BLOOMINGTON — To make patrons and business owners in its bar district and downtown business corridor feel safer, the City of Bloomington is developing a wireless camera network.

Since September of 2011, the city has been testing wireless camera models at Main Street intersections at Mulberry, Monroe and Market streets, as part of a pilot Downtown Camera Project.
“We have 4-5 different cameras placed in downtown Bloomington in that bar district and business corridor that are monitoring essentially the center line of traffic and sidewalk areas and public areas of downtown during day and night,” said Jack McQueen, supervisor of the Bloomington Police Department’s crime and intelligence analysis unit. “They’re down there as a crime prevention tool.”
The security cameras monitor “an L-shaped path from the Coliseum to the parking deck in Bloomington to all the way down to the last bar in the bar district,” said McQueen.
The pilot project is being financed through $142,000 grant that State Farm Foundation awarded the Bloomington Police Department in 2008. The grant has also financed an online crime mapping system and a portable wireless camera system for the police department.
“The last piece of that grant proposal was the exploration of how we could utilize wireless technology to monitor areas that we don’t monitor 24 hours a day,” said McQueen. “We don’t have the manpower and money to do that.”
The cameras utilize Anixter technology that is utilized in wireless camera networks worldwide.
The camera footage is archived and made available for criminal investigations. The camera footage is not monitored.
“They’re not there to monitor live right now and we don’t anticipate in the near future that they’re going to be monitored live at any point,” said McQueen. “They’re down there as a tool to look at a crime after it has happened.
“So if somebody reports a robbery or a street fight involving four or five people and they give us the location of it and say it occurred around 2 a.m. and it’s within camera range, we can go back and view the footage to see that in fact it happened. If there is any official evidence on those recordings, they can aid in the investigation and further prosecution of the individuals.”
The city is testing various camera models, ranging from 3-megapixel to 12-megapixel cameras.
“We’ve got a variety of high-end cameras to low-end, low-budget cameras to figure out what the best combination of wireless speed and camera type is going to be,” said McQueen. “You can see things (on the 3-megapixel cameras) that aren’t crystal clear, all the way up to a high-definition, 12-megapixel cameras that looks like you’re watching high-definition TV.
“We’re going to work towards a solution to balance the cost of all those higher-end ones with how many cameras you can afford to put out there. Our goal is to get the best bang for our buck.”
The city is determining the camera placements and software they want for their permanent wireless camera network. They have also studied a wireless camera network in Springfield that monitors the buildings in the Capitol complex and city’s downtown area, and visited the Anixter Infrastructure Solutions Lab in Glenview.
Bloomington Information Technology Manager Scott Sprouls hopes to present a final purchase plan for a permanent wireless camera network to the Bloomington City Council in February.
Once the permanent wireless camera network is established, the city will be able to add cameras to the network periodically.
“Whenever we start — there may be five cameras or fewer or more,” said Sprouls. “We’ll be able to add cameras as we see fit.”
Sprouls expects the wireless camera network to be up and running by spring of 2012.