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Tinley Park Police Chief Calls for Surveillance Cameras By Gregg Sherrard Blesch 6/22/05 |
In an effort to make his squad's job easier,
Tinley Park's Police Chief wants to get moving on plans that would allow officers to spot wrongdoing from
screens in their squad cars.
Chief Michael O'Connell got permission from the village's public safety committee Tuesday to pay a consultant about $7,500 to come up with specifications for a
surveillance system and to find a vendor within the next three or four months.
O'Connell said the request was not prompted by a May 28 sexual assault in the area but might stop similar crimes in the future.
An unidentified man surprised a 16-year-old girl from behind with a gun as she walked up to her condo near the 18000 block of Oak Park Avenue, just south of downtown. She was unable to tell police what he looked like.
The brazen attack alarmed residents and merchants in the village; police had no immediate leads.
"We would hope (cameras) would certainly deter acts like that," O'Connell said.
The village was prepared to buy the
surveillance system last year but never settled on the products.
The village now has five-year-old cameras along 183rd Street, inside the Oak Park Avenue train station and on a pole at Oak Park Avenue and 173rd Place. The images feed to monitors in the Police Station and the 911 Center.
The improved system, O'Connell said, would replace the older cameras with new ones that can
pan and zoom up and down a three-block stretch of Oak Park Avenue. New cameras would be added around the outside of the train station.
The cameras only catch what could be visible to an officer on patrol. They can't point anywhere someone would expect to be private.
"I think the best crime-fighting tool you can have is deterrence," Seaman said. "If you can't do it in front of your mother, you shouldn't be doing it." Source:
dailysouthtown.com
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