The screening of America: crime, cops, and cameras.

• Author: Taylor, Brian J.

New Yorkers enjoying a day in Central Park may soon be smiling for more cameras than they are aware of. The police may be joining friends and relatives in taking their pictures.

Despite a three-year, 38 percent decline in crime in New York City, and despite Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's boast that Central Park "is probably the safest urban park in the United States," the NYPD is considering placing surveillance cameras there, as well as in other city locations. A police department spokesman says it's just one of many crime-fighting measures being considered at the behest of the police commissioner, with the support of the mayor. And, one could add, to the likely indifference of most citizens to the invasion of their privacy.

At a February 4 press conference, Police Commissioner Howard Safir announced his plan to begin placing surveillance cameras (in the form of closed-circuit TV) in several locations throughout the city, primarily in housing projects and subways. By mid-summer, reports The New York Times, Giuliani and Safir will decide whether to expand the surveillance program.

And while Safir was oblique about the number and location of cameras to be deployed, one thing is certain: New York is only the latest in a growing number of cities across the country and around the world whose citizens are having their every public move monitored, recorded, and analyzed by law enforcement officials and private security.

Following the lead of Great Britain - where several hundred localities already monitor and record everything from cars driving the wrong way on one-way streets to random faces in a crowd - cash-strapped municipalities are lining streets, sidewalks, boardwalks, and subways with surveillance devices in place of police.

As these cameras get smaller and cheaper, they are also getting more sophisticated. Many cameras already pan and tilt 360 degrees, have zoom lenses capable of reading a cigarette package at 100 meters, and come equipped with infrared sensors, motion detectors, bullet-proof casing, and small wipers in case rain or snow blurs their vision.

In addition, high-tech listening devices, designed to detect and pinpoint gunfire, are now being attached to street lights in some high-crime residential areas. Display ads for these devices appear in the pages of such journals as Law Enforcement Product News; the companies offering them constitute an industry that is already worth $2.4 billion, according to the market research firm STAT Resources, and is growing fast.

While private-sector surveillance is commonplace and widely accepted - recording devices are ubiquitous in and around malls, airports, banks, ATMs, elevators, and parking garages - the trend of placing cameras in public areas for use by law enforcement is a new and disconcerting variation on the established practice. Its utility in crime reduction has yet to be convincingly demonstrated; its morality has yet to be explored in open public-policy debate.

Placing cameras in the public square is usually supported by businesses and residents whose neighborhoods are plagued by drug- and gang-related...