As Surveillance Cameras Catch On, Florida Police Catch Criminals

The eyewitnesses are everywhere, watching everything.

Break-ins. Bank heists. Convenience store robberies, purse snatchings and shopping sprees charged on stolen credit cards.

All these incidents and more caught in the unflinching gaze of surveillance cameras.

“In this day and age, you can expect to be caught on camera somewhere,” Tampa police spokeswoman Andrea Davis said.

The proliferation of surveillance cameras on city streets, businesses and homes has helped law enforcement identify suspected criminals faster than classic methods like fingerprinting.

Dusting for prints and pencil sketches of suspects– old standbys that still have a place in a detective’s toolbox seem outdated compared to the speed of sharing surveillance footage with news outlets or posting the clips on YouTube.

“That may be all we have,” Tampa police detective Heather Bishop said of video evidence. “There may be no DNA; no fingerprints. We need to work that lead any way we can.”

Some places in Tampa offer more leads because they have more surveillance.

In Ybor City, more than a dozen security cameras along Seventh Avenue, the main drag with a reputation for rowdiness, are monitored by officers, Davis said.

Twenty street-corner cameras to deter crime will be operational near the University of South Florida in April. The cameras, owned by the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, were purchased through a $1 million federal grant.

Anxiety over terrorist threats, coupled with the affordability of the technology, has led to the rise of video surveillance.

Hundreds of cities in the U.S. have had camera networks installed since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, according to the American Civil Liberties Union and other government watchdog groups. Most of the funding came from Department of Homeland Security grants.

There’s no tally of the exact number of security cameras in say, a three-block radius in downtown Tampa, because most are owned by private businesses, city spokeswoman Annette Spina said. There’s no ordinances on the books that limit how many cameras business or homeowners can install on their properties, she said.

Advocacy groups such as the ACLU have denounced surveillance cameras as an invasion of privacy. Constant monitoring of public areas gives government and law enforcement information on people’s private lives that would otherwise be hard to get, according to a 2007 study by the ACLU.

Cameras can zoom in close enough to show the title of a book someone is carrying, the name of the doctor’s office someone is visiting, or the face of the person someone is talking to or kissing goodbye, the study said.

Installing cameras at businesses or homes isn’t a breach of privacy because owners are just protecting themselves, said Rick Garcia, the owner of Spy-Tech America, Inc., a store on West Waters Avenue that specializes in surveillance gear.

And if those cameras happen to record people on the street, there shouldn’t be an issue because those people are in public places, Garcia said.

Property owners are routinely encouraged by police to install surveillance systems, Davis said.

“The electronics have become quite affordable,” Tampa police detective Deanna Mullins said. “Back when we were rookies it was all burglar bars.”

Basic home systems start at about $800, Garcia said. Spy cams that fit on bookshelves start at $60 and high-end systems with night vision and infrared capabilities are worth thousands, he said.

These days, detectives send surveillance footage to news outlets more than ever before because of the power of television and the Internet, Mullins said.

The image of a man in a hooded sweatshirt was splashed across local news Web sites this week after police said he broke into a local business and tried to set it on fire. The man, not yet identified, looked directly into the store’s video camera.

“The majority of our cases are helped by video,” Mullins said. “Especially when the media gets involved.”

That’s how the case of the pillowcase burglars broke open in October. Thieves entered a New Tampa home in a gated community while a family slept. A pillow next to a slumbering child was taken and the thieves used the pillowcase as a sack, filling it with Nintendo Wii games and “Star Wars” DVDs, Bishop said.

The suspects also took the parents’ credit cards and used them at clothing stores on Hillsborough Avenue. Detectives traced the credit card transactions and requested video from two stores Bealls and Ross — to see if the suspects were recorded.

They were. And they were having a good time, piling clothes into shopping carts and walking through the stores with a brash attitude that comes with spending other people’s money, Bishop and Mullins said.

The couple accused of the shopping spree, James Maymi and his girlfriend, Yesenia Sanchez, were arrested on Oct. 16, two days after police sent copies of the footage to news outlets.

People who live in the suspects’ neighborhood saw the video on a news report and called police.

Studying the behavior of Maymi and Sanchez on video, then confirming them as suspects, took a few hours. Other cases take much longer to troll through raw video for glimmers of evidence, Bishop said.

When elderly customers at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Tampa were mugged in January, the detectives spent days watching footage from the casino’s camera systems to identify the suspects.

From images recorded on dozens of cameras, Bishop and Mullins, partners on the police force’s property crimes division, eventually noticed two men tailing customers from the casino floor to the parking garages.

The suspects from Orlando, later identified as Edgardo Rivera and Christopher Neff, followed the victims to their homes where they beat and robbed them, authorities said. Rivera and Neff, arrested on 11 felony charges, are being held at Orient Road Jail awaiting trial. Victims identified the duo after they were taken into custody.

“Casinos have really led the way for years in video surveillance,” Gary Bitner, spokesman for the Seminole Tribe of Florida said. The tribe owns and operates the casinos in Tampa and Hollywood, Fla. “It’s a place where it’s hard to get away with anything.”

Most criminals are so brazen they think they can, investigators said. Some are simply oblivious to cameras, Bishop said. Others are desperate and don’t care or think about the consequences of being taped, Davis said.

Although a useful tool in the digital age, there are still caveats associated with surveillance footage when it comes to courtroom testimony.

Videos can be misleading if they’re shown without context, said Michael Sinacore, the felony bureau chief of the Hillsborough State Attorney’s Office. Other than bank robberies, most clips used in trials show part of the story, he said. Usually, there’s no sound in surveillance footage and an audio soundtrack can fill in gaps.

Yet video has helped prosecutors confirm the speed of cars in vehicular homicide cases and prove that people who testified they were victims of a robbery were actually the perpetrators, he said.

“You always have to look at video with a certain level of caution,” Sinacore said. “But it could still be a valuable piece of evidence.”

At times, that evidence shows law enforcement officers breaking rules.

Last year, a video that made national headlines showed investigators from multiple Polk County agencies playing a Wii bowling video game during a drug raid on a Lakeland home. The incident was recorded on the suspected drug dealer’s home surveillance system.

Seven investigators were cited for improper conduct and ordered to take classes on ethics, time management and professionalism.

Another video that went viral showed Hillsborough detention deputy Charlette Marshall-Jones dumping quadriplegic Brian Sterner out of his wheelchair onto the floor of the jail’s central booking area on Jan. 29, 2008. Sterner, arrested for a traffic violation, received Internet celebrity; Jones resigned before an internal investigation was completed.

“With human beings involved, things are going to get caught on tape that shouldn’t have been done,” Col. Jim Previtera, the county’s director of jails, said. “There’s going to be mistakes. There’s going to be transgressions. And they’re going to get recorded.”

That’s life in a society saturated with surveillance cameras.

“But if you’re not doing anything wrong,” Bishop said, “it’s not a concern.

Topics Florida Fraud Law Enforcement