Money diverted from police surveillance cameras to charity
Residents of northeast Wichita won’t be living under constant surveillance from police cameras, the City Council decided Tuesday.
Council member Lavonta Williams withdrew a plan to spend $290,000 deploying high-tech camera coverage to fight crime in the 1st Council District.
Instead, the money will go to a project run by the United Way of the Plains to encourage entrepreneurism, economic development and public safety in the 67214 Zip Code area, the heart of the historically African-American community in northeast Wichita.
The money comes from the sale of the Hyatt Regency Hotel last year. Each council member got $1 million from the $20 million sale to spend in their council district.
Williams’s original recommendation was to spend part of District 1’s share to expand the kind of round-the-clock, high-definition camera coverage currently being used for policing the Old Town nightlife district.
But Williams changed course Tuesday after several speakers and council members expressed concern about expanding police cameras into residential areas of the 1st District.
Robert Anderson, a barber, said he thinks the crime cameras would be “misappropriating funds” and would contribute to a “war on black youth” in the 1st District.
“You’d be doing this entire city a disservice and creating another environment more explosive than April 1980,” he said, referring to a day when race riots erupted in the northeast part of the city.
Council member James Clendenin said he doesn’t have a problem with deploying cameras in specific situations to address identified crime problems, but “I am very uncomfortable with blanket surveillance.”
Others complained that they felt the deployment of cameras in the 1st District would just help cement the area’s reputation as crime-ridden.
“Don’t label us again in District 1,” said resident James Roseboro.
Dion Lefler: 316-268-6527, @DionKansas
This story was originally published December 19, 2017 at 2:20 PM with the headline "Money diverted from police surveillance cameras to charity."