Bombing trial shows blanket video coverage
The Associated Press
NEW YORK» There’s one video of a man walking to and from the scene of a bombing in Manhattan’s bustling Chelsea neighborhood. Another shows him minutes later planting another homemade explosive a few blocks away. A third has him in a backyard in New Jersey, apparently testing an incendiary device.
Prosecutors say the person captured on those incriminating videos and several others is Ahmad Khan Rahimi. The trove of digital evidence in Rahimi’s ongoing federal trial is meant to provide airtight proof he was behind a 2016 attack that injured 30 people, but it also dramatically demonstrates the growing omnipresence of security cameras.
The Rahimi case relies “on video from security cameras in storefronts and businesses all over New Jersey and New York,” said Shawn Crowley, assistant U.S. attorney, in opening statements. “You’ll see video of the defendant in every stage of the attack.”
Inspired by the “ring of steel” counterterrorism surveillance measures in London, the New York Police Department has led the security-video push in the past decade by blanketing the city with 13,000 of its own cameras, with access to an even higher number of private cameras.
Many of the NYPD cameras provide live feeds that can be monitored at command centers around the city. And the department has experimented with analytic software designed to alert police to unattended bags or to someone fitting the description of a suspect.
In the past, civil liberties groups have complained that the cameras are an invasion of privacy and pushed for protocols limiting how police use them. But over time, their proliferation has changed expectations about being watched.
“What we know is that there is no longer, or never was legally, any expectation of privacy on a public thoroughfare,” said John DeCarlo, founder of The Center for Advanced Policing at the University of New Haven. “Because we all know that we’re being recorded.”
Experts say the deterrence impact of the cameras is limited because criminals tend to ignore them, making them mostly a valuable investigative tool for solving crimes.
When a bomber planted a homemade bomb on a train in London in September, for example, closed-circuit TV footage provided vital clues that helped police arrest him within a day.
In the Middle Eastern emirate of Abu Dhabi, where security cameras are ubiquitous, police in 2014 were able use video footage to track a woman who stabbed an American school teacher to death in an upscale mall. An arrest was made within 48 hours.
Challenges for the police, particularly in ongoing cases, include sifting through tens of thousands of images quickly enough to find suspects before they attack again. Another possible pitfall is the often poor quality of many of the videos.