Campus Safety Gains Sharper Vision With New Breed of Surveillance Cameras

By JOSH FISCHMAN and ANDREA FOSTER

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Christopher Elser, a junior at the Johns Hopkins University, tried to stop a burglar in his off-campus apartment in 2004. He was fatally wounded. Seven months later, Linda Trinth, a Hopkins senior, was killed in her apartment. The university was seeing too many crimes in its Baltimore neighborhood, and knew it had to do something.

So it got smart. "We installed what we call 'smart TV,'" said Edmund G. Skrodzki, executive director of campus safety and security at Hopkins. During the past two years, the university has placed 101 surveillance cameras along Charles Street, where most dormitories are located, and at many off-campus spots as well. The cameras are hooked up to computer software that can recognize a person with arms in the air, or a vehicle moving suspiciously slowly, and send an alert to campus security.

The technology is at the leading edge of a rise in camera-based surveillance on campuses across the United States -- a trend that seems likely to intensify in the aftermath of Monday's shooting rampage at Virginia Tech.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, N.Y., is also installing the smart cameras, as is Catholic University of America, in Washington. A few years ago, the University of Pennsylvania installed about 450 standard cameras -- no special software attached -- throughout its campus and the adjacent medical school.

"The cameras have made us a lot more proactive, rather than reactive," said Mr. Skrodzki. The ever-present eyes caught someone trying to steal a motorbike and identified an armed robber. Over all, crime on the Hopkins campus has dropped 43 percent since 2004, and Mr. Skrodzki ascribes some of that decline to the cameras. "The big impact is as a deterrent," he said. "The word is on the street that they're out there and watching."

Many students express concern about privacy when the cameras are installed. Students at Pennsylvania State University, for example, protested in 2002, when the university set up off-campus cameras. But recently, students have asked for the cameras to be placed on the campus, specifically in dormitory lobbies, said Annemarie Mountz, a university spokeswoman. And no one objected to the University of Pennsylvania's plan, said a spokesman, Ron Ozio. "It was part of an overall plan for campus safety," he said.

Hopkins invited members of the student chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union to discuss the system before it was installed. Privacy concerns were allayed when students saw that the cameras automatically placed a black box in the middle of the screen, obscuring the view, when they were pointed at a dorm window.

The balance between privacy and safety has already tipped to the safety side in Europe. Ian Welsh, business manager at Harlaxton College, a country campus 100 miles north of London that is owned by the University of Evansville, said students from the United States are often uncomfortable with the heightened security measures in place there.

"In the late 90s, and onwards, the risk of terrorism started exercising our minds here," said Mr. Welsh. "People are just generally more risk-aware." Surveillance cameras are everywhere at Harlaxton, inside and outside the buildings, and security officers constantly watch a bank of video monitors.

"It is a cultural adjustment," said Mr. Welsh, "because there are so many more cameras here." But, he added, students quickly get used to it.

Martin Van Der Werf contributed to this report.

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