Columbus Police Department plans to expand its citywide surveillance grid with the purchase of 15 additional police cameras to be placed throughout the city in response to a recent rash of shootings in which bystanders were injured.
The city council unanimously approved the $52,500 purchase during its regular meeting Tuesday at the Municipal Complex despite some councilmembers’ initial suggestions to table the matter for more discussion.
“Crime is not stopping, so I think that we need to get this started as soon as we can because people are calling,” Mayor Stephen Jones told the council ahead of its vote. “Y’all probably don’t get the calls that I get concerned about the shootings and different things of that nature. I think it’s important enough for us to get this moving.”
The surveillance cameras, to be purchased from a New Orleans-based nonprofit called Project NOLA that acts as a force multiplier for law enforcement’s capabilities, will be placed in various locations throughout parks and neighborhoods.
Funding for the 15 new cameras will come from the city’s special projects fund. Once the new cameras are installed, CPD will have 25 total NOLA cameras operating throughout the city, along with five “Sky Cop” cameras monitoring crime hot spots.
Jones said the goal is to eventually have a grid of security cameras throughout the city to solve crimes sooner.
“So that if you do … hear gunshots, the cameras will detect them,” he said. “Or if somebody calls 911, (the cameras) will see who’s coming out of the neighborhood and who’s entering the neighborhood.”
While he expressed his support for the cameras, Ward 3 Councilman Rusty Greene said he wanted more information about the city’s overall plan for the camera system and moved to table the matter until the council’s work session next week, drawing a second from Ward 6 Councilman Jason Spears.
“Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to come across as if I’m not (all for this),” Greene said. “I just think we need to have a little bit more discussion on what it’s going to look like, how it’s going to be monitored. What are the results? There’s just a lot of questions that I have that I don’t think another week is going to make a difference.”
Spears concurred, asking Police Chief Joseph Daughtry about the specifics of how the system works.
The cameras are monitored around the clock by Project NOLA staff located at the University of New Orleans, Daughtry said. Equipped with gunshot detection technology, the cameras zoom in when a shot is fired in its vicinity. NOLA staff then relay footage to officers at the scene to begin investigating.
“Project NOLA monitors these cameras 24/7,” Daughtry said. “We don’t have the manpower at this time to sit up and watch these cameras on a regular basis, but if we (are) … responding to a shooting and we have this grid set up, we can tell them where we are. They will start pulling camera footage and start sending it to the officers on scene.”
The cameras have already proven effective for the police department, Daughtry said, leading to arrests in “several juvenile shootings.”
Jones pushed again for the board’s immediate approval, specifically noting an increase in calls from citizens regarding recent shootings in previous weeks, including a Memorial Day shooting that sent an 18-month-old child and his mother to the hospital.
“I can guarantee you if we had these cameras where I’m putting them at now, that 18-month-old baby, whoever shot them, we would have had them in custody right now,” Jones said.
Vice Mayor and Ward 1 Councilwoman Ethel Stewart said the council has been briefed on the cameras, their purpose and their capabilities previously and raised a substitute motion to have the request approved, drawing a second from Ward 2 Councilman Roderick Smith.
Before the council approved the request unanimously, Spears withdrew his second to table the request, though he noted that the cameras “are just a tool” when it comes to solving crimes in the city.
“They’re not going to stop crime,” he said. “They’re not going to stop people making the bad decisions they make. This is just one tool in the war chest of what you’ve got to put together to start impacting crime.”
Other business
In other business on Tuesday, the city council:
■ unanimously approved Ward 5 Councilman Gary Jefferson’s motion to table discussion about approving a proposed ordinance that would allow approved golf carts to travel on certain city streets;
■ approved setting the salary for a city planner in the amount of $75,000 pending preliminary testing; and
■ voted to accept the Request for Qualifications submitted by Neel-Schaffer for consultant engineering services regarding the Propst Park Kayak Launch.
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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