Cambridge council provided update on police CCTV/ALPR camera program

Cambridge city councillors got to learn a little bit more about the Waterloo regional police (WRPS) new closed-circuit television (CCTV) and automated license plate recognition (ALPR) camera program.

At council last week, WRPS Deputy Chief, Jen Davis, presented an update, going over how the cameras will work and how the locations were selected. Several questions from councillors addressed privacy concerns.

Davis said that the cameras will not be live monitored, and anyone asking for footage would need legal reasons to see it.

“We would need an occurrence number or event, something to give up justification to go into the stored footage to search for evidence or to investigate a criminal offence that may have happened.”

Davis also said that any footage that is not used in an investigation will be deleted after 30 days.

While there won’t be an officer actively monitoring the camera feeds at all times, should it be needed, police will have the capability to do that. Davis mentioned specifically the unsanctioned parties in the university district as one of the examples of when live monitoring might be used.

There were questions about facial recognition and whether that would be used as part of the program.

Davis stated that the cameras will have facial recognition capabilities, but that feature will not be activated. Instead, police will use another tool.

“Facial comparison actually picks neutral things. It would be nice if they took the word ‘facial’ out of it. What it does is search for neutral things, so it’s searching by, for example, a person wearing a red sweatshirt and black backpack, it’s (the software) is searching for ‘red sweatshirt’ and ‘black backpack.'”

Some cameras will also have the ability to pan, tilt or zoom (PTZ). Some will be equipped with bullet cameras or multi-sensor cameras. PTZ cameras are being used in areas with higher pedestrian traffic.

WRPS used a data-driven approach to selecting the locations of the cameras. They conducted a three-year review of uniform crime report data, citizen-generated calls for service, areas of increased crime and disorder incidents, concerns identified by the community and areas with high instances of firearm incidents, break and enters, and robbery violations.

Another consideration was the infrastructure in the area. The installation team assess each location to see if there is already a place to mount the cameras and a sufficient power supply readily available.

Phase One will see 10 locations across the region with a total of 52 cameras installed in the next year.

Davis said the locations of the cameras will be revealed once the sites have been properly assessed.