Police Shed Light On Effectiveness Of Aerial Surveillance – WBAL Radio

Friday, September 11, 2020Tyler Waldman, WBAL NewsRadio 1090 and FM 101.5

A day after a federal appeals report heard a challenge to the Baltimore Police Department's aerial surveillance program, police released a mid-term reportFriday that sheds light on the program's effectiveness.

From May 1 to July 1, the plane produced 81 evidentiary packages related to homicides, shootings, armed robberies and carjackings. Of those cases, 21% have been closed with an arrest, compared to 16% of similar incidents that did not have support from the spy plane.

Police said the data in the report assembled by RAND Corporation are provisional and that they have made no conclusions about the program. They said more work needs to be done to determine correlation, causality and effectiveness, including determining how many of the cases solved with the plane's help could have been solved without it.

This report provides an extensive review of the programs progress, while fulfilling our commitment to transparency in sharing data on where the program is at its halfway mark, Commissioner Michael Harrison said in a statement. We will continue to be guided by our research partners on the effectiveness of the program and other metrics of performance.

The flights are conducted by an outside vendor and are privately funded by Texas philanthropists.

Morgan State University and the University of Baltimore are surveying public opinion on the aerial surveillance program. Police have received 63 complaints, most of which have been noise complaints. A third plane being deployed is quieter than the other two, police said.

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Police Shed Light On Effectiveness Of Aerial Surveillance - WBAL Radio