Surveillance cameras now scanning Cedar-Riverside

Nine new safety cameras are keeping an electronic eye out for crime in the Cedar Riverside business district—and doing their best not to spy on law-abiding residents.

The Cedar Riverside Collaborative Zone (CRC Zone) cameras, unveiled at an October 27 press conference at the Minneapolis Police Department’s First Precinct, are the first in what Police Chief Tim Dolan said would be a series of wireless surveillance camera systems installed in high-crime areas around the city. “This is what’s coming for other neighborhoods,” he said, noting that similar cameras will soon be installed around Chicago Avenue and Lake Street. Bloomington Avenue in the Phillips neighborhood and West Broadway Avenue on the North Side will have surveillance cameras in place within the next year.

Omar Jamal, director of the Somali Justice and Advocacy Center, said the cameras would protect the growing Somali community in Cedar-Riverside. “It increases safety and peace of mind,” he said. “They won’t be able to escape arrest. It’s a good step forward.”

The cameras, which are trained on sidewalks, send a continuous live digital video feed to a high-definition monitoring screen at First Precinct headquarters. The video records are kept for 14 days, said Officer John Hokanson.

But the cameras can’t do the job alone, said Deputy Chief Rob Allen, “We have to meet [the Cedar Riverside neighborhood’s] expectations. The cameras have to work well, and we have to follow through. We’re expanding the number of people to watch them.”

First precinct Inspector Janeé Harteau said she hopes to support the cameras with additional beat officers. “That’s a priority of mine. We need to be cognizant of displacement. We need to have extra patrol in outer areas.”

They’ll also get some help from private security guards, thanks to Radiolink, a system that will allow security guards to share the same radio frequency with the police, making it easier to work together. Harteau said there will be 13 to 16 security guards for every officer, increasing the crime watch force.

With the cameras and new Verint Live Viewer software, law enforcement officials will have an easier time apprehending—and convicting—perpetrators. “If you see a crime, you get on the radio, and follow the guy [on the screen] and his vehicle and get information to the squad car,” said Hokanson. “If he’s caught, he sees this and pleads guilty, saving us money by avoiding courts and saving time.”

But some Cedar-Riverside residents have privacy concerns. At a recent meeting at Hard Times Café, some tenants in the apartments above the café told Council Member Cam Gordon that the cameras were pointing at their windows. “I know they can look in my window,” said one woman.

Gordon related those concerns to Unisys, the company installing the cameras, which covered the top half of the camera lens facing the café.

Hokansons acknowledged that there may be privacy concerns, but noted that there is wide support for their use. “These are community driven; they’re here at the communities’ request. These are public areas, not residential,” he said. “Other cities, such as Chicago, have had to put together a ‘monitoring policies and procedures’ document. If there were enough complaints, then “we’d have to install [that].”