What's a car thief to do when he's caught on video getting in and out of a car he was accused of stealing -- the very car he denied stealing?

This was the tight spot one New Orleans bad guy found himself in as a result of the city's decision to use wireless technology to stave off crime. In January 2005, New Orleans kicked off its Crime Camera initiative by deploying hundreds of cameras in the New Orleans Police Department's (NOPD) 6th District, one of the city's crime hot spots.

The Crime Camera initiative, which relies on Wi-Fi-connected cameras to monitor trouble spots, is one point of a seven-point plan initiated by Mayor C. Ray Nagin to stifle high crime rates.

"It was not a feeling that crime was getting out of hand, but a feeling that we wanted to be proactive and do something about it before it got any worse," said Chris Drake, project manager with the Mayor's Office of Technology.

The city began testing the cameras in 2004 in the NOPD's District 1. With the blessing of the City Council, New Orleans initiated an adopt-a-camera program in which area citizen groups -- such as neighborhood watch, churches and businesses -- sponsor cameras in their areas. During the pilot, which ran from January 2004 to August 2004, the murder rate dropped 57 percent from the same time period in 2003, and the vehicle theft rate dropped 25 percent.

Based on those results, New Orleans decided to expand the use of the Wi-Fi-networked video cameras as a viable crime-fighting tool throughout the city.


Caught in the Act
The city has a budget for 240 Sony IP pan/tilt/zoom cameras, which are powered by the utility poles they're mounted on. The cameras are placed in designated high-crime areas.

"They are constantly on virtual patrol, scanning the area within their optical-zoom limits based on virtual patrols programmed in by our staff and NOPD officers," Drake said, noting that the city makes it a policy to never have a lone camera in any one area.

"For operational reasons, it's better to have at least two cameras in a deployment area -- generally 800 to 1,000 feet apart maximum -- so they have overlapping coverage areas," he said, explaining that placing the cameras in a position to take advantage of overlapping areas allows a constant wireless signal for their operation.

The city uses a Tropos Wi-Fi connection that operates at 1.5 Mbps. The outdoor mesh Wi-Fi network provides communications for the cameras, said Drake.

"We use high-bandwidth, point-to-point wireless to feed bandwidth to omni-directional hot zones powered by outdoor Wi-Fi access points," he continued. "Each point gives about a one-third mile radius. We can put three to four cameras anywhere in that zone and connect wirelessly through the Tropos unit, back through the 'bandwidth injection' point-to-point connection."

The city has plans to bring other functionality to its Wi-Fi network, including electronic police reports, a Web-based justice information system and an electronic citation system. Although the city is already using these in some form, they will be on the network as soon as more bandwidth is available.

To make this possible, Drake said the city is eyeing the eventual use of WiMAX and that New Orleans currently holds licenses for the 4.9 GHz public safety spectrum.

"WiMAX will provide a standards-based bandwidth injection methodology and can make use of the available public safety spectrum," he said. "This will also enable, along with migration to 802.11g at the hotspot level, a large increase in the available bandwidth on the wireless network and allow us to open it up to noncamera uses."


Paying for It
Funds for the project, the cost of which is projected at $4 million to $4.5 million, are covered by