Posted on Thursday, March 16, 2006 - 11:56 am:

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CALLING ALL EYES
E. Orange seeks volunteers to tell of crime via Web
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
BY KEVIN C. DILWORTH
Star-Ledger Staff
The East Orange Police Department is getting ready to greatly enlarge its public safety ranks, with what's being called the Virtual Community Patrol, Police Director Jose Cordero said yesterday.

Soon-to-be-chosen residents will get access to a a Web site that provides panoramic views of their block, allows them to type in general complaints, pinpoint a problem location, immediately send that information to police headquarters, and simultaneously activate hidden police surveillance cameras, Cordero said.

With its potential to include a vast number of crime-fighting community participants, the Virtual Community Patrol may be the first such project of its kind in the nation, Cordero said.

"We plan on giving the community control of a very powerful technology," Cordero said.

The program will be tested in two troubled neighborhoods -- Lenox Avenue, off South Arlington Avenue, and Amherst Street, off Central Avenue -- by the end of this month.

"We want to now give them shared virtual control of their community," Cordero said. "Essentially, when they see something that alarms them, they can go to the Web site, type in information, and hit send.

"We will then get an alert in our community center, and, automatically, video cameras will turn to what they (the neighborhood resident) are looking at, or what they are complaining about," Cordero said. "We'll see what they're seeing. We'll be able to respond quicker."

For example, an individual might see suspicious drug activity around a parked car, get on the Internet, type in a brief description of what's happening, use a cursor to pinpoint the trouble spot on one of six neighborhood still pictures that pop up, then transmit that information to the police command communications center, he said.

The police, after receiving that information, can view a live video feed of the suspicious or criminal activity, and dispatch officers and patrol cars accordingly, detective Andrew DiElmo said.

The Virtual Community Patrol is an outgrowth of the installation of surveillance cameras around the city, as well as an acoustic gunshot sensor system linked to the same camera network.

The other major initiative included the installation of police barricades along a two-block stretch of Lenox Avenue and of Amherst Street, to control who drives through the neighborhoods.

The surveillance cameras and barricades have produced dramatic drops in complaints of trouble from each of those locales, Cordero said.

Before those anti-crime initiatives were launched, the police department had been averaging 79 problem calls per month on Lenox Avenue, and 75 on Amherst Street. After, the complaints dropped to about 11 calls a month in each location, Cordero said.

With plans afoot to remove the barricades by the month's end, the Virtual Community Patrol effort, hopefully, will make the streets just as safe, and continue to help reduce the fear of crime, Cordero said.

Beginning next week, members of the police department's community services unit will hold meetings with both Lenox Avenue and Amherst Street residents to explain how the new initiative works, start soliciting volunteers, then pick program participants, Cordero said.

The cost to the city has been minimal, with only the cost of extra surveillance cameras being borne by East Orange, Cordero said.

The city's contracted video surveillance camera provider -- PackeTalk, a Manhattan company that provides broadband networks for law enforcement organizations -- jumped at the anti-crime initiative, when city police first came up with the idea four or five months ago, and voluntarily helped turn the dream into reality, Cordero said.

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