Anonymous Source Also Spills The Goods About Mobile Surveillance Cameras

Photo By John Hoff, September 25

This post being a kind of continuation of the previous...during the Hawthorne Annual Dinner, my new friend/source "Municipal Diamond" quietly spoke to me about the subject of mobile surveillance cameras...

And I'll have to give a little context about how the subject came up in the first place. Inspector Martin, the Fourth Precinct Commander, was the guest speaker at the Hawthorne Annual Meeting on September 25, and he took some questions at the end of his speech.

I don't know if Martin was planning to take those questions, but he did, and it was quite a back-and-forth.

I took the opportunity to ask a question about surveillance cameras. I said the surveillance cameras currently in place were cutting into drug dealing in a significant way, but I was wondering about the possibility of MOBILE surveillance cameras which could be put somewhere for a while, but then moved around. I said there were some addresses I could name (but wouldn't, just then) where it would be handy to have something like that.

So what was the deal?

Martin answered there were a few cameras like that, but they were expensive and much in-demand for certain long-term investigations. He talked about how useful the cameras were, and how he saw them as a cost-saving measure. By his calculations (I didn't know if these were exact or a rough estimate) using the mobile surveillance cams was capable of saving approximately $30,000 in man hours as an alternative to putting police officers in place to perform long-term observation.

But...well, money was tight. There had been cutbacks in funding. It wasn't always possible to get as many police, as much equipment as he (Martin) would like to have, though he was always being the "squeaky wheel" to get what he felt was needed for the 4th Precinct.

I followed up on my question, asking Martin to name the public official who was responsible, who was not givign Martin the stuff he needed but wasn't getting. Martin wouldn't do it. He said the buck stopped with him. Blame him.

Brave Inspector Martin...taking a political bullet like that to protect our city's leaders.

But anyway, quite a while later "Municipal Diamond" spoke with me, and made reference to my question about the mobile surveillance cameras. "Diamond" was aware of the use of mobile cameras deployed during RNC 2008.

"Really?" I asked. "Well, Minneapolis got all kinds of stuff in preparation for that. So did we get some more mobile cameras? Did we get some cameras we could use up here in the Fourth Precinct?"

Diamond either didn't know or couldn't tell me more. But Diamond could tell me this much: mobile cameras of the very type I had asked about were deployed during RNC 2008.

That, I told Diamond, was just freaking lovely. Yes, keep track of all the marchers and protesters. Meanwhile, we've drug houses operating quite openly in North Minneapolis, and so much could be accomplished by just plunking down a camera in front of those houses for a few weeks or a couple months.

(In the photo above, a Park Police officer searches the ground after arresting three young men for apparent drug dealing in Farview Park. The arrests took place a few hours before Inspector Martin spoke. The photo above was taken with a telephoto function just a few feet from the spot where the Fourth Precinct Commander stood to make his speech)