Saturday, January 15, 2011

Can Technology Thwart Crime?

As I mentioned previously, I was not paying full attention at the Jan. 10 City Council meeting when the Highland Global Strategies presentation was taking place. I did see some of it later on television and one part has me wondering about how police can actually prevent a crime through technology.

As I understand what was being said, police could use facial recognition on surveillance cameras to identify known offenders and if at some point cameras detected a meeting of, say, five such characters, police could move in to ward off crime from happening.

As a citizen and somewhat of a worrywart, I have had experiences where I suspected someone's intentions and called police, only to be told to call back when a crime was actually committed.

One incident involved a man living in a car in Lot 7, just outside our building. He was using a large knife to open food cans. When he woke up in the morning, he would get out and stretch and kind of study the building. Because there is a fire escape with access to one of our windows, I was concerned that this obviously needy person might decide at some point to break in. Speculative, yes. But I wanted the police to find out more about this guy's situation. No dice.

So say a senior looks out of a window in a high-crime neighborhood and sees five known hoodlums in a huddle. Would she get the same response? Would having facial recognition technology and camera surveillance of such a get-together make a police response any more likely? Or even legal?

Now, as it happened in another instance, someone in our building heard some guys standing by the fence next to the fire escape and actually discussing how easy it would be to climb up and break in. In that case, police responded at once.

The question is whether, without any indication of intention to commit a crime, police could move in on an individual or group, even if they were known to police from past encounters. Some might say police already do run up on folks sometimes, technology or no. But if an incident went to court and all the police could say was that they thought something was about to happen, what would the judge say?

Crime has been one of the top issues in Plainfield as far back as I can remember, although in a couple of recent political campaigns it was not stressed as much as in the past. Major crime has gone down according to statistics gathered by the FBI in the past few years, but the crime rate per 1,000 remains high, compared to neighboring towns. Public safety costs are now front and center as municipal resources are being squeezed to the limit. This subject demands a lot more thought and discussion if Plainfield is to make any progress in this new decade.

--Bernice

6 comments:

  1. My worry is what they do with facial recognition if there is a corrupt police officer or municipal official. Just like we do not allow them to enter our homes without probably cause or a warrant, we should not allow the authorities to track us without cause.

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  2. I think the facial recognition software might help. It's unbelievable how many folks are roaming about town with open arrest warrants on them. (Not ME, of course!) In ne'er-do-well suspicious gatherings, chances would be that at least one would have a warrant out on them. That would present sufficient cause for questioning/arrest and might thwart a crime before it happens.

    I know folks complain about "Big Brother," but that's our world today. I personally don't care if the police watch me in public. Do you? (Not meaning you, Bernice ... the world at large you.) To be honest, it makes me feel safer if I think they might be watching.

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  3. "Face recognition has been getting pretty good at full frontal faces and 20 degrees off, but as soon as you go towards profile, there've been problems." And that is from wikipedia.

    There are a few low tech ways to thwart the software . . . it has a very long way to go!

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  4. We are only two weeks into 2011 and the 2010 crime stats are not yet available. When you report that crime is down you can only be referring to the stats for 2009 and prior. It's hard to believe that with a jump from 2 homicides in 2009 to 8 homicides in 2010 that violent crime is down (although that is how the Director likes to report it).

    Here we are, just 16 days into the year and we've already hit 25% of last years homicide rate. Unless something is done soon, it is going to be a very bad year for Plainfield. Unfortunately this Director doesn't have a clue and doesn't have the support of his troops even if he did.

    http://www.njsp.org/info/stats.html

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  5. Bernice, Your problem is that you are from the 007 generation. Get with it and watch "24". They will be able to open a socket, move the infra red satelite into postion and open up the trap door to use the pneumatic tube to wisk them away to somewhere. Please get the videos from the library. We can not have this old thinking continueing in town. Next people will suggest that children do homework before they are allowed to download their Facebook links.

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  6. hey GB watch your mouth when you speak to your elders like that. 2nd of all i think you need to renew your meds cause you are losing it!

    3rd - we need to call in the National Guard to put the brakes on all the violence.

    4th - public beatings wouldnt hurt either... but it would never happen cause we have this legal system that will keep these thuglets in the cycle for a long time

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