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VIDEO SURVEILLANCE - Usage is multiplying worldwide
Cameras gather evidence, help catch criminals
Jan. 28, 2007
By JOE LAMBE
The Kansas City Star
VIDEO
A robber grabbed a convenience store’s video surveillance tape and cut it to pieces. An FBI laboratory in Kansas City last year put it back together.
A Kansas burglar’s face didn’t give him away on video, but the tattoos on his neck and arms did. The FBI lab froze the frames, photographed the tattoos and identified the man.
As more surveillance cameras appear worldwide, police use them more and more to mine evidence and catch criminals. Even more and better cameras are on the way, and so are more technicians called video forensic experts.
Kansas City police want to spend $4 million to upgrade their patrol car cameras to higher-quality digital equipment. Police in both Kansas Citys hope to install cameras in high-crime neighborhoods. And some officers on both forces are being trained in forensic video.
Use of surveillance video in Kansas City homicide investigations has doubled in the last five years, detectives said.
“Every time we’re at a scene, one of the first things we do is scan the area for video cameras,” homicide Detective Steve Morgan said Friday. “It’s one of our top priorities. We even look a couple of blocks away, in case a camera caught somebody coming from or going to our crime scene.”
Two years ago, the FBI organized a program in the Northland to enhance crime videos and train area police to work with them. Before that, police sent dicey crime video to a central FBI lab in Virginia.
“They were being overwhelmed by these types of cases,” said Melissa Hamley, an FBI forensic video expert at the Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory in Kansas City.
Next month, the University of Indianapolis will open the first such large lab in the nation to teach forensic video.
Meanwhile, industry experts say surveillance cameras soon will be as common as smoke detectors. Surveillance video business doubled in the last five years and will jump from $9.2 billion in 2005 to $21 billion by 2010, experts predict.
The American Civil Liberties Union contends cameras are spreading so fast they have outrun concerns of privacy and policy.
Today, digital cameras posted in public areas can scan 360 degrees and zoom in to read a note in someone’s hand. Police routinely check public and private business cameras for evidence in crimes or terrorism cases.
Department of Homeland Security grants pay for cameras in cities and small towns.
Chicago, with hundreds already in high-crime areas, is in the process of installing about 2,000 more. Cincinnati officials plan to spend $6 million for “smart” cameras with sound sensors that zoom in on people who fire guns. A pilot study in East Orange, N.J., credited the technology for an 85 percent drop in gun-related crime.
Other “smart” systems trigger cameras to record far more frames per second of higher-quality video when a robbery alarm goes off.
Among a few recent Jackson County cases with helpful video evidence:
- Givon O. Clemons shot a woman to death in a convenience store as a camera recorded him. He is serving life without parole.
- Video of a robbery and murder at a Kansas City gas station showed the killer enter with a coffee cup and leave it on the counter. Police got a fingerprint off the cup and quickly arrested Anthony S. Davis. Jurors convicted him of the robbery last year, but hung up 11-1 on whether the murder was first degree or second degree. He will be retried.
- A police car’s video showed a man in a stopped Cadillac shoot at a Kansas City officer walking toward him. Phillip S. Hudson Jr. was convicted last year. A judge will sentence him next month.
- In October, digital video cameras ran as killers shot one man to death and wounded another in a Kansas City bar. Police arrested brothers Anthony Sisco and Roy Sisco. They are awaiting trial.
“I would like to think I could have solved that case without the video, because I had a living victim,” Morgan said. “But he couldn’t communicate with me for a month. Having the video sped things up.”
Morgan said he supported increased video surveillance, like the camera system police have proposed for a troubled area along 24th Street.
“In my opinion, there is nothing negative about video surveillance — unless you’re the person who did something wrong,” he said.
Little wonder that police chiefs around the world are pushing for more cameras and people to work with them. Officers who enhance, repair and do other things to video are getting trained and certified to fill the need.
The FBI lab in Kansas City has three full-time forensic video experts, among them Hamley and Todd Taylor, a Kansas City, Kan., detective temporarily assigned there. Two Kansas City officers and others train there.
It takes about 18 months to become an FBI-certified forensic video expert. The certification is needed when defense lawyers in court attack any changes to video.
At the lab, Hamley lightened black video enough to show a car and a license plate number. She recently demonstrated how disjointed frames shot by different cameras from different angles could be made into clear images.
Damaged videotapes can be fixed and erased tapes restored.
One of the most common operations at the lab, Hamley said, is to freeze video frames and make photographs police can study.
Police get surveillance videos from all businesses near a crime scene. The lab puts them together in time and place to form a panorama.
They did that two years ago in the BTK case of serial killer Dennis Rader, who had left a clue at a business to taunt police. The lab told police to watch for a dark-colored, late-model sport utility vehicle. They later learned Rader drove such a vehicle that belonged to a relative.
In Indianapolis, former FBI agent Thomas Christenberry is doing what he can to turn out video experts. He is director of public safety education at the University of Indianapolis, which for two years has worked with law enforcement to provide classes on forensic video analysis and the law.
Next month, the university will open a large new lab that will be the first of its kind in the nation, Christenberry said. The program has drawn interest from as far away as Hong Kong, Eastern Europe and the United Kingdom.
In London, hundreds of thousands of cameras catch a person on video up to 300 times a day, a study found. Two years ago, authorities reviewing video spotted the subway suicide bombers.
“In the U.K. they see it (cameras) as a way to keep the peace,” Christenberry said. “There is some resistance from the American viewpoint to too much ‘Big Brother.’ ”
Brett Shirk, director of the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri, said the extreme spread of the cameras into public places made no sense.
He noted studies in the United Kingdom found public cameras did not reduce crime or make people feel safer.
Shirk also noted the potential for operator abuse. Studies in England, for instance, found that many male operators zoomed in on the bodies of young women.
“Who is going to monitor the monitors?” Shirk asked.
In Jackson County, the circuit court will soon get digital cameras to monitor hallways and people who enter courtrooms. The new cameras will even be able to peer into darkness, and may show whether mice run the floors at night, an expert said.
Caught in the act
Two recent Jackson County cases in which video proved crucial:
- Convenience store footage showed Givon O. Clemons shooting a woman to death and walking out with a cash-register drawer. He was convicted last year.
- Video of a robbery and murder at a Kansas City gas station showed the killer enter with a coffee cup and leave it on the counter. Police got a fingerprint off the cup and quickly made an arrest.
RICH SUGG | THE KANSAS CITY STAR Industry experts say surveillance cameras soon will be as common as smoke detectors. This camera was on guard inside a parking garage on the Country Club Plaza.
JIM BARCUS | THE KANSAS CITY STAR Kansas City police want to spend $4 million to upgrade patrol car cameras to higher-quality digital equipment.
The Star’s Christine Vendel contributed to this report. To reach Joe Lambe, call (816) 234-4314 or send e-mail to jlambe@kcstar.com.
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