'Eye in the Sky' scans northwest.

Thunder Bay considers surveillance system for business district

Sudbury businesses and their patrons are "elated" by the city's Eye in the Sky program, a local businessman says, and that endorsement may help a similar program make its way into Thunder Bay.

A proposal to introduce a video surveillance program to Thunder Bay has attracted plenty of support from the community's business sector, local government and police officials, who cite Sudbury's success with their program as a reason to bring it to Thunder Bay.

Brian MacRae, Thunder Bay city manager, says no final decisions have been made regarding the Eye in the Sky program yet, other than the city is setting aside $135,000 in its 2000 capital budget to implement the program.

MacRae says the program's direction, including where the cameras will be installed, will be better defined once the committee set up to iron out the details of the surveillance program has issued its report.

"I think it's inappropriate at this time for me to say where the cameras should be located until (the committee) gets into the larger discussion," he says.

"Certainly the committee will look at (location), and I would anticipate that the BIAs (Business Improvement Associations) will be given an opportunity to participate" in the decision. Local BIA representatives were unavailable for comment.

Todd Wilkinson, the chair of Sudbury's Metro Management Board, says almost all of the feedback he has heard about Sudbury's Eye in the Sky Program has been positive.

"There really haven't been any negatives," he says. "The negatives that you hear are from the (people) that really have a big problem with Big Brother watching. But it soon dies. The only people that have a problem with the cameras are the guilty ones.

Also a businessman (of Reg Wilkinson Men's Wear), Wilkinson says not only are downtown businesses pleased with the program, but their customers are as well.

"As far as the businesses go, we're elated only because of the positive comments we're getting back from our customers," Wilkinson says. "We have a lot of elderly people living downtown, and with us being a business that has been around for 52 years, about 15 per cent of our overall clientele is elderly.

"They're downtown people instead of mall people, so that 15 per cent is ecstatic because the crime rate has dropped substantially."

Sudbury's Eye in the Sky program was launched in 1996, and Wilkinson says the downtown core saw a 19 per cent drop in crime in the first year alone. In subsequent years, he estimates an annual decline of about 12 to 13 per cent.

"Not to make it sound like we had a real problem, because we didn't, but it's amazing what the public doesn't see, like the petty stuff, the vandalism that doesn't make the paper or the purse snatching."

There are five cameras in downtown Sudbury. They are powerful enough to zoom in on a licence plate located 100 metres away, Wilkinson says. And they can act as a self-policing tool for businesses.

"We get some credit card fraud here when someone breaks into a car overnight and steals a credit card," Wilkinson says.

"We can often sense if something's a little out of whack or we recognize the name and know that this isn't (the cardholder). We've been known to detain them and we've done our own policing overtime.

But what you can do is, instead of phoning Visa and trying to casually detain the customer without them knowing, you phone the Eye in the Sky - you phone 911 - and you say, 'Can I have a camera at the front entrance of Reg Wilkinson Men's. Wear?' The police will then have a specific identification on that person."

Sudbury is credited with having the first Eye in the Sky program in Canada. Wilkinson says the program was modeled after a similar program in Ireland.

"(Sudbury Regional) Police Chief Alex McCauley, I would say, was the biggest instigator or the program. He had been over in Dublin or somewhere and he saw something working over there. There had just been a murder here in Sudbury, and he was just fed up at the time.

"He came to us and asked if we would be involved in promoting this because it would look too much like a Big Brother watching-type program. By us (and the Lions Club) getting involved, it became a community project."

Sturgeon Falls has since implemented an Eye in the Sky program, and city council in London, Ont. has also recommended the installation of 16 cameras in that city's downtown.