A representative with Atlanta-based Flock Safety said that technology makes the company stand out from others that just read license plates.
Springfield police are looking to install about 80 of the cameras, which cost $2,500 per year, throughout the city to hopefully have “a positive impact on reduction of crime,” said SPD commander of field operations Andrew Dodd.
Flock Safety has been installing 60 cameras around Decatur in the last couple of weeks, representative Dan Murdock said. Around 50 municipalities and counties around Illinois have installed their cameras, he said.
“If a crime happens and they want to find any black car that was on the street during a certain time period, (the police) can go back to the camera and do that,” Murdock said. “They can be alerted in real time if a criminal passes one of the cameras that is on a national or state hot list.”
Dodd said the Flock technology can filter out vehicles and find the plates that way. Most of the other systems the SPD looked at are the other way around, Dodd added.
“It makes the investigative tool much easier for us to use, to get down into the data and get the best out of it as quickly as possible,” Dodd said.
Dodd said police want to be able to use the cameras to solve all sorts of crimes, from retail thefts to hit-and-runs to shootings. Being able to identify cars as they are coming or going can help build on witness statements, he added.
The cameras could be mounted on utility poles or poles could be put up by the company, Murdock said.
Flock Safety is not a connected technology with ShotSpotter, but the overarching goal of both of them is the reduction of and the solvability of crimes, Dodd said.
“ShotSpotter gets us to the scenes faster and gives us accurate information on where the shots are being fired,” Dodd pointed out. “The Flock is going to give us quicker access to the suspect vehicles that are coming and going.”
“We have the ShotSpotter technology that we paid a lot of money for and now we’re talking about cameras and I’m not sure how I feel about it,” admitted Ward 6 Ald. Kristin DiCenso during the meeting.
In May 2020, the city signed a three-year deal with ShotSpotter, with a price tag of $643,750.
Mayor Jim Langfelder said that any time technology can be put to use to make the community safer, “we should be taking those steps.”
The purchase would require city council approval.
Langfelder has made it known that if the General Assembly is considering the opportunity for casino licensing, he would like Springfield to be in line.
A city ordinance supporting a license for the downtown area remains in committee though after several people voiced their opposition against the idea.
Gambling, said the Rev. Trajan Iliff McGill, was “an odd place for us to rest our hopes for growth, when (it) is just about the one industry we can accurately describe as totally economically unproductive.”
McGill, the associate pastor for parish life at Westminster Presbyterian Church, said a casino wouldn’t attract new visitors to the city and wouldn’t create a single dollar of new value.
“It simply shuffles existing wealth from one set of hands to another, which rules it out immediately as an engine for true economic growth,” McGill argued. “When we siphon cash from the pockets of our own communities, this isn’t a net gain.”
Ward 2 Ald. Shawn Gregory wore a “Hope” polo shirt to the meeting Tuesday, the one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The shirt’s rendering, showing a Black man, his head tilted back and his eyes closed, with an N95 mask taking the place of the “O” in “Hope,” is titled “Just Let Me Breathe.”
Michelle “Micki” Smith, a resident of Gregory’s ward, submitted the winning entry for a Ralph Lauren national design contest last year.
Smith said she had the Feb. 23, 2020, shooting of Ahmaud Arbery in Glynn County, Georgia, on her mind when she submitted the design, a week before Floyd’s murder.
Gregory attended several rallies in Springfield in the aftermath of Floyd’s murder, including a May 31 car procession that attracted some 3,000 vehicles, and a June 1 rally organized by three teenagers.
Before the meeting, Gregory said the anniversary was “a bittersweet moment.”
“I’ve been taking time to really remember what it was about and how special that time frame was,” Gregory said. “It’s something that won’t ever be duplicated again. We certainly will have the event, but that special moment will be hard to recreate.
“With the car parade, I was so very well shocked at the multitude of people of all colors coming down to take a stance. Then the next day when the young people, some still in high school, put together a great protest and movement themselves, it put things in perspective. If that doesn’t open your eyes, when people younger than me speak, then nothing will.”
Gregory praised the city and how it “handled that trying time. Our city has showed great poise.”
Langfelder said he respected “the proactive nature and the responsible nature” of the protests last year.
Tuesday was a good time, Langfelder added, to step back and see “how far we’ve actually progressed and how far do we actually have to go. We are making progress, but really we need to be as one community because we need law enforcement and we need the community and everyone working together. I think we’ve risen to that level but there’s room for improvement and how we can work together to make our community safe wherever you live and whoever you are.”
Springfield Police Chief Kenny Winslow was among the first responders who attended the visitation Tuesday for Champaign police Officer Christopher Oberheim, who was shot and killed responding to a domestic incident last Wednesday.
© 2021 The State Journal-Register, Springfield, Ill. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
