Buses and trains to be equipped with cameras to manage crowds!
WASHINGTON - September 29, 2009 - Metro officials are preparing to install video cameras on an unspecified number of rail cars, the first step in what could become a system wide surveillance network that officials say will help them better manage crowds and investigate criminal activity.
The agency's board voted Thursday to accept $27.8 million in grants from the Department of Homeland Security to pay for cameras. Most of the money will put more cameras on buses, in ventilation shafts, at station entrances and near the end of platforms over the next few years. Just more than $7.1 million is set aside to surveil passengers inside rail cars - something that is done in other cities but that continues to trouble privacy advocates.
Metro Transit Police Deputy Chief Jeff Delinski said the primary purpose of these cameras is for crowd control, despite the fact that the money comes from a transit security program. Metro briefly put cameras on a handful of rail cars in summer 2006 to see how customers would respond to experimental designs and technology.
"That spurred the idea that there's a lot of good information the cameras can capture," Delinski said. "Our rail operations people will get the most use out of it. As an ancillary benefit, the police department could go back and retrieve the footage."
One of the federal government's goals in paying for cameras is to deter wrongdoing by scaring would-be terrorists into thinking that they are under a watchful eye.
The agency's board voted Thursday to accept $27.8 million in grants from the Department of Homeland Security to pay for cameras. Most of the money will put more cameras on buses, in ventilation shafts, at station entrances and near the end of platforms over the next few years. Just more than $7.1 million is set aside to surveil passengers inside rail cars - something that is done in other cities but that continues to trouble privacy advocates.
Metro Transit Police Deputy Chief Jeff Delinski said the primary purpose of these cameras is for crowd control, despite the fact that the money comes from a transit security program. Metro briefly put cameras on a handful of rail cars in summer 2006 to see how customers would respond to experimental designs and technology.
"That spurred the idea that there's a lot of good information the cameras can capture," Delinski said. "Our rail operations people will get the most use out of it. As an ancillary benefit, the police department could go back and retrieve the footage."
One of the federal government's goals in paying for cameras is to deter wrongdoing by scaring would-be terrorists into thinking that they are under a watchful eye.
