Michigan universities see cameras as crime fighters

Don’t look now. But cameras are filming all over Michigan university campuses.

The devices are recording the movements of students, professors and others in public spaces for safety reasons, but also are leading to concerns about privacy.

Most of the state’s 15 public universities have amassed surveillance systems in recent years that include hundreds of cameras across campus. They’re inside sporting facilities, classroom buildings and common areas of dorms.

Put another way, there is one camera for every 28 students at Central Michigan University, and one camera for every 26 students at Western Michigan University.

Several universities, including CMU, Eastern Michigan University and Saginaw Valley State University, report they are installing more cameras this year.

Officials say the cameras help combat crime — and police can cite cases in which footage helped an investigation and led to an arrest and conviction.

For some students, being watched and recorded all the time can be reassuring — but also a little creepy.

“You know that somebody is watching you,” said Conrado Moraes, a Wayne State University graduate student from Brazil. “It’s security, but you also lose your privacy. It’s not bad, but it’s not good, depending on how you think.”

Campus officials say the cameras are used to keep students safe, not to spy on them.

“There’s no one constantly monitoring them,” said Jason Cody, a spokesman for Michigan State University. “They are placed in locations on campus that provide another layer of security and safety.”

But privacy advocates argue the devices have not proven to reduce crime, and could be abused.

“We don’t want universities to condition our young people to live in a ‘Big Brother’ society where the police can monitor our every move,” said Michael J. Steinberg, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan. “This is not China. This is not the old Soviet Union. This is a country that is supposed to foster liberty and freedom.”

Still, security cameras are ubiquitous. In an era of terrorism fears, the closed-circuit televisions can easily be found inside banks, airports, around cities and even in some people’s workplaces.

While some cities have them in downtowns, Lansing has deployed them in neighborhoods since 2008; a coalition has been working to have them removed.

Nowadays, more and more universities have them too: At Eastern and Western Michigan, there are 700 and 900, respectively. At Northern Michigan, 400 cameras record students and others. And at Wayne State, more than 1,000 cameras are stationed around campus.

Some schools are guarded about the devices. The University of Michigan and Michigan Technological University declined to cite the number of cameras on campus. MSU does not track an overall number.

“For security purposes, we don’t release the number or cost of cameras nor the specific camera locations,” said Diane Brown, spokeswoman for UM police. “We have been able to utilize videos during crime investigations, including aiding in the identification of an arsonist in one of our residence halls in March 2009.”

Will Leaf, an Ann Arbor resident, went away to George Washington University in fall 2009 and couldn’t believe it when he saw surveillance cameras on his dorm room floor, constantly monitored by police. As a result, he said officials often came to the floor to investigate incidents.

Leaf saw this as an invasion of privacy and started a petition to try to get them removed. Though he got most students in his dorm to sign, the effort didn’t go anywhere.

Police action ‘intrusive’

He later transferred to UM because he couldn’t afford to keep attending George Washington, a private school in Washington, D.C.

“Anything the police saw out of the ordinary, they would go investigate,” said Leaf, 25. “On a college campus, you could see how that would be very intrusive.”

Police say surveillance recordings have helped in investigating some crimes.

At Central Michigan, for instance, police used footage last year to identify and convict a suspect when an unarmed robbery and assault began across the street from campus and spilled over to a campus parking lot.

Investigators also used 300 hours of camera footage to piece together the events leading up to the death of a Wayne State freshman, Michael Hartnett of Dearborn Heights, who drowned in a pond last year while visiting friends on the Mount Pleasant campus, said William Yeagley, CMU police chief.

“Many people expect this is part of what we do to keep them safe,” Yeagley said. “It doesn’t seem unusual to have cameras in public places.”

But Steinberg said a growing body of research has shown that surveillance cameras don’t reduce crime.

He pointed to a project during the 1980s in downtown Detroit, when the largest surveillance system in the country was installed at public transportation stations and Detroit streets.

The system was taken down because it didn’t demonstrably deter crime, Steinberg said.

Balancing act

Geoff Larcom, EMU spokesman, said the use of the cameras is a balancing act.

“They are a vital addition among the many initiatives the university has undertaken in recent years to maintain safety and security on campus,” Larcom said.

Few universities escape the constant recording of what is mostly the mundane everyday happenings of a campus life. Among the state’s public universities, only the University of Michigan-Dearborn is without security cameras.

“Historically, UM-Dearborn has focused on utilizing a visible University Police and Public Safety officer presence via vehicle, foot and bike patrol to create a community policing atmosphere,” said Beth Marmarelli, a school spokeswoman.

Marmarelli said adding security cameras will be evaluated in the next fiscal year, possibly for parking lots, outside buildings and in high-traffic areas.

So UM-Dearborn may soon be watching students too.

kkozlowski@detroitnews.com