PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Perkasie Borough Police Department is asking the public to help fight crime by registering personal and business surveillance cameras with the department.
Police Chief Robert Schurr said the additional cameras would help investigators in the event of a crime in a particular area. They would be able to easily tap into the surveillance database.
“They can pull it up on a mobile app, they can see where cameras are,” he said. “We can go to that business or we can go to that resident and we can ask them if we can take a look at their video to see if we’re able to develop any suspects.”
And, knowing camera locations can save investigators a lot of time. “Normally if we had criminal activity, we were going door-to-door, knocking on businesses’ doors, knocking on residents’ doors to see if they had cameras.”
Surveillance video has also become an important tool for prosecutors, judges and juries.
“They want to see video, they want to see hard-core forensic-type evidence,” he said. “And I think that this is important to help us gain the convictions we need to be able to alleviate some of the criminal activity in our municipalities.”
Schurr emphasized this is not about Big Brother watching.
“We’re not going to be able to remotely access anybody’s cameras and look to see what people are doing,” he explained. “This is something that’s a voluntary program, that the homeowner or the business owner has complete control over, and it’s only what they’re willing to share with us.”
Residents and business owners can fill out a form to register their cameras with the department here.