In October 2000, when the New York Surveillance Camera Players (SCP-New York) first scouted out and mapped the locations of surveillance cameras around City Hall, the Mayor of New York was Rudolph Giuliani. In July 1997, Giuliani (helped out by then-Police Commissioner Howard Safir) reversed longstanding NYPD policy by installing police surveillance cameras in public places. (Surveillance cameras had been tried out in Times Square in the early 1970s, but were quickly abandonned as not being cost-effective.) In Giuliani's new program, CCTV (closed-circuit TV) systems were installed in a handful of key locations: subway stations, public housing developments (one of which is in the Lower East Side), and public parks (including Washington Square Park). In each location, the strategy was the same: watch the cameras diligently; quickly make as many arrests as possible; declare with great fanfare that "crime" had been "reduced"; and then either cut back on the number of watchers or completely stop employing people to watch the cameras and have the images go "straight to tape" automatically.
At some point, perhaps in middle or late 1999, a police CCTV system was also installed around City Hall. In its first mapping expedition, the SCP-New York found 16 police cameras, most (10 of them) installed on the building itself. Of the remaining cameras, 5 were installed on light poles erected along the adjacent streets (Broadway to the west and Park Row/Centre Street to the east); and 1 was installed on a pole within the confines of City Hall Park (right near the tree upon which an anti-Giuliani protester once climbed). One of the light-pole cameras (the one on Broadway at Warren Street) warrants mention, because someone in the watcher's booth has placed a small thermometer on the pole, just below the camera, so that he or she can sit in the NYPD's air-conditioned watchers' booth and use the surveillance device (supposedly a "crime-fighting tool") to "look outside the window" and find out the outside temperature. But surveillance cameras aren't toys!
In July 2003, the SCP-New York returned to City Hall and mapped the area a second time. But this time the SCP-New York widened its scope to include A) surveillance cameras located on the furthest-away sides of the adjacent streets e.g., the west side of Broadway and the east side of Park Row/Centre Street, which had been excluded previously; and B) both privately owned and police cameras. Because of the change in scope, the overall number of cameras on the map has increased: there are now almost twice as many cameras, 28 of them, 9 privately owned and [at least] 19 operated by the NYPD.
Giuliani is no longer the Mayor; he's been replaced by someone "more liberal," Michael Bloomberg. Though Bloomberg has retained same of Giuliani's "innovations" (interlocking metal barricades at political demonstrations, pre-emptive arrests, "crack-downs" on homeless people), there's clearly been a decrease in the use of video surveillance at/of City Hall: the NYPD have decommissioned (pointed in "harmless" directions) -- but not removed -- two large cameras that used to watch the building from the west side of Broadway and the east side of Park Row/Centre Street, respectively; and the police have removed the camera that (in the immediate aftermath of September 11th) used to watch the building from atop Pace University, across the street. It also appears that the NYPD have removed several cameras from the City Hall building itself, but one can't be sure because access to it is highly restricted and trees block the view from the surrounding streets.
At the same time, there's been a dramatic increase in the number of cameras installed on the nearby Municipal Building, which not only houses valuable government property (records, equipment and personnel), but also stands at the intersection of three "sensitive" routes or landmarks (the Brooklyn Bridge, a large subway station, and One Police Plaza). Police surveillance cameras have been in operation on this building ever since the late 1960s: shots of one such camera were included in Red Squad, a suppressed documentary made in 1971 by NYU film students Steve Fischlar and Joel Sucher. This camera is still attached to the Municipal Building, but looks like its been decommissioned (it's pointing straight down to the ground, at a spot where there's nothing to see). Another decommissioned "Red Squad" camera hangs lifeless from the heights of 253 Broadway, which stands right across the street from City Hall.
Since September 11th, the NYPD have installed at least 6 brand-new, globe-shaped cameras on the Municipal Building. Mind you, not one of these cameras is accompanied by a sign that A) warns potential criminals or terrorists, and B) reassures potential crime victims that the NYPD is watching. And so, these surveillance cameras have great value as tools for secret spying and other abuses of power, but no value as "crime deterrent."
By e-mail SCP@notbored.org
By snail mail: SCP c/o NOT BORED! POB 1115, Stuyvesant Station, New York City 10009-9998
