Police Chief Lynn Button checks a scene spotted by camera operator Mary Quesada. The seven monitors and 22 cameras on campus constitute perhaps the largest monitoring system in the CSU.

Security cameras help ensure
safer campus, parking lots

by Tom Uribes

A passenger car cruised slowly from Maple Avenue into Lot C at the southeast edge of campus.

Its occupants, four males in their late teens, emerged from the vehicle in large coats - no backpacks, no books and no apparent destination - and began walking, not down the row of cars toward the campus, as students, employees or visitors would, but in and out among the other vehicles. They casually checked car door handles, undoubtedly keeping a look out for police.

But they couldn't see Mary Quesada, who was watching every move from her vantage point clear across campus in the Fresno State Police department dispatch control center.

She was aided by one of 22 new cameras that went up around campus last fall in the first of the university's three-phase "Camera Project," possibly the only such system in the CSU and even at a university anywhere.

The camera allowed her to monitor the subjects until Sgt. Lupe Shrum could arrive and follow them off campus. As the subjects headed west and accelerated, Fresno State Police Chief Lynn Button, in his unmarked chief's car, joined the pursuit. When he finally caught up to them, he hit the emergency lights and stopped them for questioning.

Finding no apparent signs of a crime, Button had to release them, but he said they got the message.

"I don't think they'll be back on our campus anytime soon thinking it's an easy target," Button said. "Thanks to the cameras, we were able to get to them before anything happened."

This extra set of eyes is primarily what the university had in mind when it undertook the Camera Project - to protect students and employees from property crimes, said Rick Finden, director of Parking and Transportation, who oversaw installation of the cameras.

By the time all three phases are complete, the university will have about 50 cameras monitoring the parking lots, parts of the central campus, and the stadium area.

The first phase alone cost about $200,000 Finden said. It was paid for with money from parking fees. Phases two and three are awaiting funding of about $100,000.

The video cameras pan their respective areas on campus and beam the images via the campus's broadband cable system to the police dispatch room, where three camera security operators rotate eight-hour shifts and keep a watchful eye on seven monitors.

If the operators spot anything suspicious, they notify the dispatcher sitting next to them. Or if an emergncy call comes in from an officer in the field or from the public, the operators can pan the area with the nearest camera.

Operator Michelle Cowings said, "We have been able to assist people who have fallen or whose car is disabled by spotting them and sending an officer."

Finden said the Burle brand cameras, monitors and videocassette recorders are "top of the line stuff because we wanted the system to provide us with real information, not just a silhouette of a suspect.

"For a university, it is elaborate and large," he said. "No CSU or UC has a system like this."

Button says the project is worth its weight in gold.

"If someone calls in for assistance or from our emergency phones, we can see where they are and what is going on out there until an officer can arrive," Button said.

"And when we catch somebody driving through the campus, we can spot them or if we don't get to them in time, we can go back and show the tape as evidence," Button said.

"We even picked up a drug sale across the street at nearby apartments and provided the tape to the City of Fresno Police."

But for all its safety value, Finden cautions against a false sense of security.

"The problem with camera systems is that people think that they are personally being monitored as they walk through the lots," Finden said. "This is not the case. There are 20 or so cameras, thousands of people on campus and only one person at a time watching the monitors."

He said it would be unwise to rely on the cameras to guarantee one's safety but recommended, instead, using the university's security escorts (278-2132).