RadioOnFire.com - Baltimore Police on Wednesday responded to revelations about department-funded aerial surveillance that's been ongoing since January, but only came to light this week.
"What we're talking about here is not an unmanned drone or secret surveillance program," police spokesman T.J. Smith said in a press conference at department headquarters Wednesday. "This is a 21st century investigative tool used to assist investigators in solving crimes."
The program was disclosed this week by Bloomberg Businessweek. While Smith stressed multiple times it was not and had never been a secret, city officials declined comment for that report.
Monte Reel broke the story for Bloomberg:
Smith said the program was merely a trial conducted locally by Ohio-based Persistent Surveillance Systems, with financial assistance from a private donor. As it wasn't city money being spent, the trial was never put in front of the city Board of Estimates or lawmakers. The contractor's founder, Ross McNutt, was present to take questions at the press conference at well.
Multiple media reports have traced the funding to to Texas-based philanthropists John and Laura Arnold.
The flights are not to be confused with those conducted by the FBI at the city's behest during the state of emergency last spring.
Smith said that the while the camera can scan a 32 square mile area (about half the city) at a time, it cannot identify individual faces.
"This effectively is a a mobile citywide scanner," Smith said. "What we gain with this is size."
Commissioner Kevin Davis said later in a statement that the test expands police capability to pursue violent offenders.
"Imagine the capacity to retrospectively review those public space crime scenes and capture images of criminals, their vehicles, and their before and after travel routes," David said. "Now just think what that type of evidence-based policing would mean for our crime closure rates."
Both Davis and Smith tried to tie the flights to existing CitiWatch cameras at street level, and Davis said that the cameras in the sky operate on the same policy as other closed-circuit cameras. He said that if the flights had captured a homicide and pursuit in progress, followed by an arrest, people would look on the program with less suspicion.
"The first call from the local media would be asking for a copy of the video and the first social media post would be one of praise for the police department," Smith said.
But though Smith said it wasn't deliberately kept secret, he could not name specific officials outside the police department who knew of the program, and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said in a statement Wednesday afternoon that she was only "recently" informed about the flights, but isn't against them.
"This technology is about public safety. This isn’t surveilling or tracking anyone. It’s about catching those who choose to do harm to citizens in our city," Rawlings-Blake said. "However, it is not limited to just catching criminals. This technology acts as a force multiplier when public safety could be at risk. This technology can also be used for public safety concerns like floods, large fires, sink holes, train derailments and other issues that are larger than one city block."
She also pointed to a particular shooting suspect in February who is off the streets thanks to the flights and said she looks forward to full data on their efficacy.
"The message is clear," Rawlings-Blake said. "If you choose to harm our city, we are going to go after you. We are looking into new tools and technologies daily to assist us in the crime fight. I am committed to ensuring that we don’t violate any privacy laws as we use technology to our advantage in fighting and solving crime in the city of Baltimore."
However, suspicion from civil liberties groups is what the disclosure met this week, along with questions about why police made no announcement when the flights were to begin.
Source WBAL
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