But Safety Services Director Dan Trelka said leaders need to find more money and “proceed cautiously” in determining where they would be placed throughout the community.
“We’ve got a strong foundation to build off of already with our fiber optics,” Trelka said. “It’s just going to take funding, quite frankly, so it’s up to those that hold the purse strings if you would like to proceed with this.”
Trelka was speaking Monday during a meeting of the City Council’s public safety committee, which was just beginning to investigate a request from some residents to install cameras to help deter acts of violence in the community or catch those responsible.
No cost estimates for cameras had been developed yet.
Trelka and Police Capt. Joe Leibold visited Dubuque last week to see what Trelka described as an “impressive and robust” system of public surveillance cameras.
The Dubuque system grew out of traffic monitoring cameras at intersections that were later utilized by law enforcement to help track crime. Most of Dubuque’s 924 cameras are still run by traffic engineers at intersections, but the city has started rolling out cameras at public parks and around buildings.
The Waterloo Traffic Operations Department currently has 28 cameras at intersections, which are used by engineers to monitor traffic flows but have been utilized by Waterloo police to investigate crashes.
Traffic Operations Superintendent Sandie Greco said the fiber optic lines and wireless system is in place to handle many more cameras if the council authorized funding to buy and install them.
While some residents have urged the city to put up cameras to monitor neighborhoods with a history of shootings, Trelka suggested the city start by putting up more traffic intersection cameras.
“If you’re going to proceed with this initiative it shouldn’t be spearheaded by the police department because the perfect platform, the infrastructure, is in the hands of the traffic engineers,” he said.
“Most of our shooters in our cities throughout Iowa are in cars, so they’ll typically be able to track them to and from the shooting,” Trelka added.
While council members generally supported moving forward with the plans, Councilmen Jerome Amos Jr. and Patrick Morrissey said they wanted to ensure the city wasn’t trampling on civil liberties.
“If we’re going to move forward with this I really think we need to make sure that people’s rights are protected,” Amos said.
Morrissey said he’s heard concerns cameras would be placed in a “discriminatory” fashion targeting certain neighborhoods over others.
Trelka said he shared those concerns, which is why he thought utilizing the traffic cameras was preferable to putting up neighborhood watch cameras.
“I don’t want any municipal employees to have the ability to be prying into private areas of people’s lives,” he said.
Mayor Quentin Hart said said the idea of public safety cameras was “only one part of a larger challenge we need to deal with” to reduce violence in the community.
But he said he would work with council members to set up a task force and pursue the idea.
Councilman Tom Lind urged his colleagues and staff to take the next steps to get cameras in place.
“I think the cameras will make people feel safer,” Lind said. “I know they’re not going to solve all crimes. … Cameras would just be one more thing to help (the police) department do their job.”
©2016 Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier (Waterloo, Iowa). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
