by Does the King County Library System administration place greater value on patron privacy than on public safety?
This question is being raised after library system officials refused to provide Des Moines police with evidence that would help solve a recent violent crime outside the Woodmont Library.
Police investigators had requested surveillance video to identify suspects in the assault and robbery of an elderly patron in the Woodmont Library parking lot.
The library declined “to release the video evidence without a search warrant,” Mayor Bob Sheckler wrote in a May 12 letter to King County Superior Court Judge Richard Eadie, who is also president of the library system’s board of trustees.
Although police officers eventually obtained “a warrant for the video and within a very short time of viewing the video … made an arrest based on information contained in that video,” Sheckler made it clear to Eadie this was not good enough.
“In many criminal investigations, time is a critical factor in whether a case can be successfully resolved,” he said. “Some information such as clothing descriptions are usually of the greatest value when they are obtained immediately and there is a chance the suspect is still in the vicinity.
“Video can also be critical when dealing with victims that are especially vulnerable, such as the very young or elderly, who frequently find it difficult to clearly relate and recall important details,” Sheckler added. “This was the case in this matter where the elderly robbery victim could not provide or remember certain details about the robbery or robber.”
Yet library officials, citing “their mission to protect the privacy of their patrons,” refused to voluntarily release the video evidence despite the fact the crime occurred in “an outside parking lot area open to the public at large.
“The Library does not need such a rigid policy, which in effect throws the baby out with the bath water,” he noted.
“The Des Moines Police Department feels very strongly that in an open public area there is clearly a reduced expectation of privacy for library patrons, and a workable compromise to requiring a search warrant in all cases could be reached.”
Removing Surveillance Cameras
But what happened next “absolutely shocked” Police Chief John O’Leary.
In a May 5 meeting with library representatives, O’Leary was told that “not only was a reasonable and narrowly tailored [privacy] policy not going to be considered, but a decision had already been made by the King County Library System to remove all video surveillance systems on a county-wide basis.”
Sheckler stated, “The rationale explained was that KCLS is more interested in patron privacy and it is not the mission of the KCLS to be in the video security business.”
O’Leary told The Waterland Blog, “I was, and continue to be, extremely disappointed and disheartened by this so-called solution. It is a waste of taxpayers’ money to remove camera systems already installed and paid for. It is a giant step backward from common sense and proven crime prevention strategies.”
In the Woodmont Library case, “not only were we not allowed to view the video, the library staff would not view the video to confirm details of the investigation,” O’Leary said. “It makes me wonder if the library staff had been standing in the very same parking lot, in the same location as the camera, whether they would have provided any information to aid the investigation?…
“Unlike what is portrayed on television, obtaining a search warrant takes time, often hours. In some situations there simply is no choice but to seek a search warrant but that should not have been the case in this investigation.”
Both Sheckler and O’Leary stressed there is a difference between making surveillance video of a crime scene – especially in an open public area – available to police investigators, and in protecting the privacy of library patrons by shielding them from questions about what they view or check out.
“The City of Des Moines considers this action by the King County Library System [to remove surveillance cameras from all libraries where they are installed] to be ill advised. We strongly request you reconsider this decision,” Sheckler urged Eadie.
Copies of his letter have been sent to all King County Library System trustees, library system Director Bill Ptacek, King County Executive Dow Constantine, King County Sheriff Sue Rahr, all members of the King County Council, and the mayors of all King County cities.
A request for an interview was left May 19 in a voicemail at Judge Eadie’s chambers.
King County Library System’s Position
The Woodmont Library/surveillance cameras situation is mentioned in Ptacek’s director’s report for the May 24 board of trustees’ meeting, which will be held in North Bend beginning at 5 p.m., but it will not be on the agenda.
This, Julie Brand, the library system’s director of community relations, told the Waterland Blog, is because the “proposal” to remove the cameras “is an operational issue … it is not a policy related issue so it would not be on the agenda for them [the trustees] to consider.”
Surveillance cameras have been installed over the years at the discretion of local librarians in only 10 of the 46 King County libraries, Brand continued.
Ptacek was out of town and unavailable for comment.
“When this issue came about, it provided KCLS the opportunity” to consider the use of these cameras, she said. “We did a lot of research” that concluded “crimes and violent conduct are not really affected by surveillance cameras.”
And the dispute over release of the surveillance video “was causing an adversarial relationship with the Des Moines Police Department. That’s the last thing we want to have happen … we rely on the police for our safety and our patrons’ safety.”
Brand said the library system never installed surveillance cameras in all libraries “because it is contrary to our principles of intellectual freedom and the right to privacy.”
I recently sent the below email to the head of the KCLS, KC Exec and Coucilmembers. I would encourage others to do the same. billp@kcls.org mshatcher@kcls.org kcexec@kingcounty.gov council@kingcounty.gov
I recently heard of your decision to remove all surveillance cameras from the Woodmont Library due to your recent dispute with the Des Moines Police Department. I must say I am appalled at your decision to both waste tax payer dollars used to install this new equipment and put my safety at risk when visiting this Library. I have been an avid supporter of the KCLS system and always voted in favor of any bonds or tax increases you asked for to support the KCLS. As a result of this recent decision, I will no longer support your system and will in fact spend my time campaigning against you the next time you ask for an increase in my tax dollars. More important than my love of reading and access to the KCLS is my support for local police and the safety of the library patrons. I certainly understand the right to privacy in certain areas of the library system but this is not one of those cases. As I understand in this situation, this event occurred in the PUBLIC parking lot visible to anyone else in the parking lot. I must say, when I’m at the library I don’t feel I have an expectation of privacy in the parking lot or even the common areas of the library. The DMPD was not asking for a computer history, or patron personal information from library records.
The KCLS is wrong in this instance and I urge you to reverse your decision and be more compliant with local authorities. A simple question, why don’t you simply post $10 worth of signs on the outside and inside common areas of the building to inform patrons they are under surveillance? If you actually have someone who is so concerned they don’t want to be recorded coming and going from a library, we should have concerns about this person and question why.
The library is in the right here. You’ve buried the lead, which is this:
“We did a lot of research” that concluded “crimes and violent conduct are not really affected by surveillance cameras.”
Despite this one incident to the contrary, the research does indeed show that surveillance cameras don’t affect crime rates.
Furthermore, by maintaining a rigid policy of requiring a search warrant, KCLS avoids establishing a precedent that could be used by police in the future to request video surveillance footage of other events.
Libraries are often one of the most important bulwarks against the erosion of civil liberties in this country, and I fully support them in this.
Thanks, anonymous blog commenter above, for saving me the trouble of looking up those email addresses – I’ll be sending them a version of this note as well.
I would never argue that surveillance cameras deter crime but there are numerous cases every year where law enforcement use video footage to identify a suspect and make an arrest (watch the news)……just as in this case. I hope when you are robbed in a library parking lot you are able to get a great description and a name and date of birth of the suspect so the police can go to his/her house and arrest that person. I would bet you, had it not been for the video footage in this case to ID the suspect we would still have this thug out running around and robbing others.
What this illustrates is the lack of policy associated with using public and private surveillance video. Sharing information is and always has been a difficult process across different organizations…federal, state and local government, private industry and the public.
The challenge is complicated even further by the competing policies to protect sensitive information, privacy data and proprietary information. But we know that sharing information is a good thing and if accomplished on a balanced need-to-know and need-to-share.
The library has every right to manage operations however, if there is no policy on sharing video or possibly other data as well (video is data by the way), then in points to a lack in sound information assurance policies and should be addressed by their board.
Surveillance video by itself does not reduce crime but the evidence did lead to an arrest so that criminal’s action has been ‘reduced.’ Statistics are used in both directions and more cameras are on the way in both public and private locations. Banning technology is not the solution – managing your information and sharing data in accordance with policy is.
It could start with a simple agreement with the police or other agencies to share information (video) under certain conditions in accordance with the law. That may involve a warrant but can also be done voluntarily (as promoted within numerous DHS and state homeland security laws). As policies become more complex or there is a need to share live video, policy rules can be automated within systems to manage access to the data based on the situation, the data (video) and the party requesting access. This is called attribute-based access control and is being implemented for surveillance video systems, intelligence centers and other data stores that require a federated approach to information sharing.
Very understandable thoughts from each side of the safety/privacy spectrum. The issue is the technology, with traditional security cameras, privacy is not an option. King County Library System should check out how cameras were effectively put to use in the Marshfield, MA library
http://www.wickedlocal.com/marshfield/news/x1107764949/Cameras-installed-in-four-town-buildings
This technology protects privacy by placing “eyelids” over the cameras, so that they are only opened during emergencies so that responders can see firsthand what is going on. It’s the best of both worlds for libraries – safety and privacy. More info can be found at http://www.situcon.com