Toledo Police Chief Diggs says surveillance cameras have curbed crime

8/28/2013

Toledo Police Chief Derrick Diggs today told the media that the department's real time crime center has helped bring down the crime rate in the city, with at least one expert agreeing.

Chief Diggs said the overall crime rate, including violent crime and gun-related crime, in the city is down due to the department's "multifaceted" intelligence-led approach to fighting crime that includes the use of crime-surveillance cameras. He did not say by how much.

Chief Diggs was speaking at the Safety Building in downtown Toledo during a news conference. It was attended by representatives of Ohio law enforcement agencies after Chief Diggs showcased the real crime center on the sidelines of a monthly meeting of the Northern Ohio Crime Consortium.

"We have preliminary data that indicates that there is a deterrence effect attributable to those cameras," said Dave Licate, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Akron, after the news conference.

Professor Licate said he and Eric Jefferis, a professor of public health at Kent State University, have been evaluating the effectiveness of crime-surveillance cameras for NOCC and have yet to quantify the results of their research.

Police Sgt. Joe Heffernan, the police department's spokesman, said Toledo police have between 70 and 80 crime-surveillance cameras, with another 70 to 80 "arriving any time."