PITTSBURGH – According to KDKA, 45 of this city’s 163 surveillance cameras, or 28% of them, are not fully operational.
During a recent shooting of a 17-year old boy, a nearby camera that could have captured the incident malfunctioned. Public Safety Director Wendell Hissrich says, “The camera kept going around 360 degree non-stop. In another case you had a camera pointed directly to the ground.”
Pittsburgh has a $75,000 a year maintenance contract with Hitachi Data Systems, but Hissrich says the company is not to blame.
The City Information Technology Bureau was tasked with relaying any operation issues to Hitachi. The city’s Office of Municipal Investigations is now investigating why that information was never passed along.
The Public Safety Department has now taken over maintenance of the cameras.
“Important thing is once we do get it up operational that we have checks on it weekly and make sure those cameras are operational at the time that we need them,” says Hissrich.
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