About a day after five people were shot early Aug. 2 near City Market, police released a photo of a suspected gunman. The man is shown running through Ellis Square, where police say the victims were shot after a fight — one in which they weren’t involved.
The photo of the suspect was captured by a city-owned surveillance camera near the square, a hub of downtown Savannah nightlife for residents and visitors alike. Such cameras, whether public or privately owned, can be crucial in helping detectives solve crimes and track down suspects.
But at the end of last month, 22 of those 224 city-owned cameras weren’t working.
Savannah-Chatham Police Chief Joseph Lumpkin stressed that’s only about 10 percent of the system.
City spokesman Bret Bell said only one of the inoperable devices was classified as a public safety-specific camera — that is, a camera solely for police purposes that’s activated in a high-priority area. The rest are on public buildings and, while accessible by police, are used for a variety of purposes.
Bell said staffers were working to fix, replace or find funding to resolve the issues. Ten of the cameras were completely inoperable and needed to be replaced, he said. Another had a Wi-Fi connection issue that could not be resolved, so staff were relocating it. The rest were being evaluated or repaired, pending funding, he said. Ones connected to public buildings are funded by individual city bureaus.
In one case, police said, an inoperable camera could have hampered an investigation.
“I know of one incident wherein a camera’s Wi-Fi was not working,” Lumpkin said recently. “Therefore, we were not able to capture a potential image of the perpetrators.”
Citing a need to protect the investigation, Lumpkin said he could not discuss details of the case or identify the crime. Detectives, after all, don’t want suspects to know police don’t have them on camera yet. The chief did, however, say it was a “significant” violent crime that took place within the last month.
Lumpkin said he was told the camera issue was resolved within a week, and it’s not like detectives give up just because there’s not a photo.
“Realistically, no systems work all the time unless you have redundancy,” Lumpkin said.
Cameras don’t always help — they don’t capture the best possible angle every time. And while there’s no substitute for good old-fashioned police work, footage from cameras can sometimes be the investigative break detectives need.
“We use them to any effect we can,” said Maj. Richard Zapal, who runs the Savannah-Chatham police department’s Criminal Investigations Division. “Sometimes we wouldn’t have been able to clear cases without any photos or videos.”
Zapal said distributing images has an impact on residents in helping police identify suspects.
Photos of Shan Cheley, who was eventually tried and found guilty of slaying 18-year-old Amber DeLoach and leaving her body in a burning car in 2012, were distributed to the public after he was caught on camera entering a gas station near the crime scene.
Court testimony showed Cheley had been identified by an anonymous CrimeStoppers tip after police released that footage. Video captured at that BP station showed him buying a lighter and gas in a plastic container.
When he was prosecuted, investigators revealed a series of photos taken by a city-owned camera that showed him driving from where DeLoach’s body was left near Yamacraw Village just a minute before firefighters arrived.
City staff and police declined to reveal exact locations of the inoperable cameras — or any, for that matter — for security reasons.
The police chief noted that cameras working on a fiber-optic system can sometimes be compromised by construction workers digging through a cord or other accidents and that Wi-Fi connections are occasionally interrupted.
Bell said it’s important to note that the cameras are outside 24/7 all year, and that contributes to wear and tear. City staff, he said, have been trying to add cameras.
“We have more today, even with the ones down, than we’ve ever had on our streets,” Bell said.
There’s about $1 million in Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax funding on the way to expand the city’s fiber-optic network. Bell said a plan is in the works to put more public cameras in various neighborhoods once the network grows.
Public safety officials use the city cameras for a variety of purposes, including monitoring traffic and crowds during large events like Savannah’s annual St. Patrick’s Day festival. From a control room, police can catch events like erupting fights in real time and direct officers for fast response amid the festival’s party-heavy late night frenzy. They and city traffic engineers work in tandem to identify impending traffic jams and direct officers for assistance as well as control traffic signals.
Private-sector cameras, too, help police. When an East Bay Street brawl broke out early this year, the two alleged victims told investigators a mob of men randomly attacked them. A closer look from a nearby business’ camera, however, tore up that narrative. It turned out one of the alleged victims instigated the altercation.
“It’s technology, and we use technology to our benefit,” Zapal said of surveillance cameras. “... There’s no better record than having a video or a still photo.”