DENVER—Denver police are relying more on video surveillance to alert them to crimes and provide evidence, including Saturday’s shooting during a marijuana rally at Civic Center park that left three people wounded.
The city has 98 special cameras around the city, compared with just 13 the city had before the 2008 Democratic National Convention. That doesn’t include several hundred other cameras police can tap into, which are operated by Denver Public Schools, the Regional Transportation District on bus lines and the Colorado Department of Transportation.
According to the Denver Post ( ), the cameras helped in the 2009 beating of a man outside a nightclub that led to the firing of a police officer and the investigation into Saturday’s shooting at a marijuana rally in Denver’s Civic Center park.
Following the shooting, the department released images from a YouTube video, zeroing in on a man who police at the time said was the gunman’s accomplice.
Authorities in Boston credit video and pictures taken by surveillance cameras and the public for helping them solve that crime so quickly.
Police say it gives them something to give the public, begin the search and narrow their investigation.
That was the case in February when one of the city’s overhead cameras captured footage of a car hitting a 16-year-old East High School student as she crossed Colfax Avenue. Police said the release of the footage, which aired in the news, prompted the suspected driver, Erin Jackson, 30, to surrender.
Denver police say they plan to add more cameras around the city, including in Civic Center park. Other agencies and neighborhood organizations are willing to foot the bill, police spokesman Sonny Jackson said.
Some civil libertarians worry that intense surveillance erodes privacy, but attitudes could be shifting.
“For the most part, people don’t know how little privacy they have left,” said Kai Larsen, an associate professor at the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business.
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Information from: The Denver Post,
