Vancouver police want to keep surveillance cameras rolling in the entertainment district.
“As a crowd management tool it was very powerful for our people working in the department’s operations centre because they could radio [officers],” Vancouver Deputy Chief Const. Doug LePard said of camera use during the Winter Olympics.
“Being on the ground you could only see a small piece of what’s going on. We would get reports from the operations centre who could look anywhere with the video, and say, hey look, there’s a problem developing here.”
Police, however, aren’t sure if cameras deterred criminal activity because their effect is hard to measure, LePard said at a debriefing on the Games Monday.
An inventory of the city’s surveillance cameras conducted in August by the Vancouver Public Space Network and partners found 1,200 cameras pointed at streets and sidewalks.
LePard said any decision to keep the cameras would come from the City of Vancouver.
Mayor Gregor Roberston credited police for their actions rather than cameras for keeping streets safe.
“There is currently no appetite [at council] to keep those cameras active,” Mayor Robertson said. “Of course, we will continue the dialogue with the VPD, we want to hear from people if they think otherwise, but there’s no plans to keep the cameras up.”
Notes
Vancouver Deputy Chief Const. Doug LePard identified the protest involving 1,500 people on the opening night of the Olympics as the first and most serious test of the Games.
“I can tell you now that really was our most tense moment,” he said. “The criminal element within that protest group threw everything at us they could get their hands on When they ran out of things to throw at us they spit on us. Through it all, the blue line held and no one was hurt.”
More Notes
VPD statistics during the Olympic Games
Voluntary liquor pour-outs: Approximately 21,000
Public alcohol consumption tickets: 1,230
Arrests for public intoxication: 253
Arrests for breach of peace: 93
Number of protests: 36
Additional officer shifts per day: 400
Crime Statistics compared to the same period last year
Residential break and enters: -16 per cent
Business break and enters: - 46 per cent
Theft from auto: - 37 per cent
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- Reporter
- Dharm Makwana currently serves as a web editor at The Province, British Columbia's best read daily newspaper. For more than four years he wrote on issues affecting the Lower Mainland for the province's third largest daily newspaper Vancouver 24 hours. Before arriving in Vancouver in January 2007, Dharm won the John Lott Scholarship for outstanding journalism at Centennial College. Since then Dharm has developed an interest in municipal and provincial politics, crime and policing and social issues including immigration, prostitution and trafficking. He is currently working on a series of stories involving Vancouver's sex workers.
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