Bloomberg has been looking to increase the city's camera surveillance in the wake of the Times Square bomb scare, and headed to London yesterday to check out their famous "Ring of Steel" system of over 500,000 cameras. He met with City of London Police Commissioner Mike Bowron, toured the tube with Mayor Boris Johnson, and was done in time for tea. Bloomberg said, "I am here to learn from others, see what works best, and try to fix things before they become a problem." So what did he learn?
Despite the average Londoner's being caught on camera about 300 times a day, Bloomberg told reporters, "It's not clear that they would have helped in Times Square. Other than if the perpetrator knew there were cameras, he might not have tried to come into Times Square." Though Times Square is equipped with security cameras, they weren't able to catch any clear images of failed bomber Faisal Shahzad.
The city's subways are equipped with 4,000 cameras— half of which don't work—which is just 1/3 of London's subway system's surveillance. However, Bloomberg said that crime is low in the subways, so street surveillance would be better for catching terrorists. "The street crime rate in both subway systems are probably as low as you can get. We've had only two murders since 2007, and it was one guy who killed two people. So fundamentally you are very safe on both systems."
London's "Ring of Steel" was already the inspiration for the 3,000 camera surveillance system in downtown Manhattan, but both Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly want to set up a similar system in midtown. Bloomberg said, "Nobody's going to make the world perfectly safe, but wouldn't you rather be somewhat safer?" Would you feel safer if you knew you were caught on camera 300 times a day?
