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A man at a train station sets down a suitcase and vanishes. In seconds, security is alerted, the bag is being eyeballed, and police have a bead on the suspicious person. How? A nearby camera "trained" to spring into action in such an event has done just that.A thug snatches a woman's handbag on a subway platform. She punches 911 into her cell phone as the thief tries to flee through the throng of commuters. But police track his every move from a remote command post and capture him easily. Set off by the woman's call, nearby cameras zero in on the suspect instantly.
A gunshot rings out in an apartment complex. Even without an officer in the vicinity, police still have a description of the suspect in minutes. The shot triggers an automatic alarm and activates a bird's-eye-view camera positioned on a nearby street corner.
Welcome to Chicago, city of the future -- the very near future. The Windy City is set to become home to the nation's most aggressive, advanced and extensive camera surveillance system. The result: If you're in Chicago, almost anywhere, at any time, a camera is likely to be aimed at you.
Mayor Richard M. Daley loves the city's 2,000-plus public-safety cameras-and the high-tech network that's in the process of connecting them. Other city officials see the cameras as crucial weapons in their crime-fighting efforts. And anti-terrorism officials say the spying eyes will make Chicago one of the safest cities in the country. The camera's lens certainly is everywhere -- peering from rooftops, glaring down from light poles, poised on the sides of office and apartment buildings. Even city buses carry cameras to snap license-plate numbers. They're meant to deter rush-hour traffic violators from clogging crowded intersections in the city.
In terms of quantity, cities such as New York and Los Angeles may be home to more security cams, says Ron Huberman, executive director of Chicago's Office of Emergency Management and Communications. But no other city, he says, has developed a system to connect all of its cameras with all of its emergency services -- police, fire, aviation and over a dozen other agencies.
The cameras will be monitored in a spanking new operations center. There, dozens of video monitors with full-color screens flash images from across the urban landscape.
Such technology gives police the ability to scan the city and take proactive measures in real time. They can, for instance, get an unfettered view of an unruly mob's exact size much more clearly than they could by relying on one or two cops' street-level view. Police can also conduct a virtual "chase" of a suspect through the streets by activating different cameras along a potential escape route, guiding officers to their quarry even when they can't see him with their own eyes.
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