PERSPECTIVE - THE UNBLINKING EYE

What Minneapolis can tell us about surveillance cameras

With Winnipeg police poised to release a report recommending the
installation of public security cameras downtown, the Free Press
visited Minneapolis, which has an ambitious network of surveillance
cameras. The cameras work, but as Winnipeggers inevitably demand more
of them to bolster security in areas outside the heart of the city, we
should prepare for some unintended results.

MINNEAPOLIS - as little as a year ago, the thought of standing idly
in front of Wafana's Deli at the corner of 24th Avenue and Lyndale
Avenue on Minneapolis's gritty north side would have been laughable,
if not suicidal.

In 2005, a year before the city forced the grocery to close due to
allegations it was an active participant in the area's drug trade, the
intersection was the site of 1,300 calls for emergency services.

Police made more than 600 arrests on that corner.

"If this was the toughest city in the whole state, this was the
toughest corner of the city. You would pass through here, and you
would literally be afraid to drive through," says Don Samuels, the
area's city councillor.

Now, in the early afternoon on a seasonably warm March Friday, there's
literally not a soul on the street, and there's no evidence of the
entrenched drug trade that plagued the corner and its surrounding area
for years. A lone surveillance camera sits atop a five-metre telephone
pole across the street, wirelessly beaming the footage it captures to
screens in a police station about 10 blocks away.

It's one of 38 cameras switched on in the Northside six months ago, at
a cost of more than $1 million. Similar surveillance initiatives in
the city's downtown core have been up and running since late 2004.

Here, across the river from the heart of downtown, cameras are
positioned to form an electronic border -- you can't get in or out of
the area without at least one of them catching, and recording, the
movement.

While to some, the cameras are a beacon of a brighter future for their
blighted neighbourhoods, to others, they are simply another example of
police and politicians trying to cure a sickness they don't understand.

Crime on the Northside ramped up after people fled from the area in
the wake of civil-rights riots in the late 1960s. Jamaican-born
Samuels calls that period the beginning of a protracted "brain drain"
that the Northside still grapples with.

Today, he says, 72 per cent of African-American males in the area fail
to graduate from high school, creating what he calls "a feeder system
for the streets and jails."

Throughout the 1980s and '90s, street gangs began swarming the area
and violently competing for turf, while the drug and prostitution
trade flourished. In 1995, residents nicknamed the city
"Murderapolis." Police began fighting back through the use of
technology. The introduction of a crime-tracking system called
CODEFOR, similar to Winnipeg's CrimeStat, allowed police to target
their resources more effectively. Serious crime began dropping up
until 1999, when the homicide rate began creeping up again.

The 57 murders recorded in 2006 were the most in a decade -- and more
than half of them were in North Minneapolis.

Since then, police say crime has been subsiding after reinvestment in
juvenile policing, the addition of surveillance cameras, and hiring
more officers. Even still, the Northside today has the highest crime
rate in the state of Minnesota, despite the area showing its best-ever
reduction in violent crime last year.

In the first week of March, reported serious crimes like homicide,
aggravated assault, rape and auto theft hit a record low of 42 incidents.

The high crime rate isn't surprising, given some other facts about the
area. Just 17 per cent of people in Minneapolis call the Northside
home, but the area accounts for nearly half of the city's subsidized
housing. Sixty per cent of the city's mortgage foreclosures in the
last year happened here.

Samuels fears the high rate of mortgage default -- local fallout from
a national financial crisis -- could mean the area is primed for
another round of cheap property grabs by absentee landlords. He says
that problem has plagued the area for a long time.

111The botched drug raid made national headlines after a ricocheting
police bullet meant to kill an attacking pit bull struck and injured
an 11-year-old boy. Furious bystanders reportedly hurled rocks and
bottles at police, set cars on fire and attacked media there to report
on the raid. In the year before the city shut it down, Samuels says
321 calls for emergency service originated from that home alone.

Now there's a police camera on a side street monitoring what's
happening.

But the dealers and junkies are changing their behaviour and adapting
to the cameras to avoid being caught in the act of selling or buying
dope.

Samuels compares the activity of people near this spot to an elaborate
production staged by criminals to fool police into thinking they're
simply out for a stroll to the store or to catch a bus.

"Within a block of here, there's this busy back and forth, people
coming and going -- you'd walk beyond the block and it would fall off."

Fake traffic -- it's all just for show, he says.

Many have been shot or assaulted near the problem house and a nearby
shuttered convenience store. But as at Wafana's Deli, crime on the
corner plunged by as much as 95 per cent after the home was shut down.

The stark tour continues down a five-block stretch of Penn Avenue that
Samuels says became instantly ravaged by pimps, prostitutes and johns
after the city razed their former place of business along Lowry Avenue
to try to deal with the Northside's sex-trade problem. Cameras now
hang here too. Activity is down, and the street is virtually empty.

In fact, Samuels says this troubled portion of the Northside,
including "the street from hell" where his own home sits, is
undergoing something of a miraculous rebirth. In the wake of safety
advances, businesses are beginning to come back and reinvest. West
Broadway Avenue is slated for $200 million in development and upgrades
in coming years.

It's already home to new businesses like a Federal credit union, and a
trendy sit-down coffee shop downstairs from a skills-development
office for at-risk youth.

A next step is to have more non-white police hired to live and work in
the area. Samuels says many residents see police as an occupying army
that can't possibly share their concerns.

"Sometimes you'll have a guy coming out of the academy and the most
intimate relationship he's having with black folks is the one's he's
wrestling to the ground."

What Samuels doesn't say in our time together is that the cameras have
been the silver bullet. In fact, the man who top cops in the
Minneapolis Police Department call "a visionary" on crime prevention
never once says the cameras are directly responsible for a reduction
in crime.

No one seems to be able to connect the technology to a definite
result, only to include cameras as part of a range of crime-reduction
strategies.

"We can't say any one thing has been responsible for the decline in
crime, but the cameras are a big part of it," Samuels says. "The
cameras are here now to help prevent crime from coming back."

Not everyone on the Northside agrees, and even Samuels admits that
criminals are now finding more discreet ways of doing business.

Following the camera's always-watching eye north up Lyndale, past
lot-upon-lot of homes vacant or for sale, you pass by the solemn brown
brick steeples of the New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, tended by
Rev. Jerry McAfee.

McAfee has lived in the Northside for 30 years, and is pastor of this
church of 1,000-plus members and a small school.

To put it in his own words, "nine times out of ten, I've either
married or buried someone in the community."

He shakes his head when he hears police and politicians trumpet the
successes of crime-fighting strategies like surveillance cameras, one
of which sits on the corner outside the front door of his church.

"You can't fight what you don't understand," he says. What police
administrators and politicians have failed time and again to see, says
McAfee, is that many of the competing gangs are linked to each other
by family ties.

If there was another avenue for gangsters to deal with each other --
an amnestied mediation process -- the majority of them would take it,
he believes.

The targeting and jailing of gang leaders has only made things worse,
McAfee says. In the absence of leadership, the younger gang members
have no idea how to govern themselves, and they'll strike out at each
other.

"Now Minneapolis looks like Los Angeles, you've got your Crips and
Bloods, but different variations... . They'll hit each other. Now the
work is much harder when you're trying to get stuff shut down," he
says.

Two months ago, McAfee says he read that police had taken crime down a
peg in the area after an upswing in violent crime. He called the very
idea "a farce."

"What they didn't know is we met with every sect, every gang over a
three-to four-week period to get them to buy into leaving the
foolishness alone," he says. "We don't publicize that because it has
to be on the down low -- they would have known that if they weren't so
arrogant."

The pastor shrugs his shoulders when asked if the cameras have made
any difference in the lives of his congregation. "I don't have a
problem ... as long as they're used in a proper way."

"This government has not been good with African-Americans," he says,
recalling widespread allegations of racial profiling after police
began using statistical crime-tracking methods in the late 1990's

Heightened police presence and cameras won't fix the poor relationship
many area residents have with police, McAfee says.

"You can't arrest the problem away -- if you're going to solve the
crimes, you're going to need the community's help in doing it.

McAfee resists any notion that the Northside's issues will begin to be
fixed until there's "a proper diagnosis" of the gang problem.

"All they're doing is continuing to create a permanent underclass
where people can prey on each other."

He had some cautionary words for Winnipeg about public
surveillance.

"Camera things are good -- but if it's only to put a Band-Aid on the
wound and not to try and get in front of (the gang problem),
(Winnipeg's) going to wind up like America."

Like McAfee, longtime business owners along Minneapolis's West
Broadway Avenue aren't all buying into the idea that cameras make much
difference. West Broadway between Washington Avenue and North Fremont
Avenue can only be described a dull-looking scramble of businesses,
some just eking out a trade, others housed in new buildings, looking
hopeful of better times ahead. This stretch of the Northside is home
to some of the more infamous sites of gang-related violence, like what
locals call the "murder store" (a ramshackle mini-mart) and a grocery
store that reportedly spends $1 million a year to hire off-duty police
as security. "There's a virtual mini-precinct in there," one observer
says.

Area politicians say that many of the entrenched businesses were
resistant to the new cameras and other police tactics, mostly because
of an "intricate relationship" between the drug trade and some
convenience stores and gas bars selling drug paraphernalia -- and
sometimes drugs.

One business owner identified only as Ouzi owns Easy Wireless on West
Broadway, a store that sells hip-hop clothes and jewelry, along with
pre-paid cell-phone cards. The store is neat and well-stocked.

Just outside the store's door is a police surveillance camera that
Ouzi says does his business no good, since he still has to personally
turn loiterers and dealers away from his corner. Directly across the
street, four young men in hoodies skulk about. As Ouzi talks, they
cross the street, enter the store in a pack, look around, buy nothing
and head back out.

The store owner, who came to the U.S. from the Middle East in 1993,
says he believes the real purpose of the cameras is to confine crime
to one area of the city.

"They're not about to save north Minneapolis because if they do, some
other area is going to suffer," he says.

It would be far better for the city, Ouzi says, if people focused on
rehabilitating young people in the area who have turned to dealing
drugs as a way out of poverty.

Letting youth into work programs despite their criminal past is
key.

"They can feel that $200 hard-earned money might be a lot safer than
$1,000 in drug money ... but they're not giving them a chance," he
says.

Ouzi doubts police are watching the cameras.

"It's just there watching people running red lights or speeding," he
says.

Ouzi's suspicion that police aren't watching the cameras is actually
true -- they aren't.

At least not most of the time, according to Lt. Jeff Rugel of the
Minneapolis Police Department's 4th Precinct, the police station
responsible for law-enforcement on the Northside. Camera feeds in each
precinct are beamed back to monitors at the precincts' front desks.
The desk officer on duty is the person most likely to catch any crimes
in progress, but that officer also answers the phone and takes reports
from people walking into the station. With 38 cameras running 24-7,
that's more than one person can manage.

"We've reached the extent on the Northside of what an officer sitting
at that desk can have any control over," Rugel says. "If a cop said,
'Hey, desk person, can you check out the camera at Broadway and
Aldridge'...she could do that. Routinely she doesn't spend her day
doing this."

Rugel gives a demonstration of how the police cameras operate. A
computer turns up a list of the camera's locations, and clicking on
any one of them opens a window showing what's happening there in real
time.

The computer mouse also zooms the cameras in and out. Even though some
of them are miles away from the police station, they move surprisingly
quickly and accurately, and the picture produced is clear.

Rugel says there have already been a number of successful arrests
based on what the cameras see, including one of a key suspect in a
shooting back in November, and a loitering burglar caught breaking
into a store two weeks ago.

No audio is recorded because it would be considered a form of illegal
wiretap.

Footage is kept for two weeks, and whatever's not being used as
evidence is erased.

Anyone in the neighbourhood is welcome to come in and watch the
footage, Rugel says, but this can cause problems because people assume
the cameras capture more than they do.

It's 3:30 p.m., and within a couple of hours, the calls for service in
the area will grow. On the midday watch (4 p.m. to 2 a.m.) there will
be about 22 officers out on the streets of the Northside, trying to
show a visible presence.

They are keeping tabs on a developing situation with a gang facing
possible retaliation by rivals.

"The technology has helped, but frankly the most important thing is
the staffing levels. We've added cops in the last couple of years,"
Rugel says.

Cameras don't serve warrants, do traffic stops or conduct searches, he
adds.

In his precinct alone, officers have recovered 58 guns between the
start of the year and Mar. 10.

"It's a huge number," Rugel says.

Still, he adds, the cameras are an important addition to the
neighbourhood for at least one reason: there's a new-found sense of
freedom of movement, which could spur commerce and pedestrian traffic.

"You don't get as many people hanging out, 'hey babying' women,
because they know they're being watched. That goes a long way," Rugel
says.

"A lot of people that live on the Northside like the fact that there's
somebody watching."

Again, not everyone agrees.

Shannon Reep has been a Northsider his entire life, and lives with his
wife in a beautifully-kept Lyndale Avenue home, two blocks north of
Wafana's.

Reep says having grown up in the area, he knows what to watch out for.
He's not even sure if the cameras are on.

"I don't know how it makes other people feel, but it doesn't make a
difference, it doesn't make us feel any safer," he says.

From his doorstep, the 38-year-old points out a number of vacant
houses across the street from him, and then points to a rented home
that he says is a source of constant traffic.

"If (the cameras) are on, they need to do something about it... . They
should have it pointed towards that because people are in and out of
there all the time."

Reep says if the cameras are simply a political strategy to show
something's being done about crime in his area, it's not a sound one.

"Honestly, I've never seen a difference," he says.

In the background, Reep's wife says that the cameras are just a way
for the city to avoid hiring more police.

He says promises made by police three years ago to get out of their
cars and walk the beat more never became reality.

His last encounter with police didn't go so well. He says was outside
using his snowblower when a cop came along and told him not to blow
snow into the street.

Reep says he complied with the officer's demands, only to have the cop
return minutes later.

Reep says he was handcuffed and put in a squad car after he refused to
give the officer his name.

He ended up with a stern warning and a ticket, and a lecture about how
police in the area have better things to do than have homeowners
create more work for them.

The incident happened in front of a police camera across the
street.

"If that camera's supposed to make me feel safer...."

Reep doesn't finish his sentence.