Report zu CCTV aus New York

Who’s watching? fragt ein Report zu Videoüberwachung in New York der New York Civil Liberties Union mit dem Untertitel “Video Camera Surveillance in New York City and the Need for Public Oversight”

In testimony before the New York City Council in 2006, the com-
manding officer of the police department’s Technical Assistance Re-
sponse Unit claimed that the department’s Video Interactive Patrol
Enhancement Response (VIPER) program offered proof that cameras
deter crime. The numbers the officer cited look very convincing. The VIPER pro

The VIPER program, a collaboration between the NYPD and the New York City Hous-
ing Authority, operates 3,100 monitored cameras in fifteen public hous-
ing buildings. The cameras were installed in 1997; during the following
year, the officer asserted, the monitored buildings experienced 36 per-
cent less crime on average than in the year before installation.

But close examination shows that these numbers do not prove what
the NYPD would like them to prove. In fact, crime decreased steadily
throughout the city during the decade of the ’90s, when these cameras
were installed. The expansion of the police force and the NYPD’s intro-
duction of Compstat, a computer system that facilitated more effective
allocation of police resources, are widely credited with contributing to
a decline in the city’s crime rate—from approximately 5,000 crimes per
100,000 residents in 1994 to approximately 3,000 per 100,000 residents
in 2000.8 Thus the decrease in crime in the VIPER buildings, social
scientists say, was to be expected—cameras or no cameras.

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