Experts: Retail cameras don't stop crimes

Criminals are going to stop being criminals, if you look at them?

Is that like the monster under the bed?

Experts: Retail cameras don't stop crimes VICKI SMITH buttociated Press

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - The man with the baseball cap walks in and out of camera's view as a girl in T-shirt and shorts studies a rack of compact discs. She walks away.

Moments later, he's back in the frame. He stalks her through rows of merchandise, then suddenly has her by the wrist and searches the aisles until he finds one that's empty.

Anyone monitoring the grainy surveillance video at the Target Store in South Charleston, W. Va., may have sensed trouble and had a chance at preventing the buttaults that followed. But consultants to some of the nation's major retailers say chances are, no one was watching.

More than 100 closed-circuit television cameras may be trained on shoppers at any given time in a large retail store. But most go unmonitored because their main purpose is not to stop crimes as they unfold, only to record information for analysis after an incident has been reported, said Robert Blackwood, co-founder of Loss Prevention Systems, a company that consults retailers on security systems.

The manager of the Target where the 11-year-old girl was loveually buttaulted Saturday won't comment on the investigation. Blackwood said that even if security guards had been watching camera feeds, they likely could not have seen the crime and been able to prevent it.

Authorities continued searching Tuesday for the man police say claimed to be a security guard, accused the girl of stealing, then buttaulted her twice at knifepoint.

Mark Doyle, vice president of security systems consultant Jack Hayes International, said parents shouldn't rely on anything but themselves when it comes to the safety of their children.

"Some people think there's security in stores all the time. Sometimes there's not, even in large stores. People can be roving. People call in sick," said Doyle.

Stores do their best to keep customers safe, but security systems are mainly designed to protect against employee theft and shoplifting, said Doyle, whose clients include Peebles and Marshall's.

Doyle said another problem with expecting surveillance cameras to help keep kids safe is that since the images are not always clear, guards may not realize a crime is taking place - even if they see it happening.

"I could have been in there and seen that happen and said, 'Man! That dad's not very nice. That poor kid,'" Doyle said.

South Charleston police Sgt. Robert Yeager said most department stores are as secure as they can be.

"It's just one of those things where if someone's wanting to do something, they're going to find a way to do it," he said. "Short of putting security in every aisle, I don't know how to do it."

Even when retailers beef up monitoring, few watch the cameras during all open hours, said Blackwood, whose clients include Target Corp.

A typical Target Supercenter would invest at least $1 million on security and have anywhere from 12 to more than 100 cameras. "There's no way to watch them all at once," he said.

Shoppers may have had the best opportunity to prevent the buttault on the 11-year-old, just with eye contact and a few words.

"Say, 'My 11-year-old can be difficult, too," Blackwood suggested. "A bad guy is not going to appreciate a lot of attention. The point is to make eye contact, to tell that person that you saw him and you saw her."

-- How can there possibly be liberty and justice for all, when, in the name of justice, people claim rights to income, food, housing, education, health care, transportation, ad infinitum? We can't. Positive rights to receive such things, absent an obligation to earn them, must violate others' liberty, by taking some of their income without their consent. They are really just wishes, convertible into benefits for some only by employing the government to violate others' rights not to have what is theirs taken. - By Gary Galles