By John Nickerson
Staff Writer
April 22, 2007
NORWALK - A plan to bring powerful police surveillance cameras to a swath of urban South Norwalk by early July could violate the privacy of the area's large minority population, community leaders say.
State Rep. Bruce Morris, D-Norwalk; NEON Executive Director Joseph Mann; and former NEON Executive Director Bobby Burgess have called on Mayor Richard Moccia and Police Chief Harry Rilling to hold public hearings on the camera project. Rilling said he will organize meetings with residents about the cameras.
Morris, who said he had not heard of the plan even though the Common Council unanimously approved spending $100,000 on eight cameras and wireless antennas in late February, said he is suspicious the cameras are being trained on South Norwalk.
The plan "has the potential to infringe on privacy," Mann said.
Rilling said he wants camera locations, which include fixed spots at Calf Pasture Beach, to be in other parts of the city in the future.
"There is no concentrated focus on South Norwalk," Rilling said. "It is just that area (South Norwalk) is where the basic infrastructure has to be in use."
Possible future spots for antenna and camera locations include Norwalk Hospital, 50 Washington St., and West Rocks Middle School, he said.
Although the Department of Public Works has cameras at more than a dozen traffic intersections, and a few schools have camera feeds piped into their administrative offices, these would be the first cameras controlled by police whose lenses would be pointed toward privately owned areas.
Rilling said the cameras will not be trained on residents' windows and will not record in areas where there is an expectation of privacy.
The plan, paid for by federal homeland security funds, calls for mounting a wireless antenna atop the new police department building at 1 Monroe St. Because city officials also want as many as three cameras at Calf Pasture Beach to deter vandalism and other crimes, another antenna will be put up at Monterey Village, a privately owned low-income housing complex on the highest parcel of land in South Norwalk.
Rilling and police Information Systems Manager Lt. David Wrinn said the antennas, which transmit images from the cameras, must have a "direct line of sight" to Calf Pasture Beach. And the only way to get that bearing on Calf Pasture Beach is to go to the tallest hill in South Norwalk - Monterey Village.
The only way to connect Calf Pasture Beach without the Monterey Village site would be to dig a fiber cable to the beach from Marvin School in East Norwalk, which would be too expensive, Wrinn said.
Once the antennas are set up, the police will be able to use three mobile cameras included in the $100,000 package to do clandestine surveillance on criminal hot spots around South Norwalk.
The three pan, tilt, zoom cameras can take video images and wirelessly send them to the antennas atop the police department, at Calf Pasture Beach or at Monterey Village from as far away as 1,500 feet, Wrinn said.
Two more fixed cameras, with the same 1,500-foot range, could be more permanently attached to buildings or other structures along Washington Street, for example, Rilling said.
Though the rules for the use of the cameras have yet to be written locally, Rilling said he does not want to violate residents' privacy. He said he will look into regulations adopted by other communities.
Rilling said the cameras will be used on a limited basis and only when a reason for surveillance can be articulated.
Though the program has some detractors, others praise it.
Moravia Langley, resident council president at Meadow Gardens, where Jeffrey Allan Coward was killed by a bullet to the head last Halloween night, said she approved of the idea.
"I love it," Langley said. "I will feel much safer because the police will have a second eye. If the police are patrolling the area and they happen to leave a location and something happens, it could be caught on tape."
Monterey Village property manager Silvia Tarifi said, "If you aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear."
Residents and managers of low-income housing are "fighting to get rid of the drugs and guns and any help we get is welcome," Tarifi said
The Rev. Phyllis Bolden, chairwoman for the common council's Health Welfare and Public Safety Committee, which unanimously approved the plan in February, said she has been assured by Rilling that the cameras will only be used for investigations and not for spying.
"I trust him and I believe that he will do exactly what he says," Bolden said.
Copyright © 2007, Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc.