Free city-wide Wi-Fi access points are becoming a reality in some major cities, in the next few years they should be the norm across the country. I’ve already listed places to find free Wi-Fi, but the effect of publicly available Wi-Fi has a second, perhaps more important use, public safety.

The Jordan Downs public housing complex in Los Angeles is now home to seven surveillance cameras connected by a Motorola MotoMesh network. The 700-units-in-103-buildings complex in the Watts residential district is notoriously high-crime, home to its own gang and a central point of both the 1965 and 1992 riots. The mesh/camera deployment was sponsored by the LAPD, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Plans for this deployment were hatched by the LAPD more than a year ago.

The cameras — there will be 10 or more, eventually — have been in place for a while. Motorola says that, in conjunction with community efforts, the cameras have already had a “chilling effect on crime,” leading to a 32% decline.

Motorola donated the equipment and aided in the installation of all of the software training, which is great and it definitely has a positive impact on the community. My concern would be privacy, the though of having big brother watching does not go over well with me.

Source: Datamation

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