City Council holds hearing on surveillance plane

At a contentious Baltimore City Council meeting Tuesday, residents booed in opposition or cheered in support during discussions about possibly bringing back the controversial, previously undisclosed surveillance plane that police said was used to capture criminal activity.

Persistent Surveillance Systems, the Ohio-based company that operated the plane in 2016 until it was grounded by the controversy, wants to reinstate the program at a cost of $1.63 million a year. Company founder Ross McNutt said Texas philanthropists Laura and John Arnold have offered to cover the costs for three years.

McNutt, who has been meeting with community associations and other groups to rally support for bringing back the program, defended the plane as another crime-fighting tool for a city that has seen unprecedented violence in recent years. Several City Council members grilled Ross on Tuesday, expressing concerns about the program’s effectiveness, citizens’ privacy protections, the long-term costs and how data collected by the private company could be accessed for other purposes.

McNutt told council members he chose Baltimore to serve as a “shining example” of what his company could do for a city to drive down crime.

The local program was launched initially in January 2016 with a small Cessna airplane that collected and stored hundreds of hours of footage from scanning city neighborhoods. But the plane was grounded after many expressed outrage that the program was only made public months later through an article in Bloomberg Businessweek, which received exclusive access to the company's testing.

City Councilman Brandon Scott, chairman of the public safety committee, scheduled Tuesday’s hearing at the request of City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young, who did not attend because he was out of town. The hearing at the packed council chambers lasted at least four hours.

Scott has expressed concerns about the program, including its cost and effectiveness. He asked McNutt for specific data about when the plane resulted in arrests and convictions. Scott also said the council does not have any power to reinstate the program or prevent it from happening, saying that the decision was the mayor’s and the Police Department’s. The hearing merely provides “political cover” for a controversial program, he said.

Some residents, including Susan Simon of Northwest Baltimore, testified at the hearing that the plane is necessary to curb violence. Simon said other efforts have not made “a significant impact on the outrageous numbers of murders. It is technology we need.”

Others, however, expressed frustration that money spent on the plane would not go to crime prevention programs, such as activities for youth.