Philadelphia Artist Against Violence: GunCrisis Solution of the Day

Friday, January 25, 2013

GunCrisis Solution of the Day

#GunCrisis Solution of the Day: Crowdsourcing surveillance cameras

Posted: 24 Jan 2013 09:58 AM PST

Philadelphia Police investigators turn to the public to identify suspects on surveillance footage so often that they now have millions of views on their YouTube channel.

Police investigate after a 33 y/o woman was shot in the left arm Philadephia, Tuesday May 15, 2012. Shots were fired around 10:15 p.m. and 14 9mm shell casings littered the scene, said Chief Inspector Scott Small. It was unclear whether the woman was the shooter’s intended target or if she was an innocent bystander, Small said. Police in the Central Detective Division were combing the scene for additional evidence around 11:30 p.m., and Small said a surveillance camera at a nearby corner store may have recorded footage of the shooting. The victim was listed in stable condition as of 11:30 p.m., and police were working Tuesday night to determine whether there were any witnesses to the shooting.

Philadelphia Police investigators spotted this private secuity camera on a utility police after a woman was shot last May. Photograph byJoseph Kaczmarek for the Gun Crisis Reporting Project.

We have shared police videos at GunCrisis.org in many cases; after a gunman shot passengers on a SEPTA train, when a man was shot with his son in South Philadelphia, and when investigators sought suspect in the murder of police officer Moses Walker, Jr., last summer.
But surveillance video is useless until investigators find it.

CommunityCam, a new project at videosurveillance.com provides law enforcement and the public at large a region-wide map of the locations of public and private security cameras.
Visit: http://www.videosurveillance.com/communitycam/

The map of public and private security cameras is crowdsourced, which means that any resident, business owner, association, neighborhood group or government organization can add locations of cameras to help their neighbors, according to a report from 6ABC:

The developers at videosurveillance.com say people who experience crime can use the map to locate cameras that may have captured the activity and ask their neighbors for help.
View the CommunityCam map below or a larger version on Google.

Last summer, Philadelphia Police officials released these surveillance images showingtwo men they had identified as suspects in the murder of Officer Moses Walker, Jr.

You can also register your camera with the Philadelphia Police SafeCam program, but that does not provide a public map.

And today, newsworks.org has a new story on a similar program in Delware: Wilmington Police looking for surveillance partners