More than two dozen new crime cameras have been installed in the French Quarter. Residents and neighborhood associations have largely welcomed them, though some have raised concerns that their placement could be too low, allowing people to tamper with them.
The City Council approved funding for the cameras late last year. The money came from a small tax levied on all goods and services sold in the French Quarter.
“In the absence of a robust NOPD and especially the Eighth District, these are kind of a force multiplier,” said Erin Holmes, Executive Director of Vieux Carre Property Owners, Residents, and Associates, “we do recognize that there is some contention between whether crime cameras deter crime, prevent crime, or help solve crime. But again, when we have such low forces available for our various police districts, these do help in some way.”
Most of the longtime residents who spoke to WWL-TV Wednesday agreed. “I think criminals need to be aware they can walk from one corner to the next and they’re gonna be on camera,” said Ken Caron, who has lived in the Quarter for 7 years. “I’d rather protect myself from crime than have the aesthetics,” added George Tropiano, in reference to the cameras’ modern design, a contrast to the rest of the Quarter’s historic look.
But others are nervous that the funds could be depleted replacing cameras damaged by vandalism. The cameras are mostly mounted on the streetlights below the lamps. The Quarter’s streetlights were installed over a century ago and are much shorter than those in the rest of the city. Therefore, the cameras are conspicuously low, about 8 feet off the ground in some places.
A viewer who lives in the French Quarter reached out to WWL-TV with concerns that the cameras would become a target of vandalism. A city spokesperson told us “there have been no recent occasions of tampering” since the cameras were installed over the last few weeks and “while there have been a small number of occasions of tampering in the French Quarter, it is certainly not common.”
Holmes, meanwhile, thinks “anything in the French Quarter is in danger of being tampered with,” and that “it wouldn't be too difficult to kind of get up there and remove [the cameras] or mess with them in some kind of way.” She added that VCPORA did not have “a lot of input” into the locations and number of cameras.
The cameras are managed by the city’s Real Time Crime Center, a division of the New Orleans Office of Homeland Security. A city spokesperson told us the RTCC had spoken with City Councilmember Freddie King, who represents the French Quarter, and “advised his office accordingly in regard to the function and positioning of the cameras, as well as the validity of these concerns.”
WWL-TV has reached out to King’s office to learn more.
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