Israel’s Ministry of Public Security, the Police Command and the Yerushalayim municipality plan to install new security cameras in the city, Israel Hayom reported. Many of the new cameras will be supervised from a new surveillance and control center in the Gilo neighborhood of southern Yerushalayim.
Initially, the headquarters will be connected to 130 cameras of the Ministry of Housing and about twenty cameras belonging to the Hebrew University in Yerushalayim. In a second phase, 250 cameras of the Jerusalem municipality and 75 Department of Transportation cameras will be added. 240 cameras will be deployed on the light train lines, twenty in the Ir David Center adjacent to the Old City and ten at the Shimon Hatzaddik compound.
License Plate Cameras (LPRs) will scan car numbers and document every vehicle entering or leaving the city to help alert the police if anyone suspicious enters Yerushalayim. An existing police tracking center only covers the Old City and East Yerushalayim.
The Israel Police also plan to equip officers throughout Israel with 8,000 body and vehicle cameras in 2018 and 2019. A yearlong study in England, New York and Atlanta, Georgia, found that the use of such cameras caused a 35% drop in public complaints at police stations, Jerusalem Post reported.
“The encounter between an officer and a citizen will be better for both sides,” Department Chief Yosi Bachar who oversaw the project told Jerusalem Post. “And of course if there are negative events, we will handle them and this will be a tool to determine the truth.”
Ethiopian-Israelis who regard themselves as discriminated against by the police hailed a pilot project for the plan last year.
{Matzav.com Israel News Bureau}
