Mobile Digital Video Surveillance Catches New York Bus Vandals
'CUTUPS' BUS-TED
By JEREMY OLSHAN, Transit Reporter
November 5, 2007 -- When a group of scratchiti vandals defaced the windows of a city bus last month, the bus fought back. The vandals were the first collars credited to new digital surveillance cameras which have been in use on 124 buses since the spring, transit officials told The Post.
Bus cameras were intended to help investigate customer and vehicle accidents and other incidents - fighting crime was an added bonus, NYC Transit spokesman Paul Fleuranges said. "While they will not prevent a crime from occurring in all instances, they will serve as deterrent to some."
In general, the thousands of hours of video shot from six different angles has been uneventful. Bus riders, it turns out, are not normally an unruly bunch, officials said.
But in late September, the buses were put on different routes as part of a two-week video sting operation to combat after-school vandalism. Transit officials would not identify the adolescent vandals or say which route the buses were switched to, but on the first day of the operation, they were caught in the act. On the video, one of the vandals even tried to cover the camera with a sheet of paper, but officials still had a clear view of their exploits from multiple angles, Fleuranges said.
After the vandals were busted, there were no further incidents on that route for the rest of the two-week sting, although several riders did take to making obscene gestures into the cameras, officials said. Another 200 buses should be equipped with the cameras by the winter's end, officials said.
The images recorded by the cameras are stored for several months in an onboard hard drive unless incidents are flagged for investigation. In those instances they can be downloaded wirelessly at the depot.
"Having the forensic images to work from will aid substantially in investigations of crimes, accidents and other incidents," Fleuranges said. Technological glitches had delayed the $5.2 million implementation of the cameras on buses at the Michael Quill depot in Manhattan, but most of the kinks have since been resolved, he said.
jeremy.olshan@nypost.com
By JEREMY OLSHAN, Transit Reporter
November 5, 2007 -- When a group of scratchiti vandals defaced the windows of a city bus last month, the bus fought back. The vandals were the first collars credited to new digital surveillance cameras which have been in use on 124 buses since the spring, transit officials told The Post.
Bus cameras were intended to help investigate customer and vehicle accidents and other incidents - fighting crime was an added bonus, NYC Transit spokesman Paul Fleuranges said. "While they will not prevent a crime from occurring in all instances, they will serve as deterrent to some."
In general, the thousands of hours of video shot from six different angles has been uneventful. Bus riders, it turns out, are not normally an unruly bunch, officials said.
But in late September, the buses were put on different routes as part of a two-week video sting operation to combat after-school vandalism. Transit officials would not identify the adolescent vandals or say which route the buses were switched to, but on the first day of the operation, they were caught in the act. On the video, one of the vandals even tried to cover the camera with a sheet of paper, but officials still had a clear view of their exploits from multiple angles, Fleuranges said.
After the vandals were busted, there were no further incidents on that route for the rest of the two-week sting, although several riders did take to making obscene gestures into the cameras, officials said. Another 200 buses should be equipped with the cameras by the winter's end, officials said.
The images recorded by the cameras are stored for several months in an onboard hard drive unless incidents are flagged for investigation. In those instances they can be downloaded wirelessly at the depot.
"Having the forensic images to work from will aid substantially in investigations of crimes, accidents and other incidents," Fleuranges said. Technological glitches had delayed the $5.2 million implementation of the cameras on buses at the Michael Quill depot in Manhattan, but most of the kinks have since been resolved, he said.
jeremy.olshan@nypost.com
posted by Steve Hemenway at
Monday, November 05, 2007
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