STEVENS POINT, Wis. (WSAU) — Stevens Point officials recently expanded their use of technology to keep an eye on the downtown business district. Interim Police Chief Marty Skibba says they have used a camera to watch the downtown square for years, but now they can see more than before. “Prior to remodeling, we had one camera on the square. With the remodel and advent of if it, the amount of businesses in the downtown area, and foot traffic, we looked at the environment and deemed that adding several cameras into the area provides us better coverage, so if in fact an unfortunate event occurs, we’ll be able to capture some of that information and help us follow up and expedite investigations.”
The old camera was just a fixed-position camera. The new ones added recently allow officers to zoom in, pan, and tilt the cameras by remote control to get a better look at what is happening. “With the placement in technology, it allows us to have eyes where maybe, if we have an officer let’s say on the scene, and something is occurring a little bit away from them, we’ll be able to view that and notify the officer of what is going on, share that with him so he can respond better.”
The expansion of camera use is in the downtown Stevens Point area. “What we looked at is the intersections that, effectually new intersections such as 3rd Street coming into Main from the north. Obviously, there’s increased foot traffic in that corridor, and having a camera in that intersection provides a better perspective of foot traffic. We then recognized that we do have a lot of foot traffic obviously by the bus area off of Strongs and Main, and so we placed an additional camera in that area.”
The old camera was monitored by Stevens Point police and their old dispatch department. The new system is currently seen by Stevens Point officers, but will soon be available for dispatchers in the joint dispatch center across the street operated by Portage County.
Skibba says having video footage helps eliminate doubt about what happened in an incident. “Unfortunately at times, when large groups get together, there are times where whether it’s pushing and shoving starts, but fights can break out, and this just fords us an opportunity again to capture some of that information that otherwise might turn into just a ‘he said’ against another person, and instead of having good eyewitness testimony, we’re able to go back to the video footage and determine actually, more factually what occurred.”
The upgraded camera installation and data storage system cost about $27,000 dollars.
(Listen to our interview with Interim Police Chief Marty Skibba on our website, here.)
