Why Progressives Should Rethink Their Stance on Police Surveillance (2024)

For more than a year, gun violence consumed a neighborhood in South Philadelphia. Rival groups were fighting for control of the streets. The gunfire had injured 17 people and killed a teenager. Most of the events happened in broad daylight in front of witnesses—but no one would talk to the police.

What finally broke the case open was the discovery of surveillance footage from a private camera outside the Get It Mini Market on Marston Street, according to Bill Fritze, the chief of the Gun Violence Task Force at the Philadelphia district attorney’s office. The camera allowed police to identify and track down the car that Nyseem Smith and his friends were driving when they shot three people. Smith’s friends had stolen the car, used it in the shooting, and then ditched it miles away, but police found a sweatshirt inside with Smith’s DNA on it. This was enough for a warrant for Smith’s phone, which contained a trove of incriminating text messages linking Smith to the shooting.

Before the discovery of the Mini Market footage, the shooting on Marston Street seemed destined to contribute to one of the grimmest statistics in the American criminal justice system: less than 20 percent of nonfatal shootings in most large American cities are ever solved.The clearance rates have been as low as 11 percent in Chicago, 10 percent in Durham, 15 percent in San Francisco, and 18 percent in Philadelphia.Instead, the outcome of Smith’s case points to a potential solution: Surveillance footage of public areas is becoming an ever more vital tool in solving and deterring violent crime.

If the idea of more police cameras makes you queasy, I understand: I spent the first decade of my career as a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer and during that time, I would have treated a plan for more police-controlled cameras with suspicion and skepticism. But acting as the policy director for progressive prosecutor and Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner for six years changed my perspective. I saw, firsthand, the cost of unsolved shootings in Philadelphia, the misery of unwilling witnesses brought to court in handcuffs, and the way witnesses could emerge from trials feeling abused and angry.

Still, I hesitated: I worried about the harm and mistrust that additional surveillance could do in poor neighborhoods. But when a Philadelphia police officer shot and killed a 12-year-old boy in 2022, it cemented a change in my thinking on the value of cameras. The child, TJ Siderio, had shot at an unmarked police car, causing a minor injury to an officer, before running away. Officer Edsaul Mendoza chased him, shooting him three times. Mendoza later claimed that Siderio was still armed and posed a threat when he was killed, and the police department initially backed him up. But surveillance footage showed that the 12-year-old had discarded his gun 40 feet away from where he was shot, and that he had been on ground when Mendoza shot him in the back.

Without the surveillance footage, it would have been nearly impossible to prove what actually happened to TJ Siderio. With the footage, the DA prosecuted Mendoza, who pleaded guilty to third-degree murder earlier this year.

Americans have a well-earned fear of government surveillance: Our history is rife with stories of law enforcement overreach, from J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI to National Security Agency abuses uncovered by Edward Snowden. And progressive interest groups including the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Brennan Center are adamantly opposed to increased police surveillance, warning against government overreach and citing concerns about privacy. They point out, correctly, that people from poor communities are the most likely to be subject to enhanced surveillance.

But those potential harms should be weighed against the suffering of neighborhoods where shootings routinely go unsolved, against the risk and trauma that witnesses who testify take on, and against the flaws inherent in building criminal prosecutions around eyewitness testimony, which research has shown can be unreliable.

Witness testimony has long been considered the most important form of evidence in criminal trials. But relying on witness testimony carries serious risks, not just for prosecutors trying to build strong cases, but for witnesses themselves.

Serving as a witness in a shooting or homicide is burdensome and time-consuming, at best. At worst, it places the witness in physical peril, or makes them an outcast in their community. Testifying can also be retraumatizing: Witnesses must relive a terrifying experience in a hostile environment and are often picked apart and embarrassed during cross-examination. Those who have had prior contact with law enforcement are frequently publicly shamed and undermined. Those who choose to testify may be subject to retaliation, and police are often limited in what they can do to help. Some cities lack the resources to relocate witnesses, and others only relocate witnesses to homicides. Even when cities will pay to relocate witnesses, they cannot protect them indefinitely. And, of course, many people in poor communities have a deep mistrust of law enforcement.

As a result, eyewitnesses and victims frequently do not want to cooperate with police, either because they have legitimate fear for their own safety, they are involved in crimes themselves, or they simply do not trust the criminal justice system. A recent study in New York of young men who were likely to be involved in group violence found that 92 percent would sooner retaliate themselves than go to the police in the wake of a shooting. Even when witnesses and victims initially cooperate with police, they do not show up to court nearly 50 percent of the time. Poor communities often find themselves trapped in a cycle: Low clearance rates drive violence higher as shooters feel that they can act with impunity and victims seek retribution because they don’t believe the police will protect them. This means that even when the police may know who has committed a crime, they have no way to prove it, and cases remain unsolved.

The majority of unsolved shootings have two things in common: they occur outside, and their victims are overwhelmingly young men of color. Group violence often consists of an escalating set of shootings. Ballistic evidence is more difficult to collect outside, and police departments do not have enough trained detectives assigned to investigate.

More street cameras are not a panacea, but they can help, and they have some advantages over human witnesses. Cameras do not misidentify suspects (a well-documented problem in the criminal justice system). A camera will not commit perjury because of a vendetta. While human memory degrades over time, a video clip looks the same several years after the incident. And while a witness may fall apart under cross-examination, a video cannot. A camera is a neutral observer, passing the job of the identification on to the viewer.

There is no single solution to gun violence, but high-quality surveillance cameras on city streets can be immensely helpful in solving violent crime and taking the burden off of human beings who don’t want to risk their own lives to cooperate with police. New technology has made these cameras and image-sharing software more accessible, cheaper, and easier to maintain.

While most American cities have yet to employ high-tech surveillance, it is ubiquitous in some cities outside the United States. Experts estimate that London has more than 900,000 CCTV cameras, some of which are owned by individuals and others by the police. New technology allows camera owners to share footage with police automatically, if they choose, with images sent in real time to a police intelligence center, which is much cheaper than outfitting a city in all-new police cameras. Atlanta, a city that has been aggressive in upping its surveillance game, has about 16,000 cameras and has been sharply criticized for it.

In February, the mayor of Seattle, Bruce Harrell, announced a pilot program: The city would spend $1.5 million on surveillance equipment, including CCTV cameras and software, in four areas of the city where violent crime is highest. Citizens and privacy groups complained, and the city scheduled an open forum before the City Council, where a tense and heated debate ensued.

It was residents of color from Seattle’s poor communities who overwhelmingly advocated for installing the camera equipment, citing the 24 percent clearance rate for homicides. “The Black community wants it,” community advocate Victoria Bush told the council, according to KOMO News, adding that opponents of the camera rollout “are not in our neighborhoods. They’re not dying.” In May, Seattle moved forward with installing most of the equipment.

Utilizing surveillance footage collected on public streets is not the same as listening to a private phone call, or peering into the windows of a home. Norms around cameras have changed in the last decade: While we may not like the idea of being surveilled as we go about our daily lives, most of us assume that we fall under the watchful eye of a camera as we pass through office buildings or drug stores or even cross the street. We don’t like it, but we live with it because it is a relatively minor violation of our privacy, particularly when considered in context. Many of us willingly use social media that allow large corporations to track our internet history, despite the fact that companies may be taking more information about us there than could be learned from a street camera.

While we have no right to privacy in public spaces, we are protected in private ones. The law is clear that if cameras controlled by police capture footage on private property without a warrant, that footage cannot be used against anyone who has a reasonable expectation of privacy. Similarly, mobile devices like GPS units and drones cannot be used to follow and surveil people without a warrant. But street cameras are different because they do not target a specific person: They capture everyone and everything, the electronic equivalent of an observant police officer stationed on every block.

Increasing police surveillance must be done thoughtfully and transparently. As cities consider whether to invest in surveillance equipment, they must listen to residents of communities where crime is highest. These communities will be watched more than other neighborhoods, and they will also suffer the most as a result of gun violence. If these residents are prepared to accept the trade-off, political leaders should listen.