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Philadelphia to install more than 100 security cameras near rec centers to deter gun violence

According to Parks and Rec, nearly 300 incidents of gun violence have taken place around recreation centers and playgrounds since 2019. Police hope the cameras will be a deterrent.

A Video Surveillance Technician (city did not want names used) with Office of Innovation and Technology installs a camera on a pole outside the Marie Dendy Recreation Center. City of Philadelphia puts up surveillance cameras outside the Marie Dendy Recreation Center, 1555 N 10th Street, Philadelphia. The city held a press conference at this location on Wednesday, April 12, 2023.
A Video Surveillance Technician (city did not want names used) with Office of Innovation and Technology installs a camera on a pole outside the Marie Dendy Recreation Center. City of Philadelphia puts up surveillance cameras outside the Marie Dendy Recreation Center, 1555 N 10th Street, Philadelphia. The city held a press conference at this location on Wednesday, April 12, 2023.Read moreAlejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer

On Wednesday a man in a hardhat took a lift to make the final installation tweaks to a flying saucer-type object on a utility pole. The new apparatus — a 360-degree camera — took its new vantage point in the middle of the 1500 block of North 10th Street, where it had a view of the Marie Dendy Recreation Center and playground.

The camera is one of 100 slated to be installed near 14 recreation centers, chosen using police data, in an effort to create “safe play zones.”

According to the Parks and Recreation Department, nearly 300 incidents of gun violence have taken place around recreation centers and playgrounds since 2019. Philadelphia police hope the cameras will act as a deterrent.

“They also work to capture so much of the crucial evidence that’s instrumental in prosecuting individuals that commit crime,” said First Deputy Police Commissioner John Stanford.

In May 2021, a 19-year-old woman was shot at the playground next to Dendy Recreation Center. The woman survived but no arrest was made.

Following several shootings near Parks and Recreation centers and playgrounds that year, Councilmember Cindy Bass and Council President Darrell L. Clarke introduced legislation to fund security cameras. The legislation was passed at the end of 2021 in a unanimous vote.

About $5 million in funds were allocated to the installation and operation last year in the city’s five-year financial and strategic plan with Clarke saying there is more funding to come.

Still, city officials had hoped to begin the installation of cameras sooner but supply chain issues delayed their plans.

“We searched all over, we actually reached out to some of the for-profit entities,” said Clarke.” They said they couldn’t buy it.”

Stanford said personnel at the Real-Time Crime Center can tap into the cameras, which gives them the opportunity to update responding officers as they head to scenes. The cameras can record at 360 degrees in a lower resolution, said a police spokesperson. Additional details regarding capabilities were not immediately available.

There is some debate, however, about just how much of a deterrent cameras can be. In 2019, Jerry Ratcliffe, a professor of criminal justice at Temple University, and colleagues looked at crime data in the city between 2003 and 2012. They found “no significant impact associated with the introduction of CCTV surveillance.”

Still, police say cameras have become an indispensable part of investigative work, particularly in shootings and homicides. Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore, speaking at a City Council budget hearing this week, said many investigations are now based entirely on a combination of forensic evidence including video, cell phone records, and ballistics tests, as opposed to requiring witness testimony.

“We’re putting [forensics] together in an investigative process to really, in some cases, replace the witness,” Vanore said.

Police have credited video with helping them make arrests after several recent high-profile crimes, including last summer’s shooting on South Street, which killed three people and left 11 wounded; the shooting outside Roxborough High School that killed a 14-year-old boy and wounded four other teens; and the fatal shooting of Tiffany Fletcher, a West Philadelphia rec center employee caught in the crossfire of a nearby gun battle.