Controversial almost everywhere, Katya Schwenk, former staff member for the award-winning independent VT Digger, finally spotlighted these plans that flew under-the-radar in a contract award up in front of the Mesa Council back in June, almost three months ago.
In Mesa, Millions of Covid Relief Funds Will Go To High-Tech Police Surveillance
"The funds were meant to assist citizens of the city of Mesa," he said, adding that he was frustrated by the city's recurring investments in law enforcement over community or social services.
“Because they're expensive, because they’re big, there's a long history of departments doing anything they can to pay for them and for the technology to fill them up,” Guariglia explained. Some departments have even used private donors or corporate sponsors.
Andre Miller, a pastor and longtime civil rights advocate in Mesa, told Phoenix New Times he found the budget increase to be “obscene." "The funds were meant to assist citizens of the city of Mesa," he said, adding that he was frustrated by the city's recurring investments in law enforcement over community or social services.
In many cities, CARES Act funds were allocated to police and fire salaries as part of a strategic workaround that helped prevent broader cuts in other areas: Public safety payroll was eligible for CARES Act funds, while other areas of city government were not.
This was true in Mesa as well. The city says that the bulk of the money was used to pay for public safety payroll only as a way to free up money to address budget shortfalls caused by the pandemic. Kennington wrote in an email to New Times that the city had used the funds to “get the money out to the community as quickly as possible.”
The surveillance center, though, is a direct purchase for law enforcement — one that Mesa police had not determined how to fund until federal money came its way.
At the August meeting, city manager Chris Brady explained to the council that the city had considered hiring new officers with the relief funds, but decided against that plan. If the city hired more officers, he explained, it would have to pick up their salary costs once the relief money ran dry. Instead, Brady said, he asked the police department to suggest “some one-time purchases that wouldn’t normally make it into our general budget discussion.”
Real-time crime centers are increasingly popular among police departments. They serve as hubs for the ever-expanding arsenals of intelligence tools that local police have at their disposal, typically integrating live camera networks with things like social media tracking or predictive policing tech.
These police facilities serve as central nodes and control rooms for a variety of surveillance technologies, including automated license plate readers, gunshots detection, and predictive policing. Perhaps the most defining characteristic of a RTCC is that a network of video cameras installed in the community that analysts watch on a wall of monitors, often in combination with sophisticated, automated analytical software. As we write in the report:
RTCCs are similar to Fusion Centers, to the extent the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. We distinguish between the two: fusion centers are technology command centers that function on a larger regional level, are typically controlled by a state-level organization, and are formally part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's fusion center network. They also focus on distributing information about national security "threats," which are often broadly interpreted. RTCCs are generally focused on municipal or county level activities and focus on a general spectrum of public safety issues, from car thefts to gun crime to situational awareness at public events.
The term “real-time” is also somewhat misleading: while there is often a focus on accessing data in real-time to communicate to first responders, many law enforcement agencies use RTCC to mine historical data to make decisions about the future through "predictive policing," a controversial and largely unproven strategy to identify places where crime could occur or people who might commit crimes.
We identified more than 80 RTCCs in the U.S. in 29 states, with the largest number concentrated in New York and Florida. The report includes case studies of RTCCs in: Albuquerque, NM; Atlanta, GA; Detroit, MI; Miami Gardens, FLA; New Orleans, LA; Ogden, UT; and Sacramento,CA. We have also included a profile of the Fresno Real-Time Crime Center, which was suspended prior to publication of our report.
These profiles break down the costs, what technology is installed in neighborhoods, and what type of equipment and software is accessible by RTCC staff.
We also document controversies that have arisen in response to the creation of these RTCCs.
"Surveillance Compounded" is part of the Atlas of Surveillance project, an ongoing collaboration with the Reynolds School of Journalism that aims to build a central database and map of police technologies using open source intelligence.
This is the second such report, following 2019 "Atlas of Surveillance: Southwestern Border Communities," which documented surveillance technology in the 23 U.S. counties that border Mexico.
As of November 15, 2020, the Atlas contains more than 6,100 data points related to automated license plate readers, drones, body-worn cameras, cell-site simulators, and other law enforcement technologies.
Visit the Atlas of Surveillance.
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It’s not fully clear exactly what tech Mesa plans to buy with the $3.3 million; it will fund the video wall of cameras at the center, plus integration software. But the city already has CCTV cameras and, in May, spent $300,000 on another new, mobile camera system. (The Mesa police chief and the city manager did not respond to inquiries from New Times.)
According to the Atlas of Surveillance, which tracks such centers across the country, there is currently only one other real-time crime center in Arizona, at the Tucson police department. Mesa’s planned expenditures on its project, too, are notably high: Atlanta, which is roughly the same size as Mesa, spent just over a million on its center. Other cities, according to one report, spend far less. “The real problem here is, what recourse does the community have to say, I don’t want you to do that?”
But critics argue that the definition is narrow: "Public safety encompasses a lot more," Miller said.
As Guariglia put it: "There's no way to police yourself out of a pandemic. And there's certainly no way to surveil yourself out of a pandemic."So far, there has been little dissent from the council or the mayor regarding the proposal.
On agenda: | 6/21/2021 |
| Title: | Five-Year Term Contract for the Purchase of Axon Flex On-Body Camera Equipment, Supplies and Evidence.com Storage and Controlled Electrical Weapon Equipment and Supplies for the Mesa Police Department (Replacements/Upgrades) (Sole Source) (Citywide) The Police Department began using Axon Flex On-Body Cameras (OBCs) in 2012 and using Controlled Electrical Weapon (CEW) equipment in 2011. In addition to hardware, the Police Department purchased five years of secure cloud data storage through Evidence.com. This contract includes an Axon refresh plan for OBCs and docks, which will cycle to the most current format every 2.5 years. Also, regarding CEWs, a warranty is included which covers the devices for the entirety of the contract. These provisions will ensure that program costs are evenly dispersed, the program can be sufficiently maintained, and will be financially supported for the foreseeable future without the need to purchase any replacement devices or docks which may get damaged... |
| Attachments: | 1. Council Report |
