FAIRFIELD — The police department hopes to install 18 additional cameras equipped with artificial intelligence in the town’s schools to respond to potential security threats.
The department requested nearly $108,000 from the town’s COVID-19 relief funds to bring the total AI surveillance cameras at Fairfield schools to 30, Police Cheif Robert Kalamaras told the Representative Town Meeting this week.
He said police have already installed 12 of the “off-site” cameras for early detection surveillance that can identify vehicles and some physical characteristics of suspects and ping officers’ cell phones in the case of an alert within 10 seconds.
Kalamaras said the technology can identify vehicles without license plate information, decipher between models like convertibles and pickup trucks and identify features like clothing accessories in a way that can narrow the department’s “search filters” when officers are trying to locate a suspect.
He added that the cameras come with a roughly $6,000 annual maintenance cost, and he has consulted with Superintendent Michael Testani about how the department operates the cameras around school sites.
“We kind of dipped our toe in the pool for a little bit just to get a couple of cameras, implement them and see how effective they would be in the town of Fairfield, and they have been extremely effective to the extent that we would want to augment our system,” Kalamaras said.
Kalamaras said surrounding municipalities, including Bridgeport, Westport, Norwalk and Stamford, have already implemented the AI surveillance cameras around schools. He said the system operating the cameras are connected to Bridgeport’s Fusion Center, which tracks police surveillance cameras across the city.
Dr. Hannah Gale, a District 6 RTM member, said the cameras seem “more like a euphemism” for a legitimate security measure against a safety threat like a school shooting, instead serving a narrower purpose of tracking down a suspect.
Kalamaras said domestic incidents tend to be the most common cases that police investigate around schools, and the cameras can deliver information about potential suspects who arrive. He said the cameras can also help the department solve other crimes within their vicinity, pointing to a recent fatal hit and run involving a motorcycle in which officers were able to arrest the suspect within an hour because of the camera technology that identified his vehicle.
Gale also raised concerns that this could lead down a path of too many security cameras being installed and infringing on people’s lives.
“Where is this line?” she asked. “Because we’re talking about adding all of these cameras, as you said on top of the state cameras. They want to put ticket cameras in. Before you know it, we’re going to be living in a prison.”
Kalamaras said the state already uses the same cameras at traffic intersections in the area.
Karen McCormack, a District 2 representative, pressed Kalamaras on the department’s work to double down on firm security measures that can prevent a safety threat as major as a school shooting, ranging from extra funding to officers who are stationed outside of schools.
Kalamaras said Fairfield has struck a steady balance in its security levels to maintain school safety, but there is no single “magic button” that would eliminate the looming threat of a criminal incident. He said the department learned effective prevention involves early social intervention based on a symposium the National Threat Assessment Center conducted last year.
“It’s a multifaceted approach, and I think the more people that get involved and are looking at those things that don’t belong is probably the best approach,” he said. “And you have to look at balance. Do we go too far where there are police officers standing at the front doors of the school at an elementary school? I don’t know. That’s up for the community to decide I think.”
The roughly $108,000 for the surveillance cameras would come out of Fairfield’s cache of COVID-19 relief funding from the American Rescue Plan Act that dates back to 2021. Jared Schmitt, the town’s chief financial officer, said the town still has about $1.5 million of unallocated ARPA funds, but officials are confident they can distribute the remaining lot by the town’s deadline for allocations that sits about 18 months ahead.
Fairfield received $24.8 million in COVID relief from the federal government in 2021, which town officials planned to funnel into the police department, flood mitigation and emergency aid for locals. The police department was set to earn $3.7 million from the federal aid under the town’s proposed plan that year.
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