm guessing they have some pretty sophisticated security technology in place. I also got permission to interview an executive for sdnTVnews, so be on the look out for that video.

In addition, we also get a tour of the Children's Medical Center. I've heard over and over that healthcare is one of my most up and coming verticals in terms of security insatllations (and even ISC Solutions has chosen healthcare to be one of four verticals to focus its upcoming conference).

Here are some of the other tours on our itinerary:
Dallas Fusion Center (I haven't had my fusion center fix in a while)
Dallas Museum of Art
AT&T Performing Arts District
Fort Worth City Center
Frito Lay (food security - that's a new and exciting topic for me)

Needless to say, I'm excited for this trip and it's hard to believe we're going to pack all that in over the course of only two-and-a-half days. To stay on top of my travels, be sure to follow me on Twitter: @Leischen and check my blogs periodically (my goal is at least a post a day). Also, next week's Newswire is sure to be full of great security stuff (per usual, of course).

When I wrote a story about the city of Oakland considering supplementing its police force with armed security guards, the primary argument I heard against such a thing was liability.

“There was a push by the city council to put security guards on the street because private guards are cheaper than police officers,” said Officer Jeff Thomason, public information officer for the Oakland Police Department. “But from our perspective, it’s a liability. They’re not highly trained and they might be placed in a situation where they have to use deadly force.”

I just read this article in the Boston Herald about an incident where an armed private officer shot and killed a patient who stabbed a doctor. This case seems fairly straightforward that the officer acted appropriately, but the issue of liability is still a major concern. Apparently the officer was a "special officer" employed by a private company (which remains unnamed), but was licensed through the Mass. Police. Here's the blurb from the article for more clarification:

Boston police license special officers, who are employed by private companies. To obtain a license, candidates must pass a licensing exam, according to police policy.

Special officers who want to carry a firearm are also tested on their ability to use the weapons and apply deadly force, the policy states. The testing takes place at the Boston Police Department Range.

Licensed special officers have the power of police officers to make arrests and enforce laws and ordinances within city limits. Special officers are prohibited from applying for or executing search warrants.

In the article, the officer's father confirms that he is a special officer and attended police academy training and previously held a summer job as a police officer in Provincetown.

But even if he was specially trained, if this is becomes a wrongful death suit or ends up in court, who's responsible? The police or the private company? Is this a risk police departments or municipalities are willing to take?