An eye toward tracking taggers

By Christina Jewett -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PST Friday, November 5, 2004



Tired of scrubbing away graffiti, community activists, business owners and police plan to hide Web cameras throughout downtown and midtown to catch taggers in the act.
While details of how the project would work and who would monitor up to 10 hidden cameras are still in the planning stages, civil libertarians urge caution as more and more cameras are trained on city streets across the nation.

Ann Brick, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said even on public streets, people don't always behave as if they're being watched all the time.

"People know that others on the street can see what they're doing," she said. "But they don't expect that people will record every move - if they are kissing a loved one, or scratching themselves in an embarrassing manner."

Brick said hidden cameras grant too much power to viewers, creating the potential for voyeurism, stalking or blackmail.

Graffiti has been on the rise this year in Sacramento, said Ryan Loofbourrow of the Downtown Partnership, a business improvement group. For 2004, there have been 2,000 incidents of graffiti compared with 1,300 last year.

Notorious taggers such as the True Believers Krew (TBK) and Most Infamous (MI) appear to have been in a turf war this year, tagging more buildings than usual, Loofbourrow said.

"We need a force multiplier," Sacramento Police Lt. Cara Westin said of the plan for Web cameras. "We have citizens out there who are mad and frustrated and spending money, and officers who want to get (taggers). But there aren't enough out there."

She said officers rely on vigilant residents and luck to catch taggers, which hasn't been enough to combat the problem.

Responding to complaints about the graffiti onslaught, Westin said, police, city Neighborhood Services Department employees and the Midtown Business Association gathered this spring to discuss the Web camera idea.

Police continue to meet with midtown business owners and activists to hammer out details of setting up a group to fund and execute a Web camera program. The group ideally would come together like a neighborhood watch, with members who would be trained to spot suspicious activity, monitor cameras and report taggers in the act, Westin said.

Locations for the cameras have not been chosen and participants do not intend to disclose where they will be mounted.

"People will have to decide if they want to have a camera at their home or business, then have to be willing to monitor the camera," Westin said. "There are a lot of steps ahead. We're at the beginning stages of this idea."

City Councilman Steve Cohn, who represents the central city, said the cameras could be a long-term solution to combating an expensive graffiti problem.

The city is spending more than $300,000 to fight graffiti this year: The Neighborhood Services Department spent $160,000 to scrub down private property, and the Department of General Services spent $120,000 to wipe graffiti from public property, city officials said. The Sacramento Police Department also employs a detective in charge of graffiti investigations.

Cohn said privacy should not be an issue, because cameras would be in public spaces or on private property, where people have no expectation of privacy. "It's basically a security camera-type system," he said.

Civil rights attorney Mark Merin differed, saying the cameras can record activity in out-of-the-way places - unlike banks and train platforms - where people don't expect to be watched. "We're going to catch taggers, but you sweep within that a broad net of people doing other things they may not want to be seen doing."

Throughout the nation, cities have turned increasingly to security cameras to fight crime. Washington, D.C., used 1,000 cameras to monitor crowds on Independence Day last year. In Chicago, the mayor announced that 225 cameras would be added to an existing 2,000 used to monitor city streets. And last month, the Los Angeles City Council approved a plan to install five cameras on Hollywood Boulevard, and about 60 more along other main thoroughfares.

Overseas, more than 150,000 closed-circuit TV cameras are used in London to track activity on the streets, the subway and the shores of the Thames River.

Brick, who specializes in technology and free speech issues for the ACLU, said Sacramento's move toward Web cameras "is just one example of the proliferation of video surveillance in public areas, so that before long it will be impossible to be out in public without being in a camera's eye."

Earlier this year, Sacramento police surveillance cameras were used at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials at California State University, Sacramento, and at last year's protests of an international agriculture conference downtown.

Midtown Business Association President Randy Hartley said graffiti removal costs business owners thousands of dollars every year.

Graffiti brings blight, he said, and an environment that could invite more crime.

"I think where it starts and is allowed, then other things happen," he said. "It just creates a breeding ground for everything else that comes up."

George Raya, a midtown resident and member of the group planning the pilot project, said the cameras could - with some publicity help - send a message that midtown is no longer tagging territory.

"You put the blank space out, they're going to come paint," he said. "Then they'll see themselves on the 6 o'clock news."

Brick denounced that idea, saying "that kind of shaming use of video is very disturbing."

Jim March, a community activist and midtown resident, said the only aspect of the plan that bothers him is the potential for graffiti spikes in areas where people cannot afford to buy cameras.

"Businesses use cameras, hire security, but they're not solving crime; they're chasing it from themselves," he said.

Midtown resident Ann Marie Patterson was concerned that the project was going forward without City Council discussion. She said the Web cameras reminded her of the surveillance powers granted in the federal Patriot Act -but without the process of public approval.

"It's an idea I'd have problems with, even if it went through the right legal channels," she said.