Better streetlights means better security video, public safety committee hears

Prince George’s Standing Committee on Public Safety talked about shining a light on crime at its first meeting of 2025.

The first item on the agenda at the Tuesday, Jan. 21 meeting was street lighting — how it affects not only the perception of safety and police work, but how better lighting could also improve the quality of footage captured by security cameras.

Eric Depenau, the city’s director of administrative services, said staff prepared their report on street lighting based on the Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design’s (CPTED) principles on what’s called natural surveillance.

CPTED Canada’s website describes the concept as “a design strategy that is directed at keeping intruders under observation. It is based on a simple premise that a person inclined to engage in criminality will be less likely to act on their impulse if he or she can be seen.”

Staff’s report also mentions that better lighting will help witnesses report crime they see, the perception of safety in lit areas and the effectiveness of camera footage.

That latter part could be important after council voted in December to allocate more than $40,000 towards a security camera pilot project in downtown Prince George.

Committee member John Zukowski, the owner of downtown business Pacific Body Jewellery and Piercing, said that while many security cameras have the ability to capture footage in black-and-white in low-light conditions, that footage can sometimes lack identifying details that police need for their investigations.

“You’re not able to get a good description of size, build, clothing, gender,” he said. “We have none of that in black-and-white whereas if you have good supplemental LED lighting in concert with the built-in LEDs in some of the video cameras, then you can get good descriptions that nine out of 10 times leads to an arrest.”

In these circumstances, extra light would help.

In 2022, staff’s report said, BC Hydro began to upgrade 2,675 street lights across the city to more energy-efficient LED bulbs. It also noted that the city’s 2025 budget, which isn’t set to be approved until Wednesday, Jan. 22, does not contain any “significant street lighting enhancements” in its capital plan.

Going into greater detail in the meeting, Depenau said there are $400,000 in upgrades to lighting planned between 2025 and 2029 and then $5 million in planned upgrades in the next five years after that. Currently, he said, there are around 2,500 lights in the city that are more than 40 years old and are reaching the end of their lifespan.

There are also lighting improvements planned as part of other projects, like parking lot renewals in the downtown and upgrades to several streets like Austin Road.

Mayor Simon Yu, the committee’s chair, said that when there are special events like the annual Civic Light Up, it would be worthwhile to co-ordinate efforts so that street lighting and the event lighting do not compete for attention while still providing safety.

Downtown Prince George executive director Colleen Van Mook gave an example of the lack of co-ordination, saying that the street lighting on 7th Avenue is beautiful, but it wasn’t discussed with her organization before they were installed.

“We can’t hang flowers on those baskets because they’re on the … street side and if we hang the baskets, they’re going to be hit by trucks,” Van Mook said.

“It’s little things like that that we really want to be part of the conversation if you’re talking about capital planning so that we can have those co-ordinated efforts. If the money’s being spent, we can enhance where it makes sense, where we can have some consistency.”

Coun. Brian Skakun suggested that the city could also partner with neighbourhood community associations for the placement of lights.

Coun. Trudy Klassen brought forward a successful motion requesting administration collaborate with Downtown Prince George “to explore opportunities for improving street lighting in the downtown area.”

Zukowski said he’d also like to see the RCMP collaborate with block watch programs in the city to collect data on neighbourhoods that have high levels of crime and poor lighting so that the efforts aren’t isolated to downtown alone.

He also suggested that development services needs to speak with developers about adequate lighting for new buildings, making sure that appropriate brightness is installed for different circumstances.