Saturday 04-02-16

Police want to use residential, business surveillance cameras

Police found Deanna Pagel, 52, dead in the street in March 2015.

Evidence was scant - until a resident who lived in the south Victoria neighborhood approached police with footage from a house surveillance camera that showed a vehicle in the vicinity that night.

"We had nothing," said Victoria Police Chief J.J. Craig. "No eyewitnesses. And all of sudden that video became available."

In hopes of replicating such a lead, police are encouraging residents and business owners who have installed outdoor surveillance cameras to register the equipment with the department.

"There's an awful lot of surveillance video equipment out there being used by businesses and residents," Craig said. "It seemed like a good time to partner with the community."

Craig said the use of the cameras would work like this: When a crime is committed, police could check if there's a registered camera in the area. If so, an officer would contact the homeowner about viewing the footage.

Residents can register on the police department's website.

Similar programs have been tried at other police departments across the country.

Craig stressed the department could not tap into the cameras remotely if they were registered. The cameras' owners can also decline to release the video.

"It's not a privacy issue from that perspective," he said. "We're just looking for people to say, 'Yeah, I have a camera.' And we would contact them to see if maybe they could help solve a crime."

Footage from surveillance cameras, primarily from stores, is already a large part of the police's evidence-gathering, said police spokeswoman Detective Tanya Brown.

"Probably about 95 percent of the stuff we run on Crime Stoppers, we get offenders identified by using that surveillance video," she said.

In the case of Deanna Pagel

https://www.victoriaadvocate.com/news/2016/mar/31/police-want-to-use-residential-business-surveillan/