How cameras are helping stop crime in Prospect Heights

Not too long ago, it wasn't uncommon for Jose Antonio Ortiz to spot five or six gang members hanging out in Prospect Heights' Willow Trails Park as he walked past on his way from his school bus stop to his home.

The park sits within a hub of more than 80 apartment buildings commonly known as the Piper Lane neighborhood. The area south of Chicago Executive Airport had a bad reputation for crime and gang activity, and in the 1980s even earned the nickname “Sniper Lane.”

Today, the nickname is gone, as are most of the gang members, and Prospect Heights police give some of the credit to the city's decision to install surveillance cameras at the park and other parts of Piper Lane.

Ortiz, now 22, says these days he's free to take his younger brother to the park without worrying who else might be there.

The success of the cameras has Prospect Heights officials planning to add more. Last week, the city council approved a plan to spend up to $130,000 to buy 15 more surveillance cameras, many of which will be installed around Piper Lane.

Police say the cameras have helped them solve offenses ranging from shootings to domestic batteries, and work as a deterrent to prevent other crimes.

When Prospect Heights began its own police department in 1990, 200 to 250 gang members were known to hang out in the Piper Lane area, Deputy Police Chief Al Steffen said. Now only a handful remain, he said.

According to police, the department responded to more than 3,000 calls from the area around Willow Trails Park in 2003. In 2013, five years after a camera was first installed, the department received fewer than 250 calls.

Most recently, cameras helped catch a suspect accused of shooting two residents in March. The victims survived, but refused to cooperate with detectives, police said.

Police officers can monitor the cameras through a smartphone, a computer or a viewing station set up at the police department.

They're paid for with money received from drug forfeitures.

The decline in gang activity not only is a result of the cameras, but also of the department's efforts to reach out and connect with the area's young people.

“Since the geographical area isn't as big, it allows us to get to know people better and develop relationships bigger cities can't,” Steffen said.

Prospect Heights isn't the only Northwest suburban police department deploying cameras at trouble spots. In March, Rolling Meadows police installed cameras at the East Apartments near Algonquin Road and Weber Drive.

Rather than find the cameras obtrusive, Piper Lane residents and building owners say they appreciate having them in their neighborhood.

“It's not like I walk out of my house and I'm automatically being recorded,” Ortiz said. “All my neighbors here don't even know where the cameras are, or that they are even really in place.”

Ramani Karunagaran, who owns three buildings in the Wimbledon Lake Estates apartments in Prospect Heights, said the complex was stuck in a bad cycle before recent neighborhood improvements. Good tenants would quickly leave once they realized the amount of crime, and with the high vacancy rates, landlords couldn't afford to turn away those willing to live there.

“You'd have riff raff running through the building,” Karunagaran said. “They'd break open the main doors, vandalize our laundry room. They'd litter, graffiti, smoke weed ... Tenants were scared.”

Karunagaran has even added surveillance cameras to the three buildings she owns at the Baldwin Green apartment complex in Palatine.

When asked how residents react to the watchful eyes placed on them, Karunagaran said they're thankful someone is looking out for them and their belongings.

Vladimir Ulyanov, president of the Willow Park Homeowners Association, said even more cameras are needed, especially near Wimbledon.

“Obviously, people with criminal intent are coming over there,” he said. “We need to fight this together.”