SEIZED ASSETS PAY FOR SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS

Assets seized from drug dealers have been used to buy 70 more
surveillance cameras that will be installed over the next two weeks
in high-crime areas and near high schools, Mayor Daley announced today.

Fifty of the new cameras are what Daley called "the next generation"
of surveillance technology.

They weigh 35 pounds and cost just $20,000 apiece, compared to 100
pounds at $34,000 each for the old model. Both versions have zoom
lenses, night vision capability and the ability to rotate 360
degrees. Twenty-five have gunshot detection technology capable of
"triangulating within 20 feet" the location of a shooting.

The new cameras bring to 170 the number of "Operation Disruption"
cameras installed in high-crime areas with microwave antennas that
beam pictures back to the 911 emergency center and district stations.
Roughly half are monitored around the clock.

Technology that allows police officers to monitor cameras on their
beat from their squad cars is still being developed. The city is also
still testing sophisticated software capable of spotting "suspicious
and unusual behavior."

"Eventually, as the technology gets better, you'll have more and more
cameras in communities -- for the safety of people and prevention,"
said Daley, who has embraced a radical plan to require every licensed
Chicago business open more than 12 hours a day to install indoor and
outdoor cameras.

"If you have children playing in the playground, around a school or
outside your home, people want to feel safe. If people who live in
high-rises have doormen and cameras, people inbungalows, two-flats
and apartment buildings would [like the same thing]. The want to feel
safe. Whether it's riding the L, riding Metra or in a community,
cameras are very, very effective. They prevent a lot of crime."

Police Supt. Phil Cline said it's not enough to "simply install a
camera" in a high-crime area.

Video surveillance needs to be conducted in tandem with other crime
reduction strategies -- like flooding an area with personnel from a
"targeted response unit" or conducting special undercover operations
to disrupt open-air drug markets, he said.

"When we put up a camera, that means we're also implementing
strategies to ensure that crime simply doesn't move down the block or
around the corner," Cline said.

"We've installed cameras in areas where gangs, guns and drugs are
most active with one idea: to hit the gangbangers in the pocketbook
by disrupting their narcotics trade."

The mayor was tight-lipped about where the latest round of cameras
would be installed.

He would only say that some would be located near high schools, based
on an assessment now underway to determine the CTA routes that
students use to get to school and the paths they walk to and from bus
and L stops.

One of the new cameras was installed at 56th and Loomis in Englewood
to serve as a backdrop for a mayoral news conference that was
ultimately moved indoors because of heavy rain. That's a neighborhood
- -- with seven cameras already -- still grieving from the shooting
deaths of two young girls gunned down in the safety of their homes.

"The greatest compliment I received was from an 82-year-oldman who
lived on a corner where a camera was [installed]. He came to me
crying and said, 'This is the first time I've ever been able to sit
on my porch,' " said Englewood Ald. Shirley Coleman (16th), after
joining Daley at a news conference at Libby Elementary School, 5300
S. Loomis.

"The camera has that kind of effect. It gives people a sense of
security."

But Coleman said she was concerned to learn that not all of the
cameras are being monitored around the clock.

"I don't want to see any dog-and-pony-show cameras in my ward. If
something happens, God forbid, they [can] say, 'Well, this one was
not monitored.'I'm not interested in props for the community. We have
to have the real stuff," Coleman said.

Two years ago, Chicago became a world leader in Big Brother technology.

With help from a $5.1 million federal homeland security grant, the
city announced plans to install 250 cameras at locations at high risk
of a terrorist attack, link them and 2,000 existing cameras to the
911 center and equip them all with sophisticated software capable of
spotting "suspicious and unusual behavior."

City Hall is now finalizing a contract for "Operation Virtual
Shield," Daley's plan to link 1,000 miles of "sometimes stand-alone
fiber" into a unified "homeland security grid"--complete with sensors
capable of monitoring the city's water supply and detecting chemical
and biological weapons.

The city also made an unprecedented offer to the private sector.
Businesses that agreed to pay an undisclosed fee for the privilege
would have cameras outside their entrances and even in their
stairwells monitored by the 911 center.

Last summer, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that Boeing Corp. had
become the first Chicago business to join the camera network.

On Tuesday, City Hall disclosed that 50 corporations -- ranging from
utilities to companies in the LaSalle Street financial district --
have also signed on. Officials were tight-lipped about the fee and
the precise number of cameras.