“I’m going to say it straight out. What I see
occurring is this being used to target Black
males in Detroit,” he said. “Police are visual
predators in Detroit.”
The debate centering Detroit’s traffic camera
expansion — which would cost $2.5 million
— comes as tensions persist over privacy and
policing in the city, The Detroit News reported.
The planned camera expansion follows the City
Council’s fall approval of contentious overhauls
for facial recognition software used by Detroit
police to fight crime in one of the nation’s most
violent cities. That nearly $200,000 contract
with South Carolina-based DataWorks Plus to
cover outlays tied to upgrades and maintenance
was approved by a 6-3 vote following protests
and calls to prohibit the technology, which
opponents contended is racist.
Akinyemi said during his presentation on the
expansion that the cameras cannot identify
people or license plates and aren’t like the city’s
Project Green Light surveillance cameras —
another technology that has been contentious.
“It’s not predominantly a police camera,” he said.
“It has a very low resolution that you cannot
identify people.”
But Detroit police can use the cameras to collect
information in crime-fighting pursuits, including
identifying similar looking vehicles linked to an
accident. Last year, Mayor Mike Duggan said he
wanted police to be able utilize video from the
traffic light-mounted cameras to investigate crimes.
The city has had 280 criminal homicides this
year and 10,596 aggravated assaults, said Detroit
police analyst Andrew Rutebuka.