Metropolitan Police Department: Hearing on Privacy vs. Security: Electronic Surveillance in the Nation's Capital

Hearing on Privacy vs. Security: Electronic Surveillance in the Nation's Capital

Charles H. Ramsey
Chief of Police
Metropolitan Police Department

Chief Charles H. Ramsey delivered the following statement to the US House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform Subcommittee on the District of Columbia, The Honorable Constance A. Morella, Chairwoman. The hearing was held March 22, 2002.

Madame Chair, Congresswoman Norton, other members of the Subcommittee, staff, and guests: In recent weeks, an awful lot has been written and spoken about the Metropolitan Police Department's Joint Operations Command Center and our use of closed circuit TV (CCTV) within that center. Much of the reporting and analysis has been factual and reasonably accurate. Regrettably, some of it has been less than accurate - and some has been pure fantasy. That is why I applaud the Subcommittee for calling today's hearing, and I thank you for the opportunity to inject not only facts, but also some perspective, into this discussion.

Let me state, up front, that the Metropolitan Police Department welcomes public scrutiny of, and public debate over, our policies, programs and actions. Our Joint Operations Command Center, and the technology behind it, have been - and remain - an open book. We have made the JOCC accessible to news reporters from throughout the region, across the country and around the world. We have demonstrated the center to law enforcement and political leaders from Europe, Asia, and North and South America. (Let me add that our open invitation to members of the Subcommittee and to staff remains, at your earliest convenience.) And when the ACLU and other privacy rights groups expressed concern about our use of CCTV, we immediately invited representatives of those groups in, for a demonstration and an open and frank airing of their concerns. The bottom line: we welcome public debate on this issue, but we ask that the debate be based on facts, not on conjecture or conspiracy theories.

Fact #1: The Metropolitan Police Department is using CCTV in public spaces only in a limited, legal and responsible manner.

Perhaps the biggest misconception in this whole area is that we are operating some type of 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week video monitoring operation. We are not. The Joint Operations Command Center is activated only during major events in our city - marches or demonstrations, Presidential Inaugurations and the like - or during periods of heightened alert for terrorism. In fact, the JOCC was scheduled to be activated for the first time during the September 2001 meetings of the IMF and World Bank Group, but the center was pressed into action ahead of schedule on September 11th. The JOCC was up and operational prior to the jet slamming into the Pentagon that morning, and it provided critical law enforcement support in the days and weeks that followed. Understand that the JOCC is not a video monitoring center, and that video is only one element of a multi-agency command complex that has become critically important in the post-9/11 environment.

The center was brought down several weeks after September 11th, but was re-activated on February 11, following the specific terrorist alert related to February 12th. The center remained in operation until the end of the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City on February 24th; other than a few demonstrations, it has not been operational since then. My point is that our use of video is need-driven - when there are specific and tangible public safety benefits from using the technology. Put another way, we are using video because we "should," not simply because we "can."

Another misconception is that our Department somehow has a vast network of hundreds of cameras at our disposal at any moment. We do not. Our current system has approximately one dozen cameras that are mounted on buildings in downtown DC and focused on critical areas that are at high risk of terrorist attacks. These sites include the National Mall, monuments and museums, the plaza outside Union Station, the public areas surrounding the White House and the Capitol, as well as some of the major highways leading into the downtown area. Geographically, these areas represent only a small sliver of Washington, DC, but we believe they represent the highest risk targets when it comes to terrorism. During times of heightened alert, the video cameras give us a clear, real-time view of these potential targets, without having to dedicate police officers on the ground to this type of monitoring activity. We can also accept video feeds in our Command Center from both the U.S. Park Police helicopter and the MPD's Falcon One helicopter.