The NYPD’s “Ring of Steel” surveillance network now has 2,000 cameras running with the final 1,000 electronic eyes ready to go online within weeks.
Named after a similar network in London, the Ring of Steel blankets portions of lower and Midtown Manhattan with cameras to keep an eye out for terrorist activity and common criminals.
“The problem here was to make the 1.7 miles south of Canal Street the safest business district anywhere,” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said of the $200 million project, partly created by defense contractor Lockheed Martin.
Human cops and an artifical intelligence program based in a downtown Operation Command Center will monitor the video feeds from the cameras along with other data, like radioactivity, that is collected by Lower Manhattan and Midtown Manhattan Security Initiative.
The AI software uses algorithms that can search video images for specific shapes, sizes, and colors, and also zero in on unattended packages or suspicious behavior, like a vehicle moving against traffic.
The program also analyzes data from biological, chemical and radiological sensors.
By the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the NYPD plans to have all 3,000 cameras in place, including more than 400 at Ground Zero, as well as at high-profile Midtown sites like Rockefeller Center, Penn Station and Grand Central.
Last year at this time there were only 500 cameras online.
The cameras are also in the subway system and transit cops have made about a hundred arrests in the subways in the past eight months from the surveillance data, according to Kelly.
Civil liberties groups have criticized the project as an invasion of privacy.