Businesses and residents can share surveillance videos

Tallahassee police will soon be watching you much more closely.

At Wednesday night’s City Commission meeting, Police Chief Lawrence Revell introduced commissioners to the “Public Safety Camera Initiative,” which will allow businesses and citizens to voluntarily share access to surveillance cameras and their recordings with TPD to assist in investigations.

“This creates the public-private partnership that we’ve been talking about,” Revell said. “We constantly talk about how we can’t do this alone, but we need to work with our community.”

Revell announced that the program would be launched soon, in just under four weeks. In addition to supporting investigations, the goal of the program is to expand TPD’s coverage areas.

Of course, police across the country are increasingly turning to private surveillance footage, including doorbell cameras, and major cities have similar programs and “real-time crime centers.” There is a Capital Region Real-Time Crime Center on site, a collaboration between the Leon County Sheriff’s Office, the Tallahassee Police Department, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Florida State University Police Department and FSU’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice .

As the Marshall Project reported earlier this year, advocates say they “make it easier for police to solve crimes and find suspects. Opponents fear both the invasion of privacy and that increased surveillance will disproportionately target Black and other marginalized communities.”

Earlier this year, Amazon-owned Ring dropped its own feature that allowed law enforcement agencies to request doorbell recordings from its users, USA TODAY reported.

The request for assistance tool has been eliminated, which no longer allows public safety agencies such as police and fire departments to request and receive videos from users. Ring did not give a reason for the change.

TPD wants to follow in the footsteps of Duval County, Orlando

Jason Lowe, the project manager, joined Revell for the presentation explaining the information to commissioners.

He explained that residents can participate in the program through a two-tiered approach:

Residents can register their cameras through the website, which is launching alongside the Connect Tallahassee initiative.
The other way is to integrate their cameras using an edge device or a bridge between two networks.

Once the camera is “online,” law enforcement can determine the number of cameras involved, their location, and have a point of contact for the owners of each camera.

“Instead of TPD now having to go out and install this infrastructure … we’re now going to put a policy in place that will allow us to use cameras in the community,” Lowe said.

Now, when a crime occurs in a particular area, TPD can check the registry to see who in the area may have recorded the incident and ask them to share any videos they may need to “save investigation time.” If someone has their camera integrated, TPD can instantly access 48-72 hours of footage in real time.

According to the agenda item, both Duval County and Orlando implemented similar programs. In one year, Duval added a total of nearly 4,000 cameras; Orlando added a total of nearly 8,000 cameras in one year.

Revell and Lowe told the audience that the cameras will not be monitored 24/7, but will only be accessed when necessary. Additionally, footage used by TPD will be released following the conclusion of an investigation.

Information to be forwarded to the Real Time Crime Center

The information collected by the camera network is passed on to analysts at the local Real Time Crime Center, who can share it with officers on the scene. The information may also be shared with TPD partners such as the Leon County Sheriff’s Office.

More:“Nerve Center”: The Real-Time Crime Center helps solve cases in hours instead of days

“What we’re seeing here is, as the chief said, a force multiplier,” Lowe said. “So instead of going out and spending those resources, we’re now leveraging what’s out there and we’re asking our community partners to join us in this journey to help make our communities safer.”

USA TODAY contributed. Arianna Otero is a city solutions reporter for the Tallahassee Democrat. Contact her via email at [email protected] or on Twitter/X @ari_v_otero.

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