Police Go Live Monitoring D.C. Crime Cameras

Mel Blizzard, the police official in charge of the camera program, said standards guard against misuse. "This is not intended to be Big Brother watching but to be more responsive to our residents' needs. As long as you put protocols in place, which we have, we can be answerable to the community and the government," he said.

The live monitoring has also raised questions about the best use of limited police resources. Typically, two or three officers are assigned to monitoring.

"To just park someone in front of a bank of monitors is not a good use of resources," said council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), head of the Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary. "The issue of the cameras is whether we get the best bang for our buck. The more officers you have on the street, the more visibility you have."

Former D.C. police chief Charles H. Ramsey, who left office in December 2006, echoed that view. He said that under his tenure, he did not want to dedicate personnel to live monitoring, preferring to have officers on the street.

"You can always go back after the fact and look at the tape," said Ramsey, who is commissioner of the police department in Philadelphia, which implemented live monitoring before he arrived.

Lanier said that she took action last fall after officials mapped locations of shootings in the city and realized that the gunfire often was taking place within range of the cameras. The department is also using a technology called ShotSpotter, which detects the sound of gunfire in some parts of the District.

In one case, police looked at recordings of a homicide in August in Southeast. Lanier said she was appalled by the tape, which showed several people passing the victim without stopping to help, including a man smoking a cigarette while staring at the body. Ten minutes went by before anyone called 911. That incident cemented Lanier's decision to be more proactive.

"It literally makes you sick to your stomach to watch somebody executed that way," Lanier said of the images, which captured the slaying of Antwan McKinney, 38, in the middle of the 900 block of Valley Avenue SE. "The guy laid there for so long. No human being should lie there for so long."

There have been no arrests in the case.

Since the cameras were installed, investigators have pulled 130 recordings for possible use as evidence in criminal cases, officials said, although none has been used in trials. Lanier said she hopes that by watching live images, officers will pick up clues for police and prosecutors.

Neighborhood activists said they want police to be watching.

"All of [the cameras] should be monitored," said community activist Sandra Seegars, who lives in Ward 8, which has the city's highest rate of incidents of gun violence. "In my neighborhood, we're not concerned about privacy -- just keeping crime down and catching people who are committing the crimes."

On a recent afternoon in Columbia Heights, several residents said they supported live monitoring. At 14th and Girard streets, where there were multiple shootings and several homicides last year, Kafi Gregory, 27, said she hopes police start watching around the clock.

"As much crime as is going on here, they need it," Gregory said.

But despite the hopes, cameras have limitations.

A block away and slightly around the corner, a pregnant woman was walking at 14th and Fairmont streets when a man approached her, grabbed her purse and pushed her around. The robbery occurred out of camera range -- and the case has not been solved.