Los Angeles turns cameras on gang graffiti

The new surveillance tool even speaks out loud to try to deter 'taggers' in the San Fernando Valley.

By Daniel B. Wood | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
and Alison Tully | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

from the September 25, 2007 edition

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Los Angeles - The voice seems to come from atop a light pole in a back alley in a gang-ridden section of L.A.'s east San Fernando Valley.

"Stop," a man's voice orders. "It is illegal to spray graffiti or to dump trash here. We've just taken your photograph, and we will use this photograph to prosecute you. Leave the area now."

The speaker and the photographer are one and the same: a "talking" surveillance camera that police and local officials hope will deter gang-related graffiti and, by extension, gang activity itself.

The new cameras, a variation on the common surveillance camera used for years to snap pictures of traffic scofflaws and loiterers, were installed last week at three locations in this part of Los Angeles, where gang violence has been rising. Seven more are to be installed soon.

For many youths in this gang capital of America, brick walls, wood fences, and cement overpasses double as canvas – for everything from spray-painted symbols to explosions of handpainted ethnic art.

"The graffiti cameras are one more tool in the city's arsenal to prevent crime," says Anthony Pacheco, president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, which oversees the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). "Graffiti is a by-product of gang life. By deterring the crime of 'tagging' [done to identify gang turf], the cameras deter one communication mechanism of gangs, and therefore help deter more severe crimes, such as murder, associated with gangs."

For five straight years, crime rates have fallen in Los Angeles, with one exception: gang-related violence. The problem is particularly acute in the San Fernando Valley, which saw a 43 percent rise in such crime in 2006.

Other incarnations of the cameras have been used, with positive results, for several years in some high-crime areas of Los Angeles, such as Compton and the notorious Jordan Downs housing projects of South Central. Cameras have a motion-detection system that flashes the lens when someone is loitering in front of it. Earlier generations of the technology, made by Q-Star Technology of Chatsworth, Calif., have also been sold in several states, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

What's innovative about the newest cameras, besides the voice recording, is that they are wireless and solar-powered. That means officials can move the cameras easily and more often to new locations. They can also download the information captured by each camera without using the current method: a human standing in a bucket that is raised and lowered by a crane.

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