Installing two security cameras to deter crime in the 220-acre Burnaby park where 13-year-old Marrisa Shen’s body was found last summer is “an absolute joke,” according to mayoral candidate Mike Hurley.
At a news conference Wednesday, Mayor Derek Corrigan and Coun. Pietro Calendino, chair of the city’s public safety committee, announced security cameras had been installed in Central Park as part of the Burnaby Citizens Association mayor and council’s “ongoing commitment to ensuring Burnaby is a safe place to live, work, learn and play.”
Corrigan linked the safety measures to Shen’s death.
“I want everyone to know that we came back and followed up on it,” he said.
Corrigan wouldn’t tell reporters how many cameras had been installed, saying that might give criminals an advantage.
According Craig Collis, an assistant director with the city’s parks, recreation and cultural services department, however, two cameras were installed over the past week.
“That’s an absolute joke,” Hurley told the NOW. “Why even bother in a park this size? Most people have two outside their homes these days. To have a press conference because you have two cameras installed at Central Park, that’s not much of a story.”
In an interview last week, Collis told the NOW the city had planned to install five cameras to start with and consider more later on.
The security cameras were among six measures (municipal bike patrol, security cameras, 911 call boxes, park closures, trail lighting and improved signage) approved in principle by the Burnaby Citizens Association mayor and council a year ago to improve safety in local parks after Shen’s murder.
A number of the approved measures have yet to be put in place a year later.
No call boxes have been installed, plans to install lights at Patterson Avenue, the area around Swangard Stadium and on Imperial Street have yet to come to fruition, and staff has set aside the idea of park closures for now because enforcement issues make them unfeasible, according to Collis.
When asked about the delay in installing the five initial security cameras, Collis said it takes time to get the necessary infrastructure in place, and the bike patrol had been a higher priority.
“We thought that there would be better service through having actually patrollers, as in the bike patrol in the park, so that took a priority,” he said.
The city’s four bylaw officers on bikes, equipped with cellphones, have been patrolling local parks since May.
But the city was without its seven-member RCMP bike squad this summer because the local detachment didn’t have enough officers for general duty work, according Chief Supt. Deanne Burleigh, who pulled the plug on the program before the summer.
The city has since agreed to fund the hiring of eight more cops this year and six more in 2019, allowing the RCMP to form a pared-down, four-member bike patrol.
The 14 new officers will be the first new officers the city has added since 2008.
Corrigan was unabashed when asked about the timing of the announcement about the security cameras (less than a month before the municipal election and less than two weeks after 28-year-old Ibrahim Ali was charged with Shen’s murder).
“Well because there's an election coming up, so quite clearly I'm making announcements that show people why they should come back and vote for me, vote for the councillors and school board,” he said at the news conference.
In an interview with the NOW, Corrigan said installing the two cameras and establishing the bike patrol were “key elements” to improving safety in the park but acknowledged there is still work to do.
“I haven’t lived up to all of our promises, and I think we’ve been pretty clear about that,” he said. “There are other things to do, and we’ve been very transparent about saying we’re continuing to do those things.”
Hurley also criticized the security camera project because the cameras will not be monitored in real time.
The footage they record will be stored for a time (the city wouldn’t say how long) and then deleted unless the city or police get a complaint.
Corrigan said monitoring the cameras would be very expensive and an undue invasion of park goers’ privacy.
Hurley disagreed.
“If you’re going to have cameras in our parks, let’s monitor them,” he told the NOW. “If there’s nothing wrong going on in the park, I don’t see why anyone should have an issue with being monitored. It’s a safety issue, and the safety issues to me override the privacy issue, given what’s been going on in the park.”
