Thursday, July 10, 2008

Moon police Chief Leo McCarthy heard the question from residents of the Mooncrest neighborhood dozens of times: Why can't surveillance cameras be installed to deter crime there?

He became convinced that they could be effective during the investigation of a stolen Moon Area School District van. It was found in a housing project in McKees Rocks where video from a surveillance camera helped lead to the arrest of the 15-year-old thief.

The township soon will request proposals for surveillance cameras, which McCarthy said will record video of public areas, where police can patrol on foot or by car. The feed can be monitored at the police station.

The cameras will not record audio -- which is against state law -- or areas of private residences. Township Manager Greg Smith said such cameras have been in use in cities like London to deter crime.

"My wife and I thought it was a great idea," said Charles Owen, a 20-year Mooncrest resident who took over as director of administration for the Mooncrest Neighborhood Association after the death of his wife, Shirley.

Owen said he and his wife favored the idea "for security reasons. Not just for individual security, but property security." He said because the cameras will be set up in public areas, "it should not be an invasion of anyone's privacy."

Mooncrest was built as a townhouse neighborhood during World War II for workers assembling landing ship tanks (LSTs) on Neville Island. Over the years, some of the units deteriorated as fewer became owner-occupied. In an attempt to turn the tide, the neighborhood association spearheaded a recent renovation project that used state and Allegheny County grants to gut eight units and transform them into five larger townhouses with modern amenities.

McCarthy said the neighborhood has a higher crime rate than Moon as a whole, but not as high as parts of Pittsburgh.

Still, the neighborhood has an unsolved 2001 murder that McCarthy said cameras might have helped to solve. On Aug. 28 of that year, Steven Henry III, 31, was shot around 3 a.m. through his back door on Juniper Drive as he made an early-morning sandwich. If a camera had been mounted at the neighborhood's sole access road, it might have recorded the license plate of the shooter.

"There have been multiple drive-by shootings since then," McCarthy said.

After Shirley Owen made a formal request on behalf of the neighborhood association to the police department, the township applied for a state Department of Community and Economic Development grant. The $22,000 grant in the crime prevention subcategory was awarded earlier this year.

McCarthy said the project eventually required the unforeseen costs of a $3,000 engineering study for the cameras, for which the police department used part of a $4,000 federal drug forfeiture grant from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Pittsburgh.

The chief said he hopes installation can begin in early August.

Sister Renee Procopio, program administrator for the Mooncrest Community Center's summer and after-school programs, approved of the cameras' installation.

"The most important aspect of the cameras is if someone is going to (be apprehended), they're going to have to take responsibility for what they did," said the Felician nun.