Justice Chief Wants Cops Monitoring Cameras

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's new anti-crime adviser said Wednesday that he will recommend a major change to the city's beleaguered video surveillance program, allowing police to watch footage in real time as officers do in other cities. San Francisco, in deference to privacy concerns, only allows detectives to request footage if they have information that a crime occurred on camera.

In part because of a lack of costly data storage space, San Francisco achieves 80 percent of the resolution that its cameras are capable of producing and gets choppy footage comprised of, at best, two to four frames per second, telecommunications officials say. The problem is not with the manufacturer, but with the implementation of the cameras on a tight budget. The hearing made clear that city officials, and residents, have tough choices ahead on how much money to put into surveillance.

While informative, this article neglects to include an important option that could solve San Francisco’s dilemma—intelligent video surveillance.