After New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin announced recently that police had been using high-tech surveillance cameras to record activity at crime hot spots around town, city officials were deluged with requests for cameras in some neighborhoods.
Trying to accommodate the overwhelming demand, the city has created an adopt-a-camera program. The city unveiled a Web site, www.iseecrime.com, from which anyone can ask for a camera in their neighborhood.
The site lets residents and neighborhood groups request cameras that can monitor an area for three blocks in any direction. The application process and the Web site are still being perfected and implemented.
Many cameras will go up automatically in areas with a particularly high rate of crimes, but people who adopt the cameras will have to pay $3,000 to $4,000. Only law-enforcement personnel, not those who adopt the camera, will be allowed to view the recorded images, he said. Most of the cameras installed will be wireless, high resolution and protected by bulletproof housings.
