The Pleasanton City Council unanimously agreed last week to support the Pleasanton Police Department's interest in installing situational awareness cameras at city intersections.

The cameras would help with finding leads during an investigation, respond better to crimes happening in real time, and deter criminals from committing certain crimes, according to PPD Capt. Kurt Schlehuber.

"If you have technology deployed in strategic locations around your city, and a 911 call comes in for someone to report a crime -- if there's a camera that's in the area, we immediately can see what's going on," Schlehuber told the council on Sept. 5. "We can potentially see a crime that's still in progress, where right now without this technology, we have to send resources there."

He said that the cameras would particularly help address the increase in organized retail and catalytic converter thefts that have been impacting Pleasanton residents, many of whom he said weren't aware that the city did not already have cameras that could record crime like that.

"There is a very robust traffic camera network within the city that already exists that traffic engineering uses to help manage traffic within the city, and there's a misconception that those cameras actually record," Schlehuber said. "There is currently no recorded camera technology deployed by the city of Pleasanton."

He also aimed to assure the council and the public that the department wouldn't use the technology to impose on anyone's privacy and that the data -- which would be deleted at the end of 30 days per policy -- would be exempt from public records requests.

The decision to retain the information for 30 days was based on similar policies used with the department's automated license plate reader technology, according to Schlehuber. He also said that the department sought guidance from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and law enforcement best practices so that there would be no privacy concerns among the community.

"We would only want the data to be used solely by law enforcement and only when investigating situations where there's reason to believe that data is relevant to a current ongoing criminal investigation," Schlehuber said. "We would employ robust access controls and an audit log that would audit all actions done with the data and in the system. We would not share our data with any third parties that didn't conform to the same privacy standards that we did."

While there was a council consensus on supporting the use of the cameras in order to deter and respond better to crime, there were still questions left unanswered regarding placement of the cameras, how the data would be stored and how funding would work.

Councilmember Julie Testa asked the question of whether the city could install cameras near neighborhoods, as per the requests of some residents who reached out to her, so that PPD could better monitor crime in those areas.

However, Schlehuber said PPD does not recommend doing that for two reasons: it could be negatively seen as favoritism toward certain residents and it is not the best use of government funds.

"We feel the major entrances to the city, the major intersections that you would have to travel through to get into the neighborhoods, provide a much broader reach than a camera in a specific neighborhood," he said.

Councilmember Valerie Arkin also confirmed with Schlehuber that if positioned correctly, the cameras could detect suspected porch pirates and other types of criminals coming out of those neighborhoods, which could help police detectives responding to those crimes.

But even then, that information would only be available to officers conducting the investigation, not to the residents calling the crime in and not to any other members of the public.

"If they said that there was a crime that occurred and there was a camera that potentially gathered any evidence of that crime, we would absolutely use that for our investigation. But we wouldn't turn that over to the public," Schlehuber said.

City attorney Dan Sodergren further explained that even though the data would usually be privy to public records requests, the city would claim exemptions in order to not release the information to anyone not involved in the case investigations.

Vice Mayor Jack Balch also helped clarify that the cameras would also not be used for things such as traffic enforcement and issuing tickets.

Balch, however, voiced more concerns on balancing the need for better public safety measures, such as the cameras, with resident privacy -- especially when deciding how the data is stored and how the department will make sure it complies with policies regarding privacy.

"We're obviously balancing public safety versus privacy and I think that we understand crime is changing on multifaceted levels," Balch said. "I think it's my duty, as just one of many up here, to try to poke at … where are we protecting privacy? We are talking about potentially surveilling 120,000 people."

Schlehuber told Balch that the PPD will be working with its information technology division in order to figure out where the data will be stored -- on a cloud-based system, a server or in the cameras themselves -- and other security measures before deploying the cameras.

Mayor Karla Brown ended the discussion by saying that safeguarding the community is a huge part of the council and the city's job, and that these cameras would only provide officers with another tool to help do their job.

Despite having the support from the council, the city is still banking on receiving just over $3 million in grant money from the California Board of State and Community Corrections before proceeding with the cameras.

The "Organized Retail Theft Grant," which the city applied for back in June, would help fund various technologies for use by police departments -- including the situational awareness cameras. The funds for the cameras, which Schlehuber said would cost roughly $150,000, would only make up one portion of what the department plans on using the funds for over the three year period that the city would receive the money.

After those three years, the department will have to decide if it wants to continue using the technology and if so, how it will work those funds into its budget.