Miami

Orwellian Overtown

Miami Police want CRA money to install surveillance cameras

By Ben Torter

Downtown Miami may soon be under 24-hour watch.

Here’s a warning to all of the drug dealers, their dope-jonesing customers and various other sick and suffering types who’ve given the streets of Overtown a bad name: Watch out — big brother’s coming to town.

If that sounds like Orwellian paranoia at its finest, it’s not. Already the city of Miami Police Department has installed surveillance cameras at various points downtown, including at the entrance to the Port of Miami. Deputy Chief Frank Fernandez and Overtown Commander Jorge Gomez gave a demonstration of these electronic eyes at a meeting of the Southeast Overtown and Omni Community Redevelopment Agencies on Feb. 25.

On a white movie screen, police projected a real-time image of Biscayne Boulevard looking south from the Port of Miami entrance to demonstrate what they can observe on computer screens inside police headquarters. Cars moving up and down the street and people on the sidewalks were clearly visible despite it being after sundown. The cameras can see 360 degrees around and record for 30 days. They are on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and can zoom in on license plates and other minute details.

City Commissioner Angel Gonzalez praised the downtown cameras, which have been in use for about a month.

“What would take 10 officers to do, we’re doing with one,” Gonzalez said.

Now, the Police Department wants to install similar cameras in Overtown in the area encompassing roughly from I-95 to Northeast First Avenue and from Fifth Street north to 14th Street.

The CRA board was very receptive and asked the department to come back to the next meeting with a formal proposal.

Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones, the CRA Committee chair, told meeting attendees that Overtown residents have been waiting for cameras for a long time. However, she cautioned that cameras without outreach teams to help drug addicts and dealers recover from their destructive lifestyles would be unacceptable. She was also aware that not everyone will feel comfortable being under constant monitoring.

“We just don’t want people to feel they are under … the microscope for what they are doing,” Spence-Jones said.

The American Civil Liberties Union is one group that definitely isn’t comfortable with cameras. It also has a lot of questions.

“Can they see into office and apartment windows?” asked Carlene Sawyer, president of the Miami Chapter of the ACLU. “What do they do with the tape?”

Sawyer said her group has had trouble getting answers to these simple questions, and she is fearful that rights to privacy are being trampled.

“We think cameras are a slippery slope because of the erosion of privacy,” Sawyer said. “Rights are being crushed and [the authorities] just say ‘terrorism’…. The real problem is this is being done under a blanket of fear and the assumption that it will make you safer.”

Police departments in various cities around the world such as Newark, Chicago and London have installed cameras to help patrol the streets. New York City is phasing in a London-style camera network that will totally monitor Manhattan below Canal Street. The system will be the most complete of its kind in the United States.

“I think it’s the wave of the future,” Commissioner Tomas Regalado said.

Though cameras certainly help, they are not a substitute for police officers, who must monitor them and continue to patrol the streets. Commissioner Marc Sarnoff wanted to know if there was any reason the CRA couldn’t spend money to hire additional cops.

CRA Executive Director James Villacorta said the redevelopment statute does provide for community policing efforts, but that hiring officers using CRA money would have to be approved at the county level.

Commissioners unanimously voted for the police to come back with a formal proposal for cameras in Overtown. After the Feb. 25 CRA meeting, Commander Gomez could not be reached for comment.

“I think one of the best ways to spend CRA money is to hire police,” Regalado said.

However, Villacorta said the police would likely ask the CRA for $500,000 for cameras, and $340,000 for officers.

The next meeting of the SEOPW and OMNI Community Redevelopment agencies hasn’t been formally scheduled, but will likely be on March 24.

Comments? E-mail ben@miamisunpost.com