ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - St. Louis aldermen are moving forward with a measure that would launch aerial surveillance above the city to fight violent crime.
The legislation was passed by the Board of Aldermen's Public Safety Committee on Tuesday, despite the words of some opponents who believe the information gathered.
The bill would direct the mayor to contract with an Ohio company, Persistent Surveillance Systems, that uses planes to track the movement of suspects and vehicles moments after a crime is committed. Opponents of the measure fear it could jeopardize the civil liberties of average citizens.
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Resident Kennedy Moore spoke at the public hearing and says she doesn't want to hear the planes buzzing over her head when she walks down the sidewalk.
"This in addition to the police and emergency service vehicles, it would just be another reminder that we live in a police state where citizens are surveilled on a constant basis," Moore says.
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Attorney Keith Rose is with the National Lawyers Guild and also spoke on Tuesday against the plan for surveillance planes in St. Louis.
"We are concerned that the vast amounts of data being harvested by this system will not be as specifically used as we are being told," Rose says. "Our personal history tells us this data may find its way out."
Rose says police insiders could leak information for profit, as happened in the 2017 federal case of four officers leaking accident reports to a chiropractor. Also, he says there's no safeguards against the data being subpoenaed for civil court cases.
Sponsoring Alderman Tom Oldenberg says the surveillance plane would be a free trial offer, and the data – which could help police solve crimes – would only be kept for 45 days.
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In 2020, St. Louis recorded its worst homicide rate for 50 years in 2020, even though the total number of homicides last year fell just short of the city’s all-time record. Police said 262 people were killed in St. Louis last year — five less than the record of 267 set in 1993. But because the city’s population has declined since 1993, the homicide rate was much higher in 2020.
The airplanes would be similar to the ones that were used in Baltimore for six months last year. The Persistent Surveillance Systems planes are equipped with cameras that zoom in from the city-wide image and move backward and forward in time to identify the movements of potential suspects and witnesses, telling officers within hours just where to look for people who traveled to and from the scene.
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