One recent spring day, two cops in the Newark Police Dept. watched a shoot-out erupt in broad daylight. Two suspected drug dealers started blasting away at each other in the middle of an apartment complex. The cops didn't witness the violence on the beat, though. They watched it from the city's new communications command center, which collects live video feeds from more than 100 surveillance cameras scattered across the crime-ridden city.
As the shooting broke out, the policemen zoomed in on the scene with a joystick controller. They saw one gunman flee, while the other dragged himself into a nearby apartment, one blood-soaked leg trailing behind. Because of the camera network, the Newark police were able to dispatch a team to the crime scene immediately—90 seconds before the first 911 calls. The gunman who crawled into his apartment was arrested on the spot. "Those complexes are like mazes, but we knew exactly where to send the unit," says Sergeant Marvin Carpenter, commanding officer of the communications post.
The surveillance system is the centerpiece of Mayor Cory Booker's ambitious plan to use cutting-edge technologies to slash Newark's violent crime rate. This August, Newark finished its initial deployment of 111 cameras, adding 76 to the 35 that were in place last summer. Newark is investing in a whole range of tools, everything from mundane PCs to more novel technologies such as a new citywide broadband wireless network that will let cops fill out police reports from their squad cars instead of schlepping back to the station house. By late fall, Newark expects to complete the deployment of an audio sensor system to pinpoint gunshot locations that cameras fail to catch. "We are trying to leave the Flintstones and get to the Jetsons," says Booker.
Major cities such as London, New York, and Chicago have rolled out larger video surveillance networks. But technology experts say Newark, New Jersey's largest city, is the first metropolis to combine an array of technologies on a large scale. "I haven't seen a city with this mix of technology all in one place," says Kevin Kilgore, president of Let's Think Wireless, a New York company that has built wireless networks for several hundred cities, including Newark.
Bangalore Across the HudsonWith a nod to New York City's revival, Booker is betting that crime reduction will trigger the economic rebirth of Newark, a city of about 280,000 with a proud industrial history that has never fully recovered from the upheavals of the 1960s. In a slowing economy, the charismatic 39-year-old, a Rhodes Scholar and graduate of Yale University Law School, is pitching Newark as a sort of Bangalore across the Hudson: a low-cost place to do business 10 miles from Manhattan, with the second busiest U.S. port, many transportation hubs, sports arenas, and a cluster of schools such as Rutgers University and Seton Hall University School of Law. "You can work your tail off on economic development, but businesses won't come if it's not safe," says Hans Dekker, president of the Newark Community Foundation.
Newark is also a test bed for the tensions between surveillance and privacy. Privacy advocates have raised concerns over the aggressive rollout of video cameras, audio sensors, and other technologies. Critics argue that such surveillance is susceptible to abuse, can have a chilling effect on public life, and hasn't been proven to reduce crime. "The costs are high, and the benefits in terms of law enforcement are low," says Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Whether Newark can strike an acceptable balance between crime-fighting and privacy may determine whether other cities follow similar strategies in the future.
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