8/2/2009
By DUANE SCHRAG/Salina Journal

The next time you roll through one of Salina's busier intersections, it wouldn't hurt a bit to give that overhead camera a friendly wave.

Not that anyone is watching. Yet.

"We do have the ability to use that camera to get pictures from that location," said Mike Fraser, director of public works for the city of Salina. "If we need to do something like that, we have the ability to do that. I wouldn't make more out of it than there is."

Traffic cameras are appearing at intersections all across the country. Drive through any small or larger city and you'll see them peering, unblinking, at oncoming traffic. These are simply closed circuit TV cameras, but the video feed is analyzed by sophisticated software that is able to determine that a vehicle is approaching, decide how soon it will arrive at the intersection and change the traffic signal if appropriate.

They're watching over stretches of rural highway as well. You may have noticed the one on Interstate Highway 135 at Centennial Road, or the ones on Interstate Highway 70 at Solomon, Chapman, Junction City and the K-State-Kansas Highway 177 exit.

And then there's another one just two miles east of the K-State exit. Why another one so close? It's because that's also the spot where the state has put an electronic message board, said Leslie Spencer Fowler, intelligent traffic systems manager for the Kansas Department of Transportation.

"We have to make sure the messages we put on the signs are correct," Fowler said. "Ninety-nine percent of the time your software is going to work, but sometimes we do have maintenance issues, operational issues. That way we can confirm."

Not for law enforcement

The highway cameras are connected via a fiber optic network. KDOT employees with the required clearance can, from a control room in Topeka, point and zoom the cameras as desired. Frame-grabs from the video feed are posted on the Internet for travelers.

"It's not used for law enforcement," Fowler said. "They're not surveillance cameras."

But law enforcement does use these traffic monitoring cameras.

"On race days at the (Kansas) Speedway, the highway patrol actually positions an officer who watches that all the time so they can dispatch officers in the event of an accident," said Vicky Johnson, general counsel for KDOT.

And she acknowledges that if asked, KDOT would not oppose requests by law enforcement to use the cameras for surveillance purposes.

"Law enforcement has not to date asked us to have any access to the I-70 cameras," Johnson said. "If they came to us and asked, 'Can we watch the live feed from those cameras?' we probably wouldn't tell them no."

The state of Colorado has almost 300 cameras along its major highways.

"Yes, we've been asked," said Stacey Stegman, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Transportation. Usually it's related to accidents but sometimes the request comes from law enforcement officials who are trying to locate a particular vehicle.

"But we don't record, so we don't have it," Stegman said. "By policy we don't record from our cameras."

Policies can change

That's the position most states take. The Oklahoma Department of Transportation won't let you look at its highway cameras until you agree that you won't save the images for any litigation purpose.

But policies change. Last year, the city of Washington, D.C., announced it is making the video feed from its network of traffic cameras available to law enforcement, 24/7. It was putting in place policies to ensure chain-of-custody of the video (one of the issues often raised by those who wish to challenge video in court). In a press release, it quoted the director of the Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency as saying that there are "safeguards in place that prohibit the release of images except for purposes of crime prevention and detection."

Look at a lot of videos

Recorded images can be immensely valuable when it comes to law enforcement.

"We look at videos a lot," said Salina Deputy Police Chief Carson Mansfield. "A lot of videos."

One of the city's unsolved homicides is the death of Beverly Logan, who was murdered in January 2008 in her home, which is on Iron about one block east of Ohio.

There are no traffic cameras at Ohio and Iron but if there were, and the video was being saved, there's no doubt in Mansfield's mind it long-since would have been scrutinized.

"We would have looked at any video we could find," Mansfield said. He corrected himself. "We looked at any video we could find."

Whether the public would be informed of plans to allow law enforcement to start monitoring the cameras, even intermittently, isn't clear. KDOT's Fowler suggested it was a moot point.

"We don't store it," she said. "You have to have equipment for that and we don't have it."

But, it would take little more than a VCR to do so.

Having public hearings

Fraser said he couldn't imagine surveillance being permitted without extensive public discussion.

"I can't see that happening in Salina, Kansas," he said. "I would imagine that any community doing this has had a very thorough discussion about whether that's a direction they want to go."

While the Kansas Highway Patrol says it doesn't monitor highway cameras for anything other than traffic control, that turns out to be not entirely true.

"They have been used on occasion for an AMBER alert," said Capt. Art Wilburn, a spokesman for the highway patrol. "This is looking for one specific vehicle that was reported to possibly be in the area."

Cameras can be cheaper

The city's cameras are replacing an earlier generation of intersection control -- sensors in the pavement that detected the presence of vehicles. Among the disadvantages of that equipment is that repairs usually require tearing up the road.

"Cameras are less expensive in the long run," Fraser said. So far the city has cameras at 16 of the 63 intersections with traffic control devices. The plan is to have cameras at 43 of the intersections. The next two intersections scheduled for cameras: Ninth and Crawford, and Ohio and Iron.

Potential for abuse

Salina attorney Roger Struble was surprised to hear cameras are in place.

"I can see the potential for abuse," Struble said. He mentioned as an example the news that during the last presidential race passport records for some candidates were examined by curious government employees.

"I would think that any time you're going to start infringing on people's constitutional right to travel freely, you would have public hearings," he said.

Actually, the city of Salina has recorded traffic through one of its intersections. When the equipment at Ohio and Belmont wasn't working as expected, the city taped the video for a while.

"It was used for maintenance purposes," Fraser said. "We plugged in a VCR to be able to watch the sequencing of traffic."

n Reporter Duane Schrag can be reached at 822-1422 or by e-mail at dschrag@salina.com.