City installs new surveillance cameras in Chinatown

Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s office has announced that the first phase of the city’s new Chinatown security camera system upgrades are complete.

But the city expects that its seven new surveillance cameras — placed at intersections in the hardest crime-hit areas of Chinatown — will not be the last, as another set of upgraded cameras, to be manned by the Honolulu Police Department, is scheduled to be installed later this year.

And more will be on the way.

By the end of 2024, the city says it plans to have 52 new security cameras covering every major intersection in the Chinatown district: from River Street to Bishop Street, and from Vineyard Boulevard to Honolulu Harbor.

“The city’s Department of Information Technology worked with the Honolulu Police Department to identify priority areas for the cameras while also taking into account the technological challenges of installing a new camera system and collaboratively decided on the locations of the first seven cameras,” Ian Scheuring, the mayor’s deputy communications director, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser via email.

Now, HPD is conducting systems training and monitoring of the latest seven cameras in Chinatown, which are located at the following intersections:

>> Hotel and Maunakea streets, near HPD’s Chinatown substation

>> Hotel and Kekaulike streets

>> Hotel and River streets

>> River and Pauahi streets

>> Pauahi Street, near the public restroom

>> Pauahi and Maunakea streets

>> Pauahi and Smith streets

According to the city, the cameras and new network infrastructure are an upgrade over the city’s prior analog surveillance camera system — technology which was installed more than 20 years ago, and, in many instances, no longer worked.

“Earlier this year, HPD reported just two of the original 26 cameras as still functional,” said Scheuring, adding the system itself was outdated and required surveillance video to be recorded onto VHS tapes. “The new security cameras themselves are an immense upgrade, and the system is now accessible from multiple work stations within the Chinatown substation and HPD headquarters, rather than at a single work station, as was previously the case.”

With the upgrades, each new camera records 360-degree footage and comes with pan-tilt-zoom functionality, allowing anyone monitoring the cameras to closely examine points or persons of interest. In addition to high-resolution quality and 360-degree view planes, the cameras are capable of tracking motion and movement and are equipped with flashing lights and sirens, the city says.

“Each camera comes with a flashing light, which will flash blue during the nighttime hours to indicate that police officers are monitoring the cameras,” Scheuring said, noting surveillance information is collected and stored for future criminal prosecutions. “The footage from each camera is stored for a minimum of 30 days, and the cameras offer a 360-degree recording point of view.”

The estimated total cost of the Chinatown security camera system upgrade is $980,000, with about $450,000 coming from federal Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds, the city says.

The mayor lauded the latest surveillance cameras as needed improvements toward public safety in Chinatown.

“These cameras are state of the art and a tremendous upgrade over anything that the city has ever utilized before, and it is impossible to overstate the impact that this new system will have in terms of making Chinatown a safer community for everyone,” Blangiardi said in a written statement. “When it comes to public safety, we’re committed to doing everything we can to make our communities feel safer in places where they live, work and play, and this is a pivotal step in creating the Chinatown we want to see.”

Despite the city’s need to quell crime in Chinatown, others have concerns over added powers of high-tech police surveillance versus the public’s rights to privacy.

“I think what sets this apart from a lot of other technologies is that it is really, really high-tech and state of the art … this level of analytics when it comes to surveillance is extremely alarming,” Jongwook “Wookie” Kim, legal director for ACLU Hawaii, told the Star-Advertiser by phone. “To be clear, it invades the privacy of not just people who are doing things that might be illegal, it impacts every single person.”

He added that such technology — which has the ability to powerfully zoom in on people to photograph and record them — could have a chilling effect over the general public.

“Just knowing that the government and, specifically, the police department is watching over your every move when you are in an area, it’s going to chill you and prevent you from doing things you might otherwise do,” he said. “And that’s not the type of society that we want, and it’s not the type of society our constitutions permit.”

Kim noted this kind of technology may also “enable over-enforcement of existing laws.”

“It’s also going to allow abuse by those in charge of the surveillance,” he said, adding it could have a discriminatory impact against certain segments of the community. “Meaning people who look a certain way — marginalized groups, houseless people — they are going to be seen more in the camera, and they are going to be a lot easier to target for whatever it is people want to target them for, so all of that is very concerning.”

Kim noted privacy rights found in both the U.S. Constitution — under the Fourth Amendment, which prevents unreasonable searches and seizures by the government on individuals — and under the Hawaii State Constitution’s Article 1, Sections 6 and 7, also come into play.

“Hawaii has its own free- standing rights to privacy,” said Kim, “and Section 7 is most analogous to the federal Fourth Amendment in that it talks about unreasonable searches and seizures but it also talks about invasions of privacy.”

ACLU Hawaii — which currently plans no legal action in this matter — intends to pay close attention to this police surveillance and privacy rights issue, he said.

“We don’t want to become the next Big Brother state, and it’s a step in that direction,” Kim added. “This is scary, I’m personally scared.”

According to Scheuring, HPD’s overt video monitoring to prevent crime in Chinatown as well as Waikiki was established by law — under Ordinance 59 — in 1998. To date, no legal challenges have advanced due to that city monitoring law, he said.

“The Office of the Corporation Counsel does not recall a lawsuit challenging the ordinance and can definitively state that there is no such lawsuit pending,” he said.

Meanwhile, the city has no plans to install similar cameras in other locations around Oahu.

“But the mayor is always open to having that conversation if crime statistics indicate a need in other communities,” he added.