The Prince George downtown business community is discussing the idea of installing street surveillance cameras in the city core to help prevent criminal activity, especially at night.
Downtown Prince George, which represents about 500 businesses in the 41-block city core, wants the city to consider funding a remote camera system capable of utilizing artificial intelligence to detect crimes happening in real time to allow for immediate responses from the authorities.
Prince George restaurant owner Eoin Foley says a remote camera system in Penticton that started as a pilot project in 2021 with 10 cameras had a noticeable impact in reducing crime in the areas covered by the cameras. The system alerted first responders to two arson incidents and also led to an armed robbery arrest.
Penticton council provided an additional $100,000 for the camera program last year to increase the scope of the system to 15 cameras and this past August approved funding for an additional 18 monitored cameras to create a city-wide system of 33 cameras.
At Tuesday’s Standing Committee on Public Safety meeting at city hall, Downtown Prince George executives were provided updates on the Block Watch and Citizens On Patrol programs overseen by the city’s community policing crime prevention section.
While acknowledging the role the public plays in reporting criminal activity and stopping crimes before they happen, Downtown PG president Eoin Foley says that becomes less likely at night when people return to their homes and downtown streets become deserted after businesses have closed for the day.
“Down here, overnight, there’s essentially nobody around, apart from maybe the people causing issues, and that’s why we’ve pushing for security camera patrols, to look out for things,” said Foley.
“This is the type of thing a lot of business owners want to see,” he said. “Because they work hard all day and at nighttime our places are sitting ducks, essentially. We’re not there to keep an eye on things.”
Monitoring would be maintained by a private security firm as well as individual business owners who would tip first responders when something untoward is happening.
Foley said the initial phase would focus on areas where crimes happen frequently.
“We would need funding from the city or other entities for us to run it,” said Foley.
“The new technology they have with the cameras, it’s smarter, and it uses AI to detect violent motions, like punching and kicking. It can detect if fires are going on anywhere in downtown and it will alert the authorities when something like that is happening.
Based on the success of the Penticton system, Downtown Prince George is working with the Chamber of Commerce to research how it would work here and what it would cost before city council is approached.
“We know that Penticton’s program is being monitored by a company out of Vancouver,” said Downtown PG executive director Colleen Van Mook. “The preventative part of it is really the key of this program because a lot of the times what we’re being faced with now is after the fact, you’re looking at footage and it’s already happened, whereas this particular program has the intelligence to see something that could be suspicious, such as a fire, to be able to prevent a scenario.
“We definitely have that mentality of neighbourhoods watching out for each other and there is a camaraderie within the downtown businesses in the area that are street-level. But when no one’s there to communicate, we need that support.”
