Eye On CameraWare -- community

Imagine yourself on a hot, summer night in Delaware. Pretend you are visiting old friends, or are having a family reunion. Your gracious hosts have not done as well as you have in the financial world, and live on a rough side of town. There isn't much to do in this neighborhood; the nice movie theaters and restaurants evacuated long ago, leaving only bars and strip clubs. The lack of air-conditioning makes any indoor activity out of the question, so everyone piles outdoors to chat with neighbors.
Your hosts are not exactly the "country club crowd" type. In fact, they would be downright unacceptable in your circles. A few very bad decisions in the past landed them in prison. Their neighbors are generally in the same predicament, and they all find themselves surrounded by fellow convicts, hookers, drug dealers, gun-toting nasty folks of all shapes and sizes. Many of these people grew up in this dark, dangerous world. Crime is all around you as the street corner crawls with the inner city poor.
Suddenly, headlights and flashing lights spin around the corner. Two police cars screech to a halt in front of your hosts' house. All the people caught in the act of being outside are rounded up, photographed and questioned. Spots still appearing before your eyes from the camera flash, you are stunned and stammer a bit while answering the policeman's questions. "Yes, Officer, I am from out of town, just visiting. Yes, Officer, the person I am visiting is a convicted felon."

Congratulations, you have been detained! If you are engaged in criminal activity as the police arrive, or if you have an outstanding warrant for your arrest, you will be taken to jail. Good riddance! If you have been a good citizen and have never been arrested, you will still be photographed, your name taken down and a record of the date and time of the incident is kept on file forever, just in case you consider breaking the law in the future. After all, you have committed the awful crime of being outdoors in a bad neighborhood and we all know that leads to harder stuff.
Sound like fiction? Not in Wilmington Delaware, where new plans to rid the city of crime are underway. The idea is to identify bad neighborhoods, send police squads in to take pictures of potential drug dealers, prostitutes, and gang members, and then keep these pictures on file for future investigations. The apparent theory is that only criminals venture outdoors in bad neighborhoods.
The Corner Deployment Unit project was started in Wilmington two months ago. In that time, there have been 588 people detained and photographed. Of these 588 people, 471 were arrested for various crimes, including possession and sale of drugs, weapons violations and outstanding warrants. Indeed, an extremely high percentage of people detained were arrested for criminal activity during these sweeps.
Information about the 117 people who were detained and photographed but not arrested was gathered. Of these not-arrested people, 84 (72%) were "career criminals," having two or more felony convictions. Furthermore, 72 of the 117 (62%) did not live in the area in which they were detained. 92 of the 117 people detained admitted accompanying one of the arrested people to the street corner.

How does the Wilmington Police Department decide which areas to target?
An analysis of crime activity by the police department
Surveillance
Calls received from citizens about illegal activities in their neighborhood
Whenever an officer observes potential illegal activities in high-crime areas

What happens to the photos taken of people detained but not arrested? According to the press release issued by Mayor James M. Baker, the photos:
Are used as possible evidence for ongoing investigations
Are saved in a case file, with a notation of date, time and location
Are not shown to the public indiscriminately
Are not used in investigations outside the Corner Deployment Unit

Have Corner Deployment Units reduced crime? According to Wilmington Delaware's website, crime rate has been reduced by a whopping 22% since June, when the project was started. Very impressive!
But is this reduction in crime worth tracking the activities of those people detained but not arrested? The argument could be made that, no matter what neighborhood (good or bad) the police raided, there would be a certain percentage of people engaging in some level of criminal behavior. In a similar sweep of quiet streets in a white-collar neighborhood, a policeman may find a certain percentage of people with unpaid parking tickets, unregistered weapons, supplies stolen from work or even smoking the occasional doobie.
Now close your eyes and imagine you are back at home, in your own safe neighborhood. Tired of watching TV and playing on the computer, you decide to go for a walk. You stop and chat with a neighbor, who is mowing his lawn after a hard day at the office. As you converse, the lady across the street pops over and joins in. Moments later, police cars screech around the corner…