President Of Company Behind Surveillance Flights Pitches Return To Baltimore

The president of the company behind the controversial aerial surveillance program once deployed in Baltimore says his company's technology can be part of the city's future.

Ross McNutt, president of Persistent Surveillance Systems, spoke to Brett Hollander Tuesday as a city panel was set to weigh bringing the program back.

The flights under their more innocuously-named Community Support Program travel at high altitudes and can scan about half the city at a time. A person is about the size of a pixel as seen from their cameras, but is distinct enough to track.

"What we're able to do is follow people to and from those major crime scenes to help identify and help provide information as to who did it, where they came from, where they went to, who might have seen it, what witnesses might have been there, and we use that to start an investigation," McNutt said. "The only reason I know you're not a bush is you're running along the sidewalk. The only reason In know you're not a dog is you tend to get in a car and drive."

The 2016 test run was funded by Texas-based philanthropists. If the program returns to Baltimore, a donor is willing to fund three years of deployments, any necessary extra police support, a University of Baltimore study of its effectiveness and external oversight.

Many have raised privacy concerns in regards to the program, but McNutt said every place his analysts look must be related to an alleged crime and is logged for potential review.

McNutt said the program would have a deterrent effect, not just in potential offenders knowing the plane may be in the air, but in getting repeat offenders off the street. He hopes to see Baltimore's crime rate dip 20 to 30 percent each year.

"That represents 70 to 100 people not murdered. That represents 500 to 1000 people not shot. That represents three-quarters [of a billion] to $1 billion dollars of economic impact for the city of Baltimore," McNutt said. "We want to show people how we do it, make sure they know that this is there, because when they see how we solve crime, they know they're going to get caught if they do it here."

Everything the cameras capture, he said, is reviewable not just by police and prosecutors but by defense attorneys, and admissible in court.

Kevin Davis, the then-police commissioner who brought the trial program to Baltimore, called into Hollander's program later on and said the plane helped solve "several violent crimes."

"The Persistent Surveillance camera technology is far less intrusive than body-worn cameras, far less intrusive than Citiwatch cameras," Davis said. "It doesn't go into your bedroom or your bathroom or your living room."

He said that while it wasn't a panacea and wouldn't eliminate the need for police presence on city streets, it could have a role in ending the careers of violent offenders.