Traffic Cameras Could Help Solve Crimes in NWO - Interesting News

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Traffic Cameras Could Help Solve Crimes

October 15, 2002
By JOHN TIERNEY

ASHINGTON, Oct. 14 — It may seem impossible to pick out a serial killer roaming the highways of a sprawling metropolitan region, but the task is far from hopeless.

The van or car of the suburban sniper who is operating here has surely been captured at least briefly by a government camera already in place, and the authorities might have quickly developed a short list of suspects if they were using the more advanced cameras that monitor traffic in other cities.
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Hundreds of cameras continuously record traffic on highways and streets in suburban Washington, including intersections near where the sniper fired. The police have not disclosed what information, if any, they have obtained. They have been spotted checking those cameras, including one that tickets red-light violators near the school in Bowie, Md., where a student was shot.

A sniper obeying traffic signals could have avoided the scores of red-light cameras in the region, because they typically photograph just violators. But the sniper must have shown up on the hundreds of video cameras that feed live images to traffic managers and public Web sites. Those cameras are along major suburban highways and at most major intersections in Montgomery County, Md., where the shootings began.

The images from those cameras are ordinarily not stored, though. Even if they were, the pictures are generally too widely focused and grainy for the police to read license plates. Other cameras, already used on toll roads here and on many roads in England, can instantly read and record license plate numbers.

"Our equipment could record every license plate on Interstate 95, whether the cars were in bumper-to-bumper traffic or moving 150 miles an hour," said Donal Waide, a project engineer for Computer Recognition Systems, a British company that 20 years ago using cameras and computers to spot stolen cars.

For an idea of what could be done today, Mr. Waide pointed to the Coolidge Bridge over the Connecticut River between Northampton and Hadley, Mass. Images are at Link to Article Source

A system like that on roads used by the sniper could allow a computer to sort through the license plates quickly and help the police narrow the search, said Dr. Lawrence W. Sherman, director of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania.

"If you placed a vehicle near several of the murder scenes, that information could help police find the sniper and the rifle," Dr. Sherman said. "In fact, it's even possible that the sniper has generally stayed out of the District of Columbia because he knows it has been more active than the suburban jurisdictions in setting up red-light cameras."

Although surveillance cameras might be useful in this case, Dr. Sherman said, it is unclear exactly how reliable they are at reading license plates or how effective they are at reducing the crime rate.

"There's been a remarkable spread of these cameras in the past two decades without much evaluation," he said. "Surveillance cameras have certainly helped solve some crimes. Murderers and robbers have been caught thanks to cameras at A.T.M.'s. But we haven't done the sort of randomized controlled trials to tell what effect they have on deterring crime or detecting offenders."

Keeping track of cars and trucks on the road could be a valuable tool against terrorism, especially in Washington, said Representative Ellen O. Tauscher, a California Democrat who has studied highway surveillance as a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

"With the sniper, we see the unpredictable randomness that we see with terrorists," Ms. Tauscher said. "We need new tools to give us a very different way of looking at things. People have peace of mind knowing that there's technology out there protecting them and letting the bad guys know that they're being watched. We all have natural concerns about Big Brother, and you don't necessarily want to know who's driving. But it does help to know which car was where. I don't think most people object to the recording of the information, as long as it's not abused."

The police in the United States have used computer information from toll roads to track criminals. F.B.I. agents investigating the kidnapping and murder of Nelson G. Gross, a New Jersey millionaire, in 1997 tracked the kidnappers' across the George Washington Bridge, thanks to the E-ZPass transponder in Mr. Gross's car.

Such surveillance worries critics like Representative Dick Armey, the Texas Republican who is the majority leader. He wrote a letter last year to Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton objecting to a National Park Service plan to install surveillance cameras to catch speeders on the George Washington Parkway in suburban Washington.

"I'm committed to doing what it takes to make our roads safer, but not at the cost of our fundamental rights," Mr. Armey wrote. "Likewise, I am concerned that this may be seen as a step toward a Big Brother surveillance state, where the government monitors the comings and goings of its citizens."

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