Jul. 16, 2008 - Issue #665: Surviving the Industry

Live from Jasper Ave, it’s Saturday night

Surveillance cameras may score points with businesses and the

The city recently installed security cameras along Jasper Avenue at 108th and 109th Streets as part of a three-month pilot project at a cost of $70 000. While the cameras are supposed to make the downtown core safer, an expert in surveillance says it’s unlikely that they’ll have any significant effect, and far more likely that they’re just a waste of money.
 

Dr Kevin Haggerty is an associate professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Alberta. Haggerty conducts research on surveillance technology and is also an editor for the international journal Surveillance and Society. He’s written countless books, articles and essays about closed circuit television (CCTV) and other methods of surveillance and notes that, for the most part, cameras don’t have the effect the general public thinks they will.
 

“They seem to [be good at deterring] certain types of crimes. Car break-ins, for example. They seem to be very good if you put them in car parks and that sort of thing,” Haggerty notes, before adding, “but they seem to be very bad at [deterring] general disorder type of crimes.”
 

General disorder crimes are also known as impulse crimes, Haggerty explains, and generally include the alcohol- and testosterone-fuelled violence seen on Jasper and Whyte Avenues on a regular basis. 
 

“The reason for [the lack of effect] is that a lot of general disorder crime is impulsive. It’s not like you sit down and you think, ‘Oh, will I get angry at this guy tonight at this location and take a swing at him?’ It just doesn’t work that way.”
 

Even when car breaks-ins and other premeditated crimes go down in the area of a city in which cameras are installed, the crime rate often goes up in other areas of the city where there is less surveillance.
 

“They tend to have a displacement effect.” Haggerty points out. “You haven’t solved the condition that makes [some people] get up in the morning and rob from cars. They still have to do that. That’s still their occupation; they just have to go somewhere else!”
 

Haggerty goes on to say that any deterrent effect that cameras might have in any given area is often short lived.
 

“Even if the crime rate dips slightly in the first year or two, it tends to climb back up soon after that.” Haggerty states, “People just become accustomed to them, or indifferent to them.”
 

In London, England—where some estimates suggest there is one camera for every 14 people—surveillance seems to have had very little effect. In 2005, the UK’s Home Office (the government organization that deals with law, policing and public safety) commissioned a study about CCTV. The report states that “the most obvious conclusion to be drawn … is that CCTV is an ineffective tool if the aim is to reduce overall crime rates and make people feel safer.” Parts of the report even suggest that crime rates might have gone up after the installation of cameras.

 

Reports like this aren’t new. For decades, studies  suggesting that cameras are ineffective have been piling up. In fact, after cameras were installed on Whyte Avenue in 2003 and 2004, statistics showed that the cameras had no significant effect on crime in the area. The system was dismantled as a result, but the recent installation of cameras on Jasper Avenue seems to suggest that the city isn’t ready to give up on Big Brother quite yet. 
 

Haggerty has his theories as to why that might be.
 

“They have an undeniable public appeal. If you tell people that you’re going to install cameras, it’s very hard to get people to believe that—you know what—they might not work,” Haggerty speculates. “It’s easy politics. It’s very easy to win votes in law-and-order kind of issues.” 
 

Haggerty’s theory is backed up by an Angus-Reid poll conducted earlier this year that found that 68 per cent of Canadians supported the use of CCTV to fight crime, likely because most Canadians think the technology actually works. 
 

But in London—the CCTV capital of the world—only three per cent of crimes were solved because of camera footage. More often than not, most surveillance photos aren’t good enough to be used as evidence, especially when the person committing a crime is wearing a ski mask or a hoodie.
 

It’s not just the general public, though: Haggerty adds that the installation of cameras is a great way to win the votes of business owners too. 

“If you can actually placate [the business owners] with a $40 000 camera system ... it’s a solution to a political problem, not necessarily a crime problem.”
 

Indeed, Michael Sainchek—one of the owners of Oil City Roadhouse—was quite verbal in his support of his cameras at a press conference last week announcing their installation downtown. 
 

“We’re very excited and support the cameras going in on 108th and 109th … I think it’s only going to assure the safety of not only our customers, but the people living downtown,” Sainchek said at the time.
 

Shirley Lowe, executive director of the Old Strathcona Business Association, shares Sainchek’s sentiment. She says that not only would she have preferred that the city had kept the cameras up on Whyte Avenue, she would have liked to see more of them.
 

“I don’t think they were up for a long enough time-frame, frankly. And they weren’t everywhere. They were in pretty specific locations,” Lowe states.

 

As Haggerty explains, though, this is where a kind of slippery slope can begin. Currently, the cameras on Jasper Avenue are unmonitored and run on a 72-hour loop, which means that people have three days to report a crime before the tapes are destroyed and any potential evidence is lost. On the bright side, this means that the cameras don’t pose a huge privacy concern—yet. 
 

However, once officials see that the cameras aren’t having the deterrent effect they had hoped for, Haggerty speculates that they’ll probably look at the possibility of adding more cameras or having the cameras monitored to see if that makes a difference. It’s at this time, he explains, that people should start worrying about privacy.
 

“You have to remember that it’s a very boring job watching those cameras. And you’ve got to figure out a way to make your job interesting,” Haggerty points out. “You also have to figure out a way to discriminate. What do you single out to look at any given moment of the thousands of potential things you could look at? Well, there’s lots of research that says that the officers spend their time looking at people of colour. 
 

“And typically, the camera operators are men, so they usually spend a lot of their time just scoping out women, to the point that they will videotape sex acts and trade them across shifts—those kinds of things.”
 

One of the more expensive solutions to the crime epidemic would be to hire more police officers. But the easiest solution the city’s criminal woes, Haggerty concludes, would be not to hand out so many liquor licenses in the same parts of the city. Haggerty is by no means a prohibitionist, but says that alcohol is the highest correlated factor associated with rowdy and violent criminal behaviour.
 

“Essentially it’s the liquor establishments that are creating a risk, but then they’re not responsible for it. They benefit, they profit, and then they throw these people out onto the street, and say, ‘Now it’s a social responsibility. Now it’s your responsibility.’”
 

A patron of a Jasper Avenue bar asking to be identified only as Seth, doesn’t necessarily think there should be fewer bars on Jasper Avenue, but he does agree that drinking establishments stop short when it comes to keeping the streets safe.
 

“Honestly, there should be one cop at every bar probably, because the bouncers aren’t going to do shit,” he charges.

Mike Pierce, another bar patron, adds to this thought: “The money spent on the cameras would have been much better spent having somebody stand on the street and prevent that crime from happening in the first place. If they can show me any sign that [cameras] work, then I’m cool with it. Otherwise, I think it’s kind of pointless, and a little Big Brother-ish.” V 

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