1,400 percent growth in surveillance cameras in

Manhattan’s Lower East Side

Formerly a completely immigrant (mostly Jewish and Latino) neighborhood, the Lower East Side (LES) fell prey to speculation and gentrification in the mid-1990s, when it came to be called “the East Village.” (Note: there is no “West Village,” there’s only Greenwich Village, of which the LES has never been a part.) Since the mid-1990s, rents in the LES have increased dramatically, squatters have been illegally evicted and their buildings have been demolished, community gardens have been auctioned off and then destroyed, and gleaming homes, restaurants and “hip” shops for yuppies have been constructed in their places. And yet (fortunately!) the place remains a gritty and relatively undesirable place for yuppies to breed. There is little subway service and the immense Con Edison power-plant on 14th Street and Avenue D — which has been closed off to the public since 11 September 2001 — regularly spews poisons into the air.

In our first map of the LES, which was made in March 2001, we located a total of 96 publically installed surveillance cameras operating in the area east of First Avenue and west of the FDR Drive, south of 14th Street and north of Houston Street (“Alphabet City”). In our second map of the area, which was made in November 2002, we found that the number of surveillance cameras has risen to 118. And in our third map, made in May 2005, we counted 298 surveillance cameras in the area. In a pattern common to all of Manhattan, all of the new cameras in the LES are privately installed; the police haven’t put up any new ones since November 2002.

Bear in mind that, back in November 1998, when the New York Civil Liberties Union counted, there were only 21 surveillance cameras in the Lower East Side. This means that in the last seven years — between November 1998 and May 2005 — the number of cameras in the LES has grown by an astonishing 1,400 percent.

And yet the LES remains one of Manhattan’s least surveilled neighborhoods. There are far more surveillance cameras in operation in or around Chinatown (605), Times Square (604), New York University (510), Greenwich Village (371), Chelsea (368), and the United Nations (322). The only neighborhood we have mapped that has as few or fewer surveillance cameras as the LES is Harlem, in which there are “only” 120. And yet both Harlem and the Lower East Side are still portrayed as “dangerous areas,” places in which you don’t want to walk alone late at night. As we’ve pointed out elsewhere, this discrepancy shows that surveillance cameras are intended to protect property (not people) and are thus only installed in places where there is property worth protecting.

One of the peculiarities of the LES is that so many of its surveillance cameras are operated by the New York Police Department (NYPD). In 2001, 29 out of the 96 cameras we mapped were operated by the NYPD; In 2002 and 2005, 44 out of the 298 are police cameras. In the other areas of Manhattan we’ve mapped, NYPD cameras are far less numerous: there are only 12 in Times Square, 10 in Chelsea, 7 near the United Nations, and 4 in Greenwich Village. The LES would be just like Harlem — where there is only one police camera in operation (!) — were it not for the fact that the LES contains the Lillian Wald Housing Development, which is one of the original 10 public housing developments in which the NYPD began installing very extensive video surveillance systems in mid-1997. (Same thing for Greenwich Village. Were it not for the existence of another NYPD “test area” at Washington Square Park, in which there are 11 cameras operated by the police, the area would only have 3 such cameras.)

*

New York City’s federally subsidized housing developments are the biggest and best funded in the USA. The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is given an annual budget of $430 million to run 160,000 housing units, in which there are approximately 600,000 people. According to NYCHA’s statistics, 94 percent of these people are either black or Latino, and the average annual income is below $15,000.

The simple but brutal fact of the matter is that if NYCHA forces these people to be surveilled by video cameras, there is nothing they can do. They can’t afford to hire attorneys, and they can’t afford to move elsewhere (not when an average NYC apartment costs $12,000 a year to rent!). But these people weren’t targeted for maximum surveillance because they are criminals or even the frequent victims of criminals. They were targeted because 1) statistics (success rates, projections and the like) play such an important role in getting, maintaining and increasing federal funding for local authorities like the NYCHA; and 2) statistics are easily misinterpreted, manipulated or even manufactured outright, especially when it comes to statistics derived from the video surveillance of people who both know about the cameras and can’t escape from them. (In “the real world,” potential criminals generally don’t know about the cameras that are watching them, and — if and when they find out — can easily move out of their sight.)

In July 1997, a video surveillance system utilizing 105 cameras was turned on at Manhattan’s Ulysses S. Grant housing development, in part because it is near the station-house of the 26th Precinct, which is where the police established their VIPER (“Video Interactive Patrol Enhanced Response”) unit. Shortly thereafter, a system utilizing 100 cameras was installed at Brooklyn’s Albany Houses, with the VIPER unit set up at a near-by station house; and a system using 260 cameras was installed at the South Jamaica Houses in Queens. Because this sprawling housing complex was too far away from the nearest police station to lay down the necessary cables, a unique VIPER unit was constructed on-site.

These CCTV (closed-circuit television) systems were designed and installed by Sparta Solutions. In each one, the cables connecting the cameras to the monitors are fiber-optic, which means they provide rapid noiseless transmission; and the monitors display their images “in real time,” that is, without skipping any of the 30 frames that go by each second. Everything is recorded. To conserve space, all of the recordings are “time-elapsed,” that is, only a frame or two per second has been captured, and each videotape records the feeds from 10 different cameras. If they haven’t recorded anything significant, these tapes are re-used after 7 days. Each tape is used a total of 10 times before it is destroyed and replaced with a brand-new one.

According to the NYPD, after the installation of its CCTV systems, the crime rate was reduced at these housing devoplements. But it was possible that these reductions didn’t derive from the CCTV systems’ effectiveness, but instead from the simple fact that the existence of these systems had been widely publicized before, during and after their installation. And so the NYPD needed the statistics from a NYCHA unit in which the existence of video surveillance wasn’t commonly known. In 1998 or 1999, a “secret” system was installed at the Lillian Wald Housing Development, which is located along Avenue D between Houston and 6th Streets. There are at least 26 cameras installed outside the buildings; inside, there are probably another 70 or so cameras watching hallways, laundry rooms, elevators, etc etc. Given the distance to the nearest police stations, it’s a good guess that the VIPER unit is located somewhere on the premises.

It isn’t clear if the images being recorded by this or any other VIPER Unit in New York are being monitored live by police officers as well as recorded by the digital machines. Note the following, which was taken from Sparta Solution’s website: it’s the only time that the company’s involvement with “New York” (the NYPD) is mentioned.

Over the past several years, SPARTA designed CCTV systems have been effective at reducing crime as much as 70 percent in several high-profile areas (New York City, Atlanta) in cases where the systems have been monitored. The effectiveness of these systems and other CCTV systems have decayed, however, as the clients have reduced or eliminated active monitoring of these sites.

This clearly suggests that the NYPD had been monitoring as well as recording back in 1997, but since then have stopped monitoring (hiring video-monitors is very expensive) and started relying exclusively on recording and looking at the images only when a crime has occurred and been reported (by the victim, perhaps, or by a squad car or foot patrol). This is very disconcerting: the surveillance cameras are no longer used to identify and call attention to criminal activity, which must take place before the cameras can be of any use. There is now no way that a crime might be averted or stopped as it was taking place — but this was precisely what the NYCHA promised its tenants when the cameras were first installed!

The system at Lillian Wald was (still) an official secret when we made our March 2001 map, because there (still) weren’t any signs that alerted both occupants and visitors to the fact that the police were using video cameras to watch the place. It was only later (the summer or fall of 2001) that the NYPD filled the place with those weird signs, the ones that say that the NYPD is using video cameras to “randomly” watch “selected areas.” Instead of reassuring the innocent that they are safe and warning the guilty that their crimes will be recorded, this weird wording has the effect of confusing everybody. Are the police watching or not? Watching this spot, or over there? Watching all the time, or only sometimes? etc etc. These questions lead to other, larger questions. Why bother to post such signs in the first place, unless one’s intention was in fact to cause confusion? And, if confusion was in fact the desired effect, why not stick with the signs? Why install any cameras at all? It is unlikely that the NYPD was intentionally trying to re-create the radically uncertain environment that, in Discipline and Punish (1975), Michel Foucault claimed was the essential feature of Jeremy Bentham’s “Pantopticon,” an 18th century design for the construction of “enlightened” prisons. Nevertheless, that is exactly what the NYPD’s weird signs have accomplished; they’ve turned the Lillian Wald Housing Development into a grim open-air prison for people whose only crime is the fact that they don’t have enough money to move out.

Lillian Wald herself would be appalled by these developments. The founder of the Henry Street Visiting Nurse Service and the Henry Street Settlement, she was one of 62 prominent people whose name appeared on a list of subversives drawn up by Woodrow Wilson’s Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, who organized the infamous “Palmer raids” on Americans who he thought held “dangerous, destructive and anarchistic sentiments.” Like the other people on the list, Lillian Wald had been under government surveillance for years. And so, the installation of police surveillance cameras (and weird signs) at the place named after her subverts and destroys the primary reason for naming something after her in the first place: that is, clearing her good name from false charges that she was an anti-American subversive.

– the New York Surveillance Camera Players, 6 June 2005.

surveillance cameras in Greenwich Village,
the most heavily surveilled neighborhood in Manhattan

When we first mapped out the locations of surveillance cameras installed in public places in Greenwich Village (Manhattan), back in May 2001, we found that this residential area had more cameras (231) than any other area (even the business districts) that we had mapped to date. This shocking fact, which was first reported by the local Fox affiliate, revealed that surveillance devices proliferate where there are rich people and property worth insuring, not where there are poor people and high instances of “crime.”

Between January and March 2004, we returned to Greenwich Village and mapped a second time. So there’s no confusion, we must make clear that we decreased the area under consideration: we didn’t map the area east of Sixth Avenue, which we now consider part of the area occupied by New York University and will include in a separate map. Taking this decrease into account, back in May 2001 there were a total of 165 publically installed surveillance cameras in Greenwich Village, 162 of which were installed on privately owned buildings.

According to our most recent map, which took an incredible 10 hours to make, there are now a total of 371 cameras in the area: 336 installed on privately owned buildings; 27 installed on buildings occupied by the federal government; 4 installed on buildings occupied by the government of the State of New York; and 4 installed on city-owned poles. That is to say, over the course of the last 3 years, the number of cameras in the area has more than doubled. There are, once again, many more cameras in Greenwich Village than there are in Midtown Manhattan (“only” 284), Times Square (258), or the United Nations (179).

What accounts for these incredible numbers? Is Greenwich Village threatened by the worst elements in society? Is it a “hot spot” for crime? Is it a “soft target” for terrorists? No, it isn’t. Greenwich Village is ravaged by super-gentrification, by the construction of brand-new, steel-and-glass nightmares into which such rich-and-famous people as Nicole Kidman, Monica Lewinsky, Edie Falco, James Gandolphini and other “stars” are moving in ever-growing numbers. Watch out.

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.”

surveillance cameras in the neighborhood of

the United Nations

On the east side of Midtown Manhattan, there used to be a small neighborhood called Turtle Bay. As its name suggested, the neighborhood was focused upon life (in all its forms) living on or in the nearby East River. But the construction of the United Nations complex in the 1940s meant the destruction of large parts of Turtle Bay, and the separation of the remaining areas from the once-close river. Today, the whole neighborhood — the box defined by Lexington and First Avenues to the west and east, and by 42d and 49th Streets to the south and north — is known as and dominated by the presence of “the United Nations.”

Given the paranoia of foreign governments concerning espionage and terrorist attacks, one would expect that this area of New York City would be filled with surveillance cameras watching public places. And it is. In the summer of 1998, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) commissioned a count of such cameras, and found 2,397 in Manhattan as a whole and 79 in the UN area. That’s a lot of cameras, especially for the UN area, which is relatively small (79 cameras averaged out to 3 cameras per square block). By contrast, there were at the time only 2 surveillance cameras per city block in nearby Times Square.

In August 2000, the New York Surveillance Camera Players (SCP-New York) mapped this area for themselves. They found a total of 110 cameras: 91 of them installed on privately owned buildings; 17 installed on either foreign embassies or the UN itself; and 2 installed on city-owned light or traffic poles. This increase (from 79 to 110 cameras) was fairly steep, but not as nearly as steep as the growth in Times Square, where the cameras grew from 75 to 131. (It’s possible that some UN-related cameras weren’t spotted because of their placement or small size, and thus weren’t included in the overall tally.)

In June 2003, the SCP-New York returned to the UN area and mapped it a second time. Once again, there was a sizable but relatively modest increase in the number of cameras. According to the second SCP-New York map, there were a total of 179 cameras in the area: 119 installed on private buildings, 57 on UN-related buildings, and 3 on city-owned poles. This total was smaller than anticipated; one expected it to be (even) higher. Why? Note the relatively slow rate of increase among private surveillance cameras, which usually grow much faster. As for the dramatic increase in the number of UN-related cameras (from 17 to 57), the SCP-New York wasn’t sure if it derived from a real growth in numbers or simply better spotting-and-mapping techniques on the part of the SCP-New York. Perhaps a combination of the two.

In mid-May 2005 — just a few days after the British Consulate was attacked — the SCP-New York once again returned to the UN area and mapped it a third time. Here, at last, were the results that one expected: a large increase in privately owned surveillance cameras (from 119 to 250); a moderate increase in the number of cameras on city-owned poles (from 3 to 10); and a small increase in the number of UN-related cameras (from 57 to 62). In other words, over the last five years, cameras in the area have increased 300 percent.

Note that there may be a mistake in the number of city-owned cameras: the poles located at the southwest intersection of 3rd Avenue and 48th Street might very well be the “private” property of an embassy; and, if so, the 5 cameras atop them should be listed as “F” (foreign embassy) and not “C” (city-owned).

number of surveillance cameras in Times Square
grows 500% in five years

In May 2000, we made our first map of the locations of surveillance cameras installed in public places in Times Square. Our intention was to double-check and update information that had originally been collected by the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), which had mapped out the locations of public surveillance cameras in all of Manhattan in November 1998. We were sure that the number of public surveillance cameras had increased. Unfortunately, we were right.

We felt that it was important to keep track because the public wasn’t and still isn’t being asked or even informed about the proliferation of surveillance cameras in public places. The installation of these cameras is rarely announced; the cameras, even the ones operated by the police, aren’t labeled or accompanied by signs; and, quite intentionally, the cameras themselves don’t look like surveillance cameras but like globe-shaped lamps, lights or ornaments. None of the local “authorities” — neither the Mayor’s Office, the New York Police Department (NYPD), the City Council, nor any of the various Borough Presidents and Community Boards — are providing their constituents with relevant information on the subject. It appears that none of them are even keeping track of the numbers, locations and operators of the cameras being installed all over the city! According to the NYPD and the Times Square Business Improvement District, there aren’t any surveillance cameras in public places in Times Square; at least, they aren’t operating any — or so they once claimed.

In 1998, the NYCLU located a total of 2,397 surveillance cameras in Manhattan; there were 75 in Times Square (the area south of 50th Street, north of 42d, west of Fifth Avenue and east of Eighth). In May 2000, we located and mapped out 131 surveillance cameras in the same area (we did not canvas all of Manhattan). In September 2002, we returned to Times Square and (starting from scratch) located, mapped out and counted the surveillance cameras in operation there. Our findings were alarming. Times Square contained (at least) 258 surveillance cameras, fully twice the number we spotted in 2000 and more than three times the number spotted by the NYCLU in 1998. In May 2005, we counted 604 of them.

That’s a 500% increase in five years. If this rate is representative — and, again, there is every reason to think so (cf. rates of increase in other parts of Manhattan) — there are now approximately than 15,000 surveillance cameras in public places in Manhattan as a whole. On average, that’s ten cameras per city block.

The terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center (WTC) on 11 September 2001 have surely played a role in the dramatic increase in the number of surveillance cameras in Times Square, which is perceived to be a potential target for future attacks. Take for example the new building on the west side of Seventh Avenue between 43rd and 42d Streets: though it is not yet occupied, it already has 19 very small digital cameras embedded in its exterior walls. These cameras are no after-thought; they are clearly part of the original design.

But note well that the number of police surveillance cameras in Times Square has hardly increased since 1998: there were nine and now there are a dozen. Given the fact that each of these cameras can zoom in and see a person clearly from more than 15 blocks away, twelve police cameras is a lot for Times Square. The police haven’t added many new cameras because they surely know that — especially those that aren’t labeled or accompanied by signs — these cameras are completely useless from the standpoint of law enforcement. They do not deter or prevent crimes from taking place; at best, they simply view or record crimes as they are taking place. For example: though there were hundreds and hundreds of surveillance cameras in operation at the World Trade Center, and though many of them were installed after 1993 by professional spies (the FBI and the CIA), none of these cameras did anything to prevent, stop or even minimize the severity of the 11 September 2001 attacks. All these cameras did was witness their own destruction; not even the tapes survived.

Surely the police also know that the best and perhaps the only way to make Times Square better protected against potential terrorist attacks — which are most likely to come in the form of bombs carried by cars or trucks — is to prohibit all automobiles and turn Times Square into a giant pedestrian zone. It’s easy to see that nearly everyone would be happy happy happy with this arrangement: the trees, the residents, the tourists, even the so-called local businesses (Starbucks, McDonalds, Disney, MTV, Virgin Megastore, et al.).

If the number of surveillance cameras in Times Square has dramatically increased over the last five years, it is because more and more private companies are putting up more and more cameras. The inability of these cameras to deter or prevent crime is no obstacle at all to private companies or the security firms that they’ve hired. Private companies don’t care if crimes take place on their premises, provided that they have the insurance to cover their loses. And getting insurance (of all kinds) is much easier when you’ve installed surveillance cameras, because they can be used to cover a very broad range of risks, including those associated with fires and explosions, slip-and-fall accidents, theft by employees, workplace sabotage, strikes, etc. etc.

This pattern is consistent with what we’ve observed as we’ve mapped out other parts of Manhattan. In neighborhoods in which there is little property worth insuring (Harlem and the Lower East Side, for example), there are comparably few privately operated surveillance cameras, despite the fact that these precise areas are said to have “a crime problem” and thus a need for surveillance cameras. In neighborhoods in which there is little crime but a lot of insurable property (for example, Greenwich Village and Midtown Manhattan), there are cameras everywhere.

But one should take care not to find dubious comfort in the idea that “It’s OK, because it’s private companies watching us, and not the police.” Private companies, especially the big corporate players who have recently moved into Times Square, have “political agendas” of their own. As a matter of fact, some of these companies are so big and so defensive that they literally have their own police forces. In England, which is easily the most surveilled country in the world — and the model for what’s going on in America — there is no distinction between private and police surveillance. The two have been combined into an immense integrated network of cameras. This arrangement works for the police because it allows them to keep their construction costs down, and for the private security firms because it allows them to cut down on the number of watchers they have to employ.

This kind of integration has just started in the United States: in Washington, DC, the police are reported to be experimenting with “tapping into” existing surveillance systems operated by private security firms as well as building new systems of their own. And so it isn’t too late for us to start fighting (again) against the use of surveillance cameras in public, but we haven’t any time to waste.

– the New York Surveillance Camera Players
Originally posted: 4 September 2002. Updated 7 June 2003. Updated again on 16 May 2005.

Surveillance Camera Players

1996 10th anniversary! 2006

Read our 10-Year Report (Short Version)

Our 10-Year Report (Long Version)