BREMERTON — A camera system, which city officials hope will deter crime, has been installed in two downtown Bremerton locations and will go live following a legal review of its use.
The cameras, located on or near Sixth Street's intersections with Park and Warren avenues, were purchased for $9,200 in the city's 2017 budget.
It is the first time the city has used surveillance cameras on public streets, though Bremerton also runs a red-light photo enforcement program and some city departments have them for security on city property.
Police won't be watching the footage in real time. But should something happen that officers want to examine, they'll be able to take a look, according to Bremerton Police Capt. Tom Wolfe.
"We won't have someone sitting there monitoring it," Wolfe sid. "We don't have the resources to do that. This isn't London."
Interim Police Chief Jim Burchett equated it to a home security system.
"It'll run for years and nothing happens," he said. "And then someone breaks into your garage. And you can go back and take a look."
The cameras are not meant to be covert, he added. Precisely the opposite.
"We want people to know they're there," said Burchett, noting signs will be posted when they're activated. "We hope that they will deter crime."
Mayor Greg Wheeler, in his first week on the job, said the cameras will not be turned on until an internal review is completed to govern how the city will use them, where they can be deployed and how long footage will be retained.
"It will be careful, thoughtful and deliberate," said Wheeler, who supports their implementation.
That review does not require approval by the City Council, but Wheeler said the council will be kept abreast of developments.
The idea came from Jerry McDonald, a recently-retired councilman who met representatives of the company that provided the cameras at a conference last June.
"We've only got so many cops," he said. "It's just another tool in their toolkit."
The cameras are portable and could be redeployed later, but the Sixth Street locations seemed a good starting point. The area had 347 incident reports in 2017, according to Joe Sexton in the Bremerton Police Department's Community Resource Unit.
Though the cameras are not yet activated, plenty of people have noticed them.
Evin Tromley, who lives at the Kitsap Rescue Mission near Sixth and Park, said he thinks they'll prevent crimes. And anyone who does commit a crime in that area will be "caught, dead to rights."
Many businesses in the area welcomed the cameras. Clarke Whitney, who operates an accounting firm on Warren Avenue near the cameras, said the cameras will make employees feel safer heading to their vehicles after work.
"I think it's a good thing," he said.
Monica Capps, the owner of the Monica's Social Club on Sixth Street, is also hopeful the cameras will help. Capps closes her bar at 11 p.m., instead of the previous 2 a.m., as business has weakened in recent years.
"Everybody's afraid to come down here," she said.
Kurt Wiest of the Bremerton Housing Authority, located at Sixth and Park, said he supports the cameras and noted his organization also has security cameras.
"That investment, from our experience, has kept things crime-free," he said.
The Salvation Army, which has cameras at its Sixth Street facility, welcomed the idea of city-operated cameras, according to Major Scott Ramsey. He's concerned that people prey on the homeless who congregate there, whether it's offering drugs, stealing from them or worse.
"We're not trying to keep track or hassle the homeless," Ramsey said. "We're really trying to keep the homeless safe."
But not everyone agrees the cameras will accomplish that. Shankar Narayan, technology and liberty project director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, questions whether the cameras deter crime. He pointed to one such camera system in Lincoln, Nebraska, where assaults failed to decline after the cameras went in.
Narayan noted that the cameras, if used appropriately, will mostly capture "innocent behavior," at taxpayer expense, in a way that "undermines the expectation of individuals to be in public without being suspicionlessly, warrantlessly recorded by their government."
"It really does have a chilling effect on people, if they think the government is looking over their shoulder," he said.
He believes other approaches by police, such as foot patrols, would be more effective.
Similar cameras have been used in other cities around the state, including Kent.
Kent Police Commander Matt Holmes said investigators have used the footage to help solve crimes.
"We have had some useful information captured on the video, and it has been a deterrent in some circumstances," he said.
