Harlem projects residents say cameras not a crime cure
Published in the Columbia Daily Spectator on February 16, 2011.
Through a heavy lisp and missing teeth, Joseph Gomez tells a story familiar to many of his neighbors: in the 13 years he has lived in the Manhattanville Houses on 126th Street, he says he has been robbed three times.
Despite the installation of almost 100 surveillance cameras at the development, Gomez says life at this housing project isn’t any safer.
“The cameras don’t work,” Gomez said. “People use masks, they use spray paint, sometimes the cameras are blurry or don’t get their faces. By the time the police come, it’s too late. They’re gone.”
Those cameras are a result of $12.3 million in funding set aside by elected officials in 2010 for the installation of surveillance cameras at 27 New York City Housing Authority developments.
In a campaign spearheaded by City Council member Inez Dickens, 96 cameras were installed by the Housing Authority at Manhattanville Houses in 2009 at a cost of $900,000, and 160 cameras were installed at Harlem’s St. Nicholas Houses in 2009 and 2010 at a cost of $1.7 million.
Now, many are questioning both the effectiveness of the new surveillance cameras and their complicated legal standing.
“Nothing is changed as far as crime and drug sales,” said Anne Morris, Manhattanville Houses’ residents association president. “The same things are going on.”
According to NYCHA public relations assistant Brent Grier, “authorized NYCHA staff” members are able to view the camera footage remotely and the NYPD can also access the footage, but Morris says that no one is assigned to monitor the videos regularly.
“I think the cameras are a good thing if they would view them on an ongoing basis, at least on a weekly basis, but they only time they are viewed is when there is a serious incident,” Morris said.
At the General Grant Houses on 125th Street, the story is different.
The Grant Houses have different surveillance cameras—105 NYPD-monitored cameras, installed in 1997, known as VIPER units. Unlike the surveillance cameras at St. Nicholas and Manhattanville Houses, VIPER cameras are monitored 24/7 by NYPD officers.
“They work,” said Gloria Allen, vice president of the Grant Houses Residents Association. “If you have cameras installed and a crime is committed, certainly the cameras have picked it up.”
In January 2010 at the Grant houses, NYPD caught two perpetrators with the help of the VIPER cameras: one resident videotaped while beating his girlfriend’s dog in an elevator, and another man accused of stabbing his nine-year-old cousin to death.
Surveillance cameras, then, seemed like a great boon to those who wanted a solution to crime in Manhattan’s housing projects.
But more questions arose in spring of 2004 when a surveillance videotape of 22-year-old Paris Lane committing suicide in the lobby of a Bronx housing project was leaked to a pornography and violence web site called “Consumption Junction.”
The incident sparked a serious question: What happens to surveillance videotapes after a criminal incident?
According to Detective John Ramos of the NYPD’s Police Service Area Six Community Affairs Unit, “We obtain the copy of the video, and we use it for prosecution and investigation.”
“The video would go into police storage and district attorney storage,” with a copy going to the Housing Authority, he added.
Does Ramos know who at the Housing Authority would be in charge of the storage of these video files?
“No,” he replied.
Morris, of the Manhattanville Houses, was similarly mystified by what happens to surveillance tape after a crime.
“They [NYPD] come in and they roll the tape, they get it, they take it, but as far as us knowing the end results, we don’t know what happens,” she said.
NYCHA representatives declined to provide an answer. The St. Nicholas Houses Tenants Association also declined to comment on its surveillance camera policies.
Some activists say that the lack of publicly available information about the use of the footage is concerning.
Bill Brown, director of anti-surveillance-camera group the Surveillance Camera Players, said he is one of the only people keeping statistics on the growth of surveillance cameras.
“There’s no city agency that has a register of surveillance cameras or their operators. It’s appalling,” he said.
Thomas Nestel, chief of police of Pennsylvania’s Upper Moreland Township and the author of a widely-read study on video surveillance, said he found a surprising lack of transparency after surveying 50 police departments, including the NYPD.
“NYPD was not willing to provide any information, so I don’t know if they have a written policy, I don’t know if there’s a supervisor on scene with the monitoring system, and I don’t know if there’s specialized training,” Nestel said.
Despite these concerns, surveillance programs are growing in the city—often at the request of residents.
In 1998, the New York Civil Liberties Union counted 769 surveillance cameras in six Manhattan neighborhoods, which did not include Harlem.
Seven years later, the NYCLU identified 4,176 cameras in those same six neighborhoods and counted an additional 292 cameras in Central Harlem alone, writing that “cameras literally line 125th Street.”
And despite the city’s efforts, residents remain skeptical about their effectiveness.
“I know I feel the same,” Denise Cartagem, resident of Manhattanville Houses, said. “People are not afraid of those cameras.”
