Project Green Light, a controversial 3-year-old surveillance program that has been touted as a major crime stopper by the Detroit Police Department, will make its entry into the city's public housing program by year's end.

The program, which installs cameras at participating locations that feed into the city's Real Time Crime Center, has raised questions about privacy and lacks a comparative study showing that it actually stops crime.

The Detroit Housing Commission and police are ironing out an agreement that will bring 26 "real time" cameras to Sheridan Place I and II, two high-rise towers on Jefferson Avenue just south of Belle Isle that cater to an "elderly and near-elderly community."

"The area has a high volume of both foot and car traffic daily, so any negative activity could impact more individuals,” Helen Kippen, interim executive director of DHC wrote in an email explaining the decision to pilot Project Green Light at this specific location.

"As an elderly community, there should be a concern associated with the surrounding area, which is susceptible to unwanted activities," she wrote, later adding, "You may imagine the level and type of street activity in this neighborhood and DHC’s concern for the well-being of the community. When unauthorized guests or visitors enter the premises with poor intentions, our residents and property may be at risk."

DHC anticipates that it will cost the agency $66,000 to transition from its current security protocol to Project Green Light. This will be paid for with federal money as an "allowed expense" from the capital fund.

More:Does Detroit's Project Green Light really make the city safer?

More:Detroit school becomes first to join Project Green Light crime reduction effort

Of the 26 cameras, four will be inside the building pointing out at all the front and rear doors used by guests. The remaining 22 cameras will be on the exterior of the two nearby buildings, which have a total of 403 one-bedroom units. The two buildings now have 19 exterior cameras.

Kippen acknowledges that she does not expect that Detroit Police will be watching the feed 24/7.

"We know (DPD) will have the footage, so if they need to go back and review it, they’re capable of doing that without us having to pull the footage. So we know that will be some staff time saving for us, but no, we never really expected a 24-hour monitoring, and we can’t provide 24-hour monitoring either," Kippen said.

Lack of monitoring

Kippen's recognition that the cameras will not be monitored 24/7 is something that critics of the Project Green Light often hook onto. They question why traditional security cameras (CCTV) cannot be used in its place if this is the case.

They also point to studies that show that once individuals know a feed isn't being monitored the crime deterrence factor wanes.

In September 2011, the Urban Institute, an economic and social policy think tank based in the nation's capital, published a paper analyzing surveillance trends in Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Chicago. In the latter city, the report found that once residents knew the cameras weren't being monitored consistently the effectiveness of the cameras dissipates.

“If they don’t monitor it, then you’re going to run into the problem that you read about in our report, which is once people know that the cameras are not being monitored, they’re going to lose their effectiveness,” Bryce Peterson, of the Urban Institute explained to the Free Press last spring. “You can get to the point where it’s so saturated the market that it becomes ineffective for everybody.”

This same finding was noted last spring by Eric Piza, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who spent time studying camera use in Newark, New Jersey.

Piza, who noted that surveillance in public housing is quite usual, said that research suggests that cameras work best in small, contained environments.

A problem, however, is when the program gets too big.

"My own research suggests that there is, for lack of a better term, a tipping point at which the police can get to a situation where they’ve installed so many cameras that they can no longer effectively police them," he said. His advice to police departments was to install only the number of cameras they can “realistically and proactively” monitor.

With more than 400 feeds now active in Detroit, not all are being monitored at once.

"Even if we had 200 people sitting in the room, we couldn’t view 200 (cameras) — it would be impossible," Police Chief James Craig said in January, noting that when businesses join Green Light they are reminded they are "not the only Green Light."

The Memorandum of Understanding between Green Light businesses and the police, in fact, notes that DPD will monitor cameras at its "discretion" and will not guarantee but rather make "its best effort to monitor" a business' cameras should it make a 911 call.

"This MOU does not oblige DPD to monitor the Entity’s cameras at any time," it states.

The MOU between DHC and DPD is still being fine-tuned and so was not available to the Free Press when we requested it.

What the green lights do

DPD has experimented with various crime-fighting initiatives over the years but none has been so prominent — in part because of the hard-to-miss strobe — as Project Green Light. While the program is best recognized for the green lights partners place in front of their buildings, at its core, Project Green Light is about cameras.

In the traditional Green Light setups, participating businesses pay $4,000-$6,000 a year to put high-definition surveillance cameras in their stores that stream directly to DPD's Real Time Crime Center.

When the program started in 2016 with eight gas stations, Chief Craig pitched the initiative as an opportunity to catch crimes in the act.

This has yet to happen.

At a news conference in January announcing the first Green Light Corridor — a section of Greektown where 11 businesses agreed to install 15 cameras facing the street — Craig explained the No. 1 goal was for Project Green Light to act as a deterrent.

The aim has also been described as being about nabbing suspects after a crime.

Even with shifting goals, the program has been expanding at breakneck speed under the general objective of "public safety."

Today, there are nearly 450 Green Light partners — including a school — and last January there were talks about making it mandatory for all businesses open between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m., a move that would have placed Project Green Light in about 4,000 businesses (City Council has yet to move forward with such an ordinance).

But, despite the eager push from politicians and the police department to expand, an important question remains: Does Project Green Light actually boost public safety and curtail crime? And if it does work, will this efficacy be altered by expansion?

In an interview with the Free Press in January, Craig spoke of the benefits of the program and cited various data points.

Waiting on data

Researchers, however, say the data that is being used — declining crime at Project Green Light sites, declining car theft across the city — does not actually tell us much.

There is no comprehensive study that compares Green Light locations with non-Green Light locations over time. And while Michigan State University was recently granted funding to create a comparison study, nothing has been published as of yet.

"Our analysis to date indicates an initial increase in calls for police service followed by a downward trend in crime. When compared to other non-Green Light locations the results are a bit more difficult to interpret," Edmund McGarrell, the director of the Michigan Justice Statistics Center who is spearheading the study, wrote in an email last week, explaining that the comparison is hard to analyze because new businesses are constantly being added to Green Light and they need more time and locations to understand the impact on violent crime.

"My best summary is that the preliminary results of Green Light are promising but that more time and more Green Light locations are needed to properly evaluate the impact on crime," he wrote.

In the absence of a conclusive study, experts say it is nearly impossible to tie Detroit's crime reduction — something many cities across the country are also seeing — specifically to Green Light.

"Violent crimes have been declining in many cities across the country. Without rigorous evaluations that use comparison groups, it is difficult to attribute the decline in any city to a specific program or policy,” Peterson of the Urban Institute said last spring.

Peterson said he had looked into Detroit’s Project Green Light program last year as a possible option for Milwaukee's police department, whom he was advising on surveillance options. While he heard many positive reviews of the program, his team "ran into a wall" when it came time to look at the data.

"I am trying to be neutral in that I’ve heard mostly good things about it, but at the same time, I have not seen any direct evidence of its effectiveness, only anecdotal information that we’ve heard from sources with a vested interest in it," Peterson said.

Milwaukee ultimately decided to go in another direction.

'I think people will be uncomfortable'

For those living at Sheridan Place I/II, the response to Project Green Light coming to the complex is mixed.

According to Linda Sharp, who is on the fence about the program, in June Mayor Mike Duggan and Chief Craig came to the complex's council meeting to share that Project Green Light would be coming.

Sharp, 61, estimates that about 50 to 60 residents were in attendance and almost all of them were eager for Project Green Light.

"They asked if we were agreeable to having the Green Light. The ones in attendance were for it," said Sharp, who has lived in the building for three years, adding that for the most part, those in attendance were "maybe 10 years older" than her.

"You got to look at the age of the seniors that voted for that," she said, explaining that the City had residents vote with their hands to express acceptance of the program.

"We voted, but it was a hand raise, not a paper vote. That caught my attention," she said. "I didn’t vote. I just sat there because I was shocked. To find out public housing is paying for this? I thought this was free. They’re spending the money the wrong way."

Kevin Sheppard, 61, waffles less when discussing the incoming plan.

“Why would they want to target a senior citizen community instead of targeting a drug community? Why are they not running on 7 Mile, 8 Mile, where the drugs are at?” asked Sheppard, who has been living in the community for five years. “We’re senior citizens, we’re just trying to live a peaceful life. So I don’t believe a Green Light should be here invading on my privacy.”

Sheppard is concerned family members will be less inclined to come and visit him should they know the building stream is being sent directly to DPD.

"I think people would be uncomfortable. My family would be uncomfortable being spied on," he said.

Cheryl McNeece, 60, however, was OK with it. In her opinion, she wasn't doing anything illegal so did not mind having cameras watch her.

For McNeece, there was a hope that the cameras would address one of her main concerns with the building: strangers getting in. This was something Kippen brought up as well.

Currently, there are 19 security cameras on the exterior of the two buildings, with a few pointing into the entrances. There is also, according to Kippen, security guards who sit in the lobby from 5 p.m. to 6 a.m. and do hourly walks around the perimeter.

"They’re not out there all the time. And that’s where the cameras can be helpful," said Kippen, who was unaware of how many 911 calls have been made from the building. DPD did not get back to the Free Press with this data point either.

For Kippen, however, this pilot seems like a good jumping off point as it forces DHC to upgrade its cameras to high-definition systems and improve lighting — something it has needed to do anyway.

"There have been incidents where we pull the footage and it’s so grainy you really can’t tell what was going on. You might see shapes and shadows, so for the most part not as helpful as we believe these newer, better cameras will be. It’s definitely going to be an improvement," she said

"This is a pilot for us," she added. "If it works out and if we really see some great benefit — less crime, or quicker reporting, you know anything that benefits the residents in that way — we have the ability to add other sites in the future," she said.

"We don’t have unlimited capital funds, so we might add another site next year when we get our capital fund grant. We’re not at the point of identifying what the next step would be. We really just want to see how this works."

Allie Gross is a business reporter with a focus on development, housing affordabilityand income inequality. Contact Allie Gross at AEGross@freepress.com. Connect with her on Twitter @Allie_Elisabeth.