The surveillance, Capt. Mark Carman, the Sheriff’s Office’s Palm Coast liaison, says is not taking place anymore, but Palm Coast and the Sheriff’s Office are working on installing permanent surveillance cameras in the park. Signs would inform users of the park that they are under surveillance. No such signs accompanied the use of the roving camera.
The surveillance was the result of persistent pressure from a few residents around Richardson Drive who publicly complained to the Palm Coast City Council that noise, traffic, “undesirables” lounging on their cars and using vacant lots as “cut-through” paths to the park were making them feel threatened. There were also some complaints about children from the school using the vacant lots as “cut-throughs.”
Click On:
- Palm Coast Council Turned on by Spy Cameras at Public Parks
- “Undesirables” Rile Residents Near Ralph Carter Park
- Of People’s Parks and Parked Reporters
- Honoring Flagler’s Finest, and Fallen
“I thought it was good news,” Palm Coast City Manager Jim Landon told members of the city council on May 5. “They put up a mobile camera, and been checking it out. The Sheriff’s department doesn’t like people to know where their mobile cameras are.” But that morning, Landon said, Carman had shown him in his cruiser the results of the surveillance. “Mark has reported back to me a couple of times now that they see no activity there at all. I’ll give the Sheriff’s department 100 percent of the credit for their initiative I guess, but parents are not picking up the kids there, they watch before and after school, they’re not seeing the kids cutting through there at this point.”
The five Palm Coast City Council members had no issue with cameras—roving or fixed—when Landon spoke of the surveillance earlier this month.
Based on 911 calls placed from the park area from February 2009 to January 2010, the problems residents cited may have been overstated. Out of 240 calls, there were just three actual fight calls, three verbal fight calls, “a couple of noise complaints, a reckless driver, a couple of suspicious persons. So for the most part I personally think we did a good job in the park,” Carman said. Residents complained that the issue had gone beyond park boundaries, which prompted the further surveillance on streets and lots adjacent to the park.
But Carman said the patrol division doesn’t have access to video cameras. Only investigators do. “If they have cameras we’re not going to tell you where they are,” Carman said. Such cameras have become cheap to acquire, easy to use and just as easy to hide–by consumers just as easily as by cops.
Sheriff Don Fleming confirmed that secret surveillance had taken place. “We have the ability to videotape certain things when we want to. But that’s something that we don’t really disclose,” Fleming said. Ralph Carter Park is a possibility. We’re not surveilling any place that would be an infringement on privacy.” He said the area under surveillance was “just a path, walkway, that’s all it is.”
Fleming made a distinction between that sort of surveillance with a “roving” camera and a different sort of camera surveillance that targets only license plates, not individuals. The license-plate cameras were also used in the area around Ralph Carter Park.
Fleming added, “If we see somebody that we think might be a person of interest, we’ll sit and talk to them, we’ll stop and talk to them to see, you know, what’s going on, what are they doing, have a nice day, that type thing.”
George Griffin, president of the Volusia/Flagler chapter of the ACLU and a director on the board of the ACLU of Florida, termed the use of cameras around the park “disturbing” though not, in and of itself, illegal. “We are becoming more and more of a society where there is no entitlement of privacy once you step outside of your home.”
The line between surveillance and harassment can easily blur. “Public streets and public parks are meant to be open to the public for use without surveillance or harassment,” Griffin said. “Last time I checked, we have not passed any Arizona-type laws here in Florida. Law enforcement cannot search, pat down, or demand documentation from citizens simply for being in a public place.”
Griffin said the ACLU intends to request records on the use of video surveillance in Flagler County. “Just because the Sheriff’s office has a new toy does not mean that it can be used in a manner that disregards the rights of the public,” he said.
So-called “eagle-eye” cameras used to sit inside the Sheriff’s Office’s patrol cars. The cameras videotaped such things as DUI arrests, providing evidence both of suspects’ and deputies’ conduct which prosecutors and defense lawyers relied on in court. Fleming did away with the cameras.
Jim Manfre, who preceded Fleming as sheriff, characterized cameras—fixed or roving—as “lazy police work.” If there’s a problem area, there’s no substitute for actual patrolling. “Police presence picks that stuff up.”
This week, the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office is starting a “crime-suppression team consisting of a corporal and about four to six deputies. “All they do, full time, is they go to hot-spot areas where they’re having problems. They don’t answer calls,” Fleming said. “It’s Ralph Carter Park, it’s any other area that might have a lot of burglaries, a lot of car larcenies, all those types of things that we get involved in all the time, so those kinds of things we’re going to be addressing with a crime-suppression unit.”
Jim R. says
Here are some ways to identify an undesirable.
1. Under 30 years old.
2. Wears clothes purchased at k mart or wal mart.
3. Long hair.
4. Hangs around in groups of three or more.
5. Believes he/ she lives in a free country.
6. Doesn’t think cops just protect and serve.
7. Would like for all police to have cameras trained on them at all times when on duty.
8. Thinks Tasers are a form of cruel and unusual punishment.
9. May be seen riding a skateboard in prohibited areas.
10. Possibly homeless or unemployed.
Anonymous says
i am under 30 wear clothes from wal mart have long hair hang out with 4 people america is a free country the cops dont protect and serve tasers are crule i skateboard and am unemployed, but i have striahgt A’s and do work around Voulisia county to help other people what you gotta say about that?
PCadiron says
I was at the park a couple weeks ago and noticed that they had put up a new sign just past the entrance that said “park under surveillance”. So, is this a lie, or was it for the cameras that they were using to catch the “undesirables” in the lots?? I did see an electrician there, so maybe he was installing cameras.
Tara says
I think it is great not only supervise what is happening in the park, but also the woman that wants to over work the 911 system for non emergency situation.
Rick G says
Here’s just another example along with red light cameras where we just don’t care about the 4th Amendment. It’s a disgrace to a free society that cameras are being used without consent or warning.
Jim R. says
Raqlph Carter Parks undesirables are not to be confused with Chitwoods Scumbags.
Chitwoods scumbags don’t have cell phones
Atilla says
Well this is a deep hole we are talking about. What is the difference between a surveillance camera and an officer in plain clothes just waling around or sitting unnoticed making notes? It is as was said in the article lazy police work but it is the new age of technology, doing the work for them and what with budget crunches maybe it is the smartest way to find out what exactly is going on at the park, good bad or indifferent. I am no constitutional scholar but as to the charges of invasion of privacy and unreasonable stops and pat downs it is a fine line between loitering and walking, and in the end it is trusting lawmen to tell the difference, as scary as that may be.
beachcomberT says
Not exactly a clearcut issue. The media defend their right to take photographs and video in any public place. One could argue police have the same right, especially if they put up warning signs. (Are the signs sufficiently multi-lingual so we’re not being unfair to any major minority?). Let’s not forget the military has spy satellites that can do the same snooping on us even in our own back yards.
Pierre Tristam says
Media photographers don’t have arresting powers, they instinctively want to make public what they gather (otherwise it’s useless), they shoot to uncover, and the ethical ones do so in the open: no signs necessary. So the comparison with police doesn’t quite work. The issue at Ralph Carter park is the outright secrecy of it. The fact that the Pentagon and the CIA and the DEA have their drones up half the world’s asses, including a good deal of our own hemorrhoidal suburbs, isn’t an argument in favor of more surveillance, but an indication of how dangerously blurred the lines are getting between military means and domestic policing.
NortonSmitty says
Pierre, too many words with too many syllables to explain this. I can’t believe I’ve lived so long as to start a sentence with “In my day…” but it used to be that the most a cranky old fart would do if you cut through his yard on the way to school was to yell and shake his cane. The worst, he would sic his Beagle on you.
Now, miserable old bastards everywhere are being true Patriots by giving the Police a reason to break out their Rocky and Bullwinkle official Secret Squirrel $100,000 Top Secret Photo Kit to document the fact.
We should thank them for taking the time out of their busy schedule to do this valuable civic duty. I hope it didn’t make them late for their Tea Party meeting to complain and ask why their property taxes are so high.
Kevin says
Smitty, obviously you have some sort of obsessive compulsion disorder/mania regarding the teaparty and good honest, and intelligent people where you try hard to consciously compensate for some undesirable trait(s) you have. I think the first issue is your familiarity with drugs based on your last comment to me.