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Sleeping On The Floor In Watts

"They sleep on the floor." I'll admit I did a double take when Sgt. Deana Stark, of the Los Angeles Police Department, made that statement as we drove through the Jordan Downs housing project in Watts today. It took me a moment to realize what she meant: that many of the families that live in the 700-unit development in South-Central L.A. are afraid to sleep in their beds for fear of being hit by stray gunshots during the night.

Sgt. Stark had agreed to drive me around Jordan Downs (which is the home turf of the Grape Street Crips gang and the setting for the film Menace II Society) to show me the new wireless video-surveillance network set up using gear donated by Motorola. The police, who have repeatedly been ambushed while responding to phony distress calls in Jordan Downs, have long sought ways to reduce the rampant gang activity, drug dealing, and general lawlessness that provides the public housing project. One way is with court-ordered injunctions that make it illegal for known gang members to loiter, congregate, drink in public, and carry weapons in the neighborhood. Another is with the 24/7 wireless network that comprises seven cameras strategically mounted around the project and linked to a multiscreen command center inside the LAPD's Southeast Substation.

Civil libertarians like me have long been troubled by the concept of permanent video surveillance, whether it's to catch speeders or cut down on outdoor drug dealing. Although the Supreme Court has generally upheld the right of law enforcement agencies to use video surveillance of public places to deter potential criminal activity, critics contend that it violates the Fourth Amendment prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures. The LAPD has at least partially cleaned up notoriously drug-and-crime-ridden MacArthur Park, in the Westlake neighborhood, using a system of cameras linked to fiber optic cable; the wireless version, using Motorola Motomesh networking equipment, is far easier and cheaper to install.

Seeing the mothers with strollers walking through Jordan Downs -- and imagining them sleeping on the floor to avoid random gunfire -- it's hard to overly concern yourself with the civil liberties of the Crips. Wireless technology will make video surveillance networks far more common in the future. The erosion of privacy probably doesn't disturb the parents who have to live in Jordan Downs too much.

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