BRENTWOOD — Teens hanging out on the Creekside Park bridge at night should brace for a blinding flash of light and a stern male voice taking them to task.
The Brentwood Police Department has installed two motion-sensor cameras — one at Creekside and one at Windsor Way Park — to try to deter vandalism, loitering and other types of nuisance crimes.
At the slightest hint of human motion, the flash cameras will take a series of four crisp photographs that police can download instantly. An audio recording attached to the camera will also play the following announcement: “The park is closed. Your picture has been taken and sent to the Brentwood Police Department. Leave the park immediately.”
The recorded announcement entices the target to look directly into the camera to see where the voice is coming from, ensuring that the camera gets a clear head-on shot when it takes the second photo.
Mounted on 20-foot poles, the cameras will be active from dusk until dawn, when Brentwood’s parks are closed. The camera’s lens is protected by a bullet-resistant cover, and the entire unit is encased in steel to withstand attack. It is precise enough to capture a readable photograph of a license plate in total darkness from up to 250 feet away.
Police departments in Los Angeles, Bakersfield and San Mateo have installed similar cameras, according to the company that makes them, Q-Star Cameras.
The American Civil Liberties Union has criticized this kind of surveillance, and questioned the efficacy of motion-sensor cameras in deterring crime.
“The facts are that they do not work, they sacrifice privacy and are ripe for abuse,” said Allen Hopper, ACLU police practices director for Northern California.
“Another problem with surveillance cameras is that once they are installed, the public has little control over where, for how long, and for what purposes their images are being collected and stored.”
Brentwood police Lt. Tom Hansen dismissed these concerns, noting that police will only use the images their new cameras capture to bring criminal offenders to justice.
“The fact of the matter is the parks are closed at night, so they’re breaking the law,” he said.
City officials say they have received numerous calls about crime in both Creekside and Windsor Way parks.
Teens tend to congregate on the Creekside Park bridge, drinking, smoking marijuana and kicking out the bridge’s slats, according to Hansen.
“It’s one of our parks where we get a high number of complaints,” he said.
Teens and adults have been found loitering and smoking marijuana in Windsor Way Park, Hansen said.
The city has been working for more than a year to reduce crime at the park through strategies such as trimming trees, removing shrubs, lowering fences and improving lighting, according to park maintenance manager Roger Stromgren.
The city used grants to purchase the two new cameras, which cost $6,000 each, and it intends to move them periodically to locations where they might deter dumping and copper thefts as well as loitering.
Several baseball fields at Sunset Park went dark last year after thieves stole thousands of dollars of copper wire from junction boxes there.
Since 2009, the city has had to fix or replace at least $300,000 worth of equipment to keep up with copper thieves, Stromgren said.
Contact Hannah Dreier at 925-779-7174. Follow her at Twitter.com/hannahdreier.
