Thomas Breen file photos
Prospect Hill Alder Steve Winter: Where's the proof cameras work? Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison: Cameras are just one tool.
The Board of Alders granted final approval to the Elicker Administration’s plan to purchase 500 surveillance cameras to help solve the city’s largely unsolved shootings and homicides — a move some defended as necessary to fight crime, and others criticized as a short-sighted and unproven way to spend millions in “once-in-a-generation” federal aid.
That approval came in the form of a vote at Monday night’s full Board of Alders meeting, which took place in person in the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall.
In a voice vote, local legislators granted a final approval to Mayor Justin Elicker’s proposal to spend $12 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money on various public safety initiatives and technology upgrades.
At the center of this latest pandemic-relief allocation is $3.8 million to buy and install 500 new surveillance cameras at crime hotspots around the city.
“It takes a lot of elements to stop crime,” Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison said Monday night in support of the plan. “This is just one tool.”
Elicker and Acting Police Chief Renee Dominguez have framed the camera proposal as helping catch New Haven up with other Connecticut cities that have much larger police camera networks — and that also have much higher homicide closure rates.
According to Dominguez’s presentation last month to the Finance Committee, New Haven currently has 190 publicly owned cameras accessible to the city’s police department, compared to Hartford’s 1,200 and Bridgeport’s 1,600. She also said that New Haven’s homicide closure rate is around 30 percent, while Assistant Chief Karl Jacobson said after that meeting that Hartford’s homicide closure rate is around 70 percent.
New Haven has made arrests in three out of 25 reported homicides this year. It has made five arrests in connection with the 20 homicides reported in 2020. (One contrast: Waterbury has closed 11 out of 13 2020 homicide and all 10 2021 homicide cases by arrest, according to spokesperson Lt. Ryan Bessette.) At issue in New Haven is whether technology is the root of the problem, or a breakdown in police-community relations and trust.
Elicker and Dominguez have also argued that surveillance cameras deter crimes from being committed because people know they’re being watched, and they help cops solve cases by providing video footage when potential witnesses don’t come forward to talk.
The Board of Alders Finance Committee favorably recommended the funding proposal last month after a half-dozen community leaders spoke up during the public hearing portion of the meeting about how pervasive and destabilizing crime is in their neighborhoods. If surveillance cameras will help in any way, they testified, then bring them on.
In addition to funding the 500-camera purchase and installation, the $12 million allocation approved Monday night includes expanding ShotSpotter to the far east and west sides of town (click here to read about the latest evidence that ShotSpotter may just be spending money without helping solve crime); paying bonuses to lateral police hires; building out a backup police data center on Wintergreen Avenue; boosting overtime for walking beats and bicycle patrols; and overhauling the police department’s atavistic computer-aided dispatch and record management system (CAD/RMS). Click here for a previous article breaking down how that money will be spent.
Paul Bass Photo
At the scene of one of the first of 2021's 25 homicides, on Winthrop Avenue. Will more surveillance cameras solve more cases?
Morrison took the lead Monday in defending the proposal and urging her colleagues to support it.
She said police surveillance cameras will help the city figure out “who is damaging these communities” through persistent criminal acts. She described the 500 surveillance cameras as just one “tool” among many that police need to deter and solve crime.
East Rock Alder Charles Decker said that he has a lot of “personal skepticism” about the surveillance camera proposal — but that he was ultimately swayed to vote in favor of the item after hearing members of the public testify in support during the aldermanic Finance Committee hearing.
“People I know and respect said they need this,” he said. That was convincing enough to win his backing.
Board of Alders Majority Leader and Amity/Westville Alder Richard Furlow also threw his support behind the proposal to spend American Rescue Plan money on buying 500 surveillance cameras. He made a verbal commitment that “there will be a communication forthcoming that will deal with the policy of the cameras” to ensure that “no discrimination or harassment” results from their use.
Furlow also said a “working group” will vet such a policy.
Prospect Hill / Newhallville Alder Steve Winter, meanwhile, called on his legislative colleagues Monday night to reject the $12 million spending proposal, surveillance cameras and all.
“We have not been presented with arguments or evidence that these cameras and improvements in policing technology will prevent crime,” Winter said.
He also said that the 500 cameras ”do not strike at the root cause of violence in our city: Poverty.”
He said the alders should not approve spending one-tenth of the city’s “once-in-a-generation” federal funding on unproven public safety projects and technology upgrades that could potentially be covered by capital funds. They especially should not do so in the absence of hearing the Elicker Administration’s plans for how to spend the rest of the roughly $120 million in federal pandemic-relief aid, he said.
This money could be going to “community centers” and “youth programming,” he said. Funding 500 surveillance cameras without knowing whether or not those other social services will also be funded is a bad idea.
There are “still so many outstanding questions,” East Rock Alder Anna Festa said. “Why are we rushing this?”
The majority of the board agreed with Morrison, Decker, and Furlow, however, and voted in support of approving the $12 million funding request.
The alders’ final approval of the $12 million ARPA spending plan came in the form of two votes: one for an order authorizing the use of ARPA funding for “quality-of-life supplemental details, lateral bonuses, and IT infrastructure in an estimated amount” of $12 million; and another for an ordinance amendment authorizing the creation of two new positions within the city’s Information and Technology Division and the transfer of $155,000 from the city budget’s Expenditure Reserve account to the IT salary account.
That latter vote, Finance Committee Vice-Chair and Westville Alder Adam Marchand said Monday night, will “create and fund two network administrator positions necessary to support and oversee the increased number of security cameras in our city.”