Nearly 100 surveillance cameras will be installed in Birmingham's most crime-ridden areas over the next three months.
The Birmingham City Council today approved a resolution authorizing the mayor to enter into a contract for a public safety surveillance camera program with Alabama Power. The item passed 6-0 with Councilors Lashunda Scales and John Hilliard not present for the vote. The District 7 seat is open as Councilor Jay Roberson's resigned effective Sept. 10.
"The No. 1 quality of life issue that we face in the city of Birmingham and our residents consistently let us know about is gunfire and violent crime," City Councilor Hunter Williams told reporters following the vote, "and we have an obligation as city leadership to equip our police department with whatever resources they need."
Councilors didn't discuss the surveillance cameras in public. They voted today immediately after meeting in executive session with city attorneys for an hour and seven minutes. A city attorney said executive session was warranted because details of the city's security plan would be discussed.
Surveillance cameras are used in most major cities and aren't new to Birmingham either. The city hired Ion Interactive Video Technologies in 2008 to install and watch footage from security cameras in undisclosed locations selected by the police department. It was immediately unclear, though, how long those cameras operated.
The agreement with Alabama Power is for five years at an estimated cost of $672,000 annually, which will be paid in monthly installments of $56,000.
The contract states the cameras will be initially placed in the Central Park, Ensley, Gate City and Kingston neighborhoods. The video content and camera locations are confidential, the contract states.
The pilot program with Alabama Power will consist of 95 cameras, which will include 24 pan, tilt and zoom cameras, 17 dome cameras and 54 license plate recognition cameras, according to the contract. The cameras can produce 182 video streams. They will be installed on 64 power poles.
The Jefferson County Metro Area Crime Center will monitor the cameras not Alabama Power, city officials said.
The cameras will be capable of producing footage, which be an archived for 24 hours a day and for 30 days, providing detailed and fluid video information for incident investigation, according to the contract. The cameras would provide "situational awareness in the field" during emergency operations. The presence of the surveillance cameras will be a deterrent on crime.
Rick Journey, director of communications for the mayor's office, said the surveillance cameras will only be placed in public places. They wouldn't be viewing residential areas, he said.
Williams, who serves as the chair of the council's public safety committee, said the Birmingham Police Department will make the decision on where the cameras will be installed based on crime trends. The cameras can also be moved around quickly based on those trends.
George McCall, who serves as the president of the Ensley neighborhood and community, said he would rather the city spend money on educating young people in conflict resolution, street paving, tearing down abandoned homes and moving lawns.
"I would rather them put money into useful things in the neighborhood," he said, adding the grass in his neighborhood is tall and needs to be mowed. There're also numerous potholes in the streets that need to be fixed, he said.
McCall said Ensley doesn't have the crime problem it is perceived to have. At its recent neighborhood meeting, no crime was reported for the last month, he said.
According to the contract, Alabama Power will disclose the content and camera locations to entities other than the city of Birmingham only: "in connection with any law enforcement investigation or proceeding by a duly authorized law enforcement agency other than the city; and/or pursuant to a court order or subpoena and, in either case, only after giving at least 48 hours' notice to the city, unless otherwise required by law or law enforcement."
According to information shared by the Mayor's Office of Public information, video footage and photographs produced by the cameras would be exempt from public records law and won't be released to the public or members of the media. An exemption to the public records law includes records concerning security plans, procedures, assessments, etc.
Williams said the surveillance cameras will be launched along with the expansion of the city's ShotSpotter program, which was previously approved by the council. ShotSpotter detects gunfire.
"Right now, we have the acoustics, we have ears out in the field to detect gunfire," he said. "What (the cameras) will do is give us eyes so we won't be blind.
Williams said multiple law enforcement agencies operate out of the crime center where the cameras will be monitored, and this will allow these agencies to immediately help Birmingham locate suspects that may leave the city limits.
He said the surveillance cameras will be an important crime-fighting tool for police.
"I think it is important to know if you are going to indiscriminately fire off a weapon in the city of Birmingham or participate in a drive-by shooting or a robbery in a neighborhood, there is a good chance that our detectives have a very powerful new tool to find you and to prosecute you," Williams said.
Birmingham police's robbery-homicide unit is solving a very high percentage of their crimes, he said. Williams said the department has doubled the number of officers in that unit and are seeing progress in the volume of crimes they are solving.
He said the surveillance cameras are a part of a pilot program. If the program isn't successful, the city won't continue to invest money in it.
"We can't sit on our hands and let violence crime take over our city," Williams said.
According to the contract, Alabama Power owns the cameras and related equipment and is responsible for maintenance and necessary updates. The power company will pay for the cost of repairing or replacing any equipment damaged or destroyed due to vandalism or willful abuse up to an annual limit of $10,500.
The city owns the recorded images, raw and recorded data, metadata, media artifacts and recordings and data files produced, the contract states.
Content produced from the license plate recognition cameras will be uploaded from the servers in the field to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Criminal Justice Information Services. The city will then obtain the content from the FBI's portal.