Bridgeport cameras are watching you

Jorge Garcia, Bridgeport's director of public facilities, talks about the city's new BSAFE Video Security Command Center Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2015, at the Margaret Morton Government Center. Jorge Garcia, Bridgeport's director of public facilities, talks about the city's new BSAFE Video Security Command Center Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2015, at the Margaret Morton Government Center. Photo: Autumn Driscoll / Hearst Connecticut Media Buy photo Photo: Autumn Driscoll / Hearst Connecticut Media Image 1 of / 6 Caption Close Bridgeport cameras are watching you 1 / 6 Back to Gallery

BRIDGEPORT - A warning to would be criminals in the Park City - Big Brother is watching.

“We have taken what people see in sci-fi movies and made it a reality in Bridgeport,” said David Antar, president of A+ Technology and Security as he unveiled the city’s new BSAFE Video Security Command Center on Friday. “We now have eyes almost everywhere.”

The system is the first of its kind in the state with Suffolk County, N.Y. , across the Long Island Sound the only other municipality in the northeast now using one, said Antar. He said Suffolk’s system is tied directly to its 911 dispatch system, something that may occur here later.

Housed deep within the maze of corridors on the first floor of the Margaret Morton Government Center, two consoles sit before a wall of television screens. The walls are painted dark blue and across the top of one are round clocks marking time in the world’s centers.

From the consoles watchers can see what is going on in the city’s schools, housing projects and even Pleasure Beach.

“Using technology, we have torn down the walls of the municipality,” said Jorge Garcia, the city’s director of public facilities.

Garcia said the system cost $1 million with the city paying about 29 percent of the cost and the rest coming from grants. “It was a blend of many different grants,” he said.

Potentially invasive

The American Civil Liberties Union, however, has expressed concern about public surveillance cameras for a number of reasons, including the technology’s susceptibility to abuse for discriminatory targeting, potential voyeurism and institutional misuse.

“The use of sophisticated systems by police and other public security officials is particularly troubling in a democratic society,” the ACLU states on its website at https://www.aclu.org.

“Although the ACLU has no objection to cameras at specific, high-profile public places that are potential terrorist targets, such as the U.S. Capitol, the impulse to blanket our public spaces and streets with video surveillance is a bad idea ... Unfortunately, history has shown that surveillance technologies put in place for one purpose inevitably expand into other uses. And with video technology likely to continue advancing, the lack of any clear boundaries for what (the) systems should be able to do poses a significant danger,” the ACLU states.

“Like any intrusive technology, the benefits of deploying public video cameras must be balanced against the costs and dangers,” it admonishes.

Eye in the sky

Back at Bridgeport’s government center Wednesday, as three of the screens showed students walking along school corridors, Garcia said that initially the consoles in the room will be manned by school security personnel.

Later, he said public facility employees will be given a turn.

But Antar said it’s not just a matter of someone sitting in front of the screens all day waiting to see something happen.

“Each camera is sensor-based and when a sensor is triggered by an event such as someone breaking into a building or a fight starting at a school a map of the location first comes up on the console as well as the situation appearing on the screens,” he said. “It gives us both vision and awareness.”

Garcia said they system is already responsible for solving two crimes in the city including the attempted kidnapping last month of a teenaged girl.

“We are now a world of sensors and cameras — welcome to the future,” added Garcia.