The City and County of Honolulu and the Hawaii Tourism Authority have teamed up to enhance security across four city park locations by installing 75 security cameras.

The cameras are primarily located on the exterior of bathrooms at Kuhio Beach Park, Kapiolani Regional Park/Paki Community Park, Foster Botanical Garden and Ala Moana Regional Park.

The city paid about $38,800 for the cost of the cameras, while HTA paid approximately $204,000 to install the cameras. The city also will be responsible for the maintenance and data retention of the cameras.

“In our experience, these kind of security cameras have proven to be excellent tools to help create more secure public areas and also to deter vandalism and other criminal activity,” said Honolulu Department of Parks and Recreation Director Laura H. Thielen. “The areas chosen to receive these cameras are our most popular locations anecdotally, and we want to assure the public that the cameras’ view cannot be remotely adjusted and are not aiming into any private areas of our bathroom facilities.”

The partnership effectively triples the numbers of surveillance cameras at city park locations. Prior to this project, there were 33 security cameras already in place at seven city park locations.

The original agreement called for 192 cameras to be installed at 13 park locations. However, once the individual park sites were assessed, including access to a wireless network, the budget was not sufficient to reach that original goal.