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10 years. $10M. 2,100 SkyCop cameras. And a crime increase of 57%
BY MATT STROUD | PUBLISHED NOV 18, 2021 | THE DAILY MEMPHIAN
Since 2010, the City of Memphis has spent more than $10 million buying and installing more than 2,100 cameras and related technologies throughout the city.
A main purpose of the cameras — with their large white metal boxes adorned with flashing blue lights, placed high and overt on light poles and buildings — was their visibility and deterrent effect.
An investigation by The Daily Memphian found problems with the ubiquitous cameras:
The cameras’ deterrent effect is questionable, as violent crime rates in Memphis have risen consistently during the past decade, far exceeding state and national averages.
The cameras rarely have helped in solving a crime. This year, of the more than 74,000 crime incidents of all types reported, less than 3 percent of the investigations even mentioned the cameras, according to data analyzed by The Daily Memphian. Of the 228 killings in 2021, only one investigation mentioned the camera program, the analysis showed.
The cameras have been subject to very little scrutiny by city officials as millions have been paid to the one Tennessee-registered company, SCI Technologies Inc. — doing business as SkyCop — that has profited from the cameras’ proliferation. A recent contract earmarked a little under $3 million for technology that the city had already allocated to another company.
A former sergeant with the Memphis Police Department helped to invent SkyCop’s main camera product while on the city’s payroll to design the crime-fighting program that would install the product throughout the city. The former sergeant is now the company’s vice president.
The Daily Memphian’s investigation showed the camera program’s rapid growth and expenditures have not produced meaningful results.
In 2010, before MPD installed a majority of SkyCop cameras, the city reported more than 1,500 violent crimes per 100,000 people, a rate approaching four times the national average.
In 2020, with thousands of SkyCop cameras monitoring streets, the violent-crime rate was 2,351 per 100,000 — an increase of about 57% over 2010, and nearly six times the national average.
While crime over that period has gone up nationwide, it has spiked at higher rates in Memphis than elsewhere in the country.
Furthermore, cameras played a role in a vanishingly small number of MPD investigations.
According to data provided by MPD in response to a public records request, of the more than 74,000 crime incidents of all types reported to the department between Jan. 1, 2021, and Oct. 31, 2021 — about 2,000, covering fewer than 1,400 incidents —mentioned “SkyCop,” “Real Time Crime Center,” or “Blue Crush,” the name given to MPD’s data policing program, which includes camera feeds.
MPD reported 228 killings during that period, with the camera programs mentioned in only one investigation.
The programs were mentioned in only 5% of the nearly 4,500 aggravated assault cases — which would include most non-fatal shooting incidents — reported to the department during that period, and in only 13 carjacking incident reports — 5% of the department’s 275 incidents during that period.
The terms were mentioned in just 4% of the city’s more than 1,300 incidents of reported robbery.
The reasons for crime increases are multitude and varied. The pandemic, to cite one example, has been recognized as spurring crime rate spikes nationwide over the last year and a half, and criminologists have, for generations, argued in books and peer-reviewed research over what other factors play roles in provoking criminality.
But if the intent of installing a conspicuous, citywide camera system was to stem crime rates in Memphis, it didn’t succeed.
That has not stopped the City of Memphis from paying SkyCop for even more cameras and technology.
A Flourish chart
‘That’s news to me’
As part of a contract worth nearly $3 million, the City of Memphis renewed a deal in April with SkyCop to place gunshot recognition technology into the constellation of white camera boxes flashing blue lights throughout Memphis’ streets. GSR — an acronym for the technology — is designed to geolocate the specific coordinates of a gunshot, so that police can investigate where and why a gun may have been fired.
The contract should have raised eyebrows for two reasons.
First, the Memphis Police Department is already in the midst of an experimental three-year contract with ShotSpotter, the publicly traded GSR company that deploys its audio sensors in cities all over the country, including Memphis.
Second, it seems no one told SkyCop about the contract.
Continued:https://www.mcgrawcenter.org/stories/10-years-10m-2100-skycop-cameras-and-a-crime-increase-of-57/