PROVINCE ANNOUNCES PILOT TO MONITOR HIGH-CRIME AREAS

VANCOUVER – The Province will provide $1 million in initial funding to Vancouver, Surrey and Kelowna to examine increased use of closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras in high crime urban areas, Solicitor General John van Dongen and Attorney General Wally Oppal announced today.

“Technologies such as CCTV can greatly assist the police and prosecution in bringing offenders to justice,” said van Dongen. “Our goal is simple: to investigate and solve more crime where it is really hitting home; urban areas where people have the right to feel safe going about their lives.”

Currently, the City of Kelowna makes limited use of CCTVs, and both the City of Vancouver and City of Surrey have been exploring options for their use. Through this pilot program, the Province will work with the local governments, law enforcement agencies, and local Crown counsel to take the first steps towards identifying high crime locations for their use, the best technologies to employ, and how these services can be coordinated with existing public safety measures.

“We know from other jurisdictions’ experience with cameras that they can have a powerful crime-fighting impact,” said Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan. “But the decision to use cameras must be made at the local level and so only those neighbourhoods that want to test CCTV will get CCTV.”

“We’re very supportive of this initiative,” said Surrey mayor Dianne Watts. “The city of Surrey has been working on the possibility of using cameras as part of our overall crime reduction strategy and this announcement by the provincial government fits very well with what we're trying to do to improve public safety in our community.”

“Kelowna has some experience with this technology,” acknowledged Kelowna mayor Sharon Shepherd. “And we like what we’ve seen so far, to the point where we want to expand the use of cameras to protect law abiding citizens.”

The Province will also work with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner to ensure that any use of this technology appropriately balances existing privacy guidelines with the broader public interest of ensuring safety in public areas. This will include establishing clear rules to ensure information is appropriately collected, managed and protected.

“CCTV plays a critical role in providing evidence that Crown needs to pursue and prosecute criminal activity and bring criminals to justice,” said Oppal. “We believe that through this pilot we can implement this technology in a way that ensures both privacy protection for law-abiding citizens, but also ensures they are not afraid to use public places for fear of unlawful activity or disorder.”

CCTV has been used extensively in the private sector such as banks and retail outlets, and other jurisdictions have successfully used it to help solve many high-profile crimes. Deploying them in British Columbia was one of the key recommendations made by the Progress Board in their November 2006 report, Reducing Crime and Improving Criminal Justice in British Columbia.

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Media contact:	Cindy Rose Public Affairs Officer Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General 250 356-5951	Dave Townsend Public Affairs Officer Ministry of Attorney General 250 387-4962

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