Connect Lawrence program aims to solve crime faster, residents weigh in
Jonah Kahn | @jonah_kahn
The Lawrence Police Department (LPD) is hoping to improve public safety with a new program, Connect Lawrence.
This program will use both public and privately owned cameras, like video doorbells, throughout Lawrence to help solve crime. LPD is asking residents to be part of the program.
Two steps are required for residents to become part of the program:
- Registering personal cameras
- Integrating them into the system
There are currently 53 registered cameras and 112 integrated cameras with Connect Lawrence.
If a crime or an incident occurs near you, they can request video from a certain time frame to help them solve the incident. However, they won’t have access to a constant livestream of personal cameras.
Some Lawrence residents, like Elizabeth Torrey, like the idea and believe it’ll work to make Lawrence a safer town.
“I feel like it’s a great idea,” Torrey said. “I feel like more students using a lot of Ring cameras are a really smart way to go about security concerns, especially in Lawrence. I feel like it’ll make a lot of similar cities safer.”
The goal is to increase video evidence collection near a crime to help solve cases faster.
However, the system to integrate cameras into is called Fusus, a plug-in to the camera, and some Lawrence residents feel uncomfortable with this newer technology and voiced their concerns at a city council meeting on Sept. 9, where LPD gave an update on the program.
“We just demand a pause, and as I feel the community deserves the option to– they deserve to have some consent in how they’re being policed,” Mazzy, a Lawrence Transparency Project member, said.
The concerned community members said they understand what LPD is trying to do. In light of federal policing crackdowns and new technological developments, they want a pause on the program until there is more transparency with video surveillance.
More information can be found on the Connect Lawrence website.
