An in-depth look at the Police Department’s expanding video surveillance efforts

When it comes to fighting crime, Philadelphia is undergoing a video revolution.
Within a few short years, the city is likely to be blanketed by a network of more than a thousand state-of-the-art, high resolution cameras, scanning high-crime areas, critical structures such as the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, SEPTA stops and inner city streets.
But this is only the beginning. The number of cameras on the network is expected to expand exponentially in the near future. City officials are working on ways to link their Police Department operation with surveillance cameras used by such parties as local universities and private businesses to create a super-network of public space surveillance that can feed images back to the video monitoring room at Police Headquarters at Eighth and Race Sts.
Technically Philly worked with former Inquirer metro columnist Tom Ferrick’s recently-launched public affairs news site Metropolis to take an in-depth look at the expanding program in a three-part series published this week. For more, check out the report on Metropolis:
Part One: A New Way To Combat Crime
Part Two: How Other Cities Make It Work
Part Three: How Technology Makes It Happen