Credit: Tom Sofield/LevittownNow.com
The seven new police surveillance cameras planned for Bristol Township’s Winder Village section are taking longer than expected to be installed.
Township Manager Bill McCauley announced at the Bristol Township Council meeting Thursday night that the cameras were expected to be installed by December 31 2014. Read more here.
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According to McCauley, the township is waiting for additional camera parts and for PECO to give the authorization to use the poles. “I’m pushing the vendor to have them up as soon as possible, I just couldn’t push water uphill,” he said.
It is the township’s hope that the surveillance system, which will allow police to monitor its feed from their mobile devices, will help deter crime and other incidents in the neighborhood. Crime in the Winder Village section of the township has been a hot button issue since July 2014 when two men were gunned down in a home off Winder Village Drive. The murders are still unsolved by police.
The township was able to purchase the surveillance system for less than $75,000 last year.
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The system in Winder Village will be different than the federally funded one in the Bloomsdale-Fleetwing section just down the road, because of its ability to relay information back to police mobile devices. The township currently operates a similar system in Croydon and the Indian Creek section of Levittown.
In October 2012, retired Chief of Police James McAndrews said crime in the Bloomsdale-Fleetwing neighborhood has fallen by more than 50 percent since the cameras were installed. The system features surveillance cameras every few yards on the neighborhood streets and even features automatic license plate readers (ALPR.) The ALPRs capture an image of the license plate of every vehicle that enters the neighborhood and runs it against databases of expired, stolen or wanted vehicles.
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In the 1990s, cities like Philadelphia, New York and Chicago began installing police surveillance cameras in high-crime sections. Philadelphia officials cited a drop in crime in the areas surrounding the cameras.
Editor Tom Sofield contributed to this report.
