NJ city leading way in crime-fighting technology

June 20, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

EAST ORANGE, N.J.

This city of 65,000 has fought one of the nation’s highest crime rates in recent years with an arsenal of high-tech gadgets, from gunshot detection systems to software that can sift and analyze crime data almost instantaneously.

The results have been startling: Violent crime in East Orange has fallen by more than two-thirds since 2003, according to state police statistics.

Yet even with its crime rate plummeting, the city is going a step further by becoming the first in the country to combine those systems with sensors, sometimes called “smart cameras,” that can be programmed to identify crimes as they unfold. East Orange police say the overall system can trim response time to mere seconds.

Doubters, meanwhile, question whether the effect on crime justifies the price tag.

Jose Cordero was hired as East Orange’s police director in 2004 after overseeing the New York Police Department’s anti-gang efforts. Crime in East Orange had dropped off after the crack epidemic of the 1980s and 90s but then rose dramatically in the early 2000s as gangs began to put down roots.

A firm believer in the power of technology, Cordero said he developed a database in his spare time so the department could track and analyze crime data instead of waiting for paper reports to be collated.

Other upgrades followed, among them a wireless computer system for all patrol cars; video surveillance cameras in high-crime areas; a virtual community patrol system for residents to report crimes via text message; a grid showing patrol cars’ locations and a gunshot detection system that tracks the source of shootings.

The entire network has cost $1.4 million, of which $1.1 million came from grants and forfeiture funds, according to Cordero.

“We knew what the city had been doing for 20 years, and we knew what had worked and what hadn’t worked,” Cordero said. “There was a community resolve that things could change, and should change.”

The sensors, which work in concert with surveillance cameras, are designed to spot potential crimes by recognizing specific behavior: someone raising a fist at another person, for example, or a car slowing down as it nears a man walking on a deserted street late at night. When the sensor raises an alert, an officer sitting in the department’s nerve center can zoom in on images to see if a crime is in progress.