Atlanta

Personal surveillance systems help metro Atlanta police catch high-profile murder suspects

ATLANTA — Police can use resident and business security cameras to help solve crimes, but only if you allow them.

There have been at least three high-profile murders in metro Atlanta solved this way in the past two months.

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WSB Tonight’s Courtney Francisco spoke to Steven McEntyre, who installed some of the security cameras that helped police catch suspects.

“It’s bittersweet to know that someone lost their life, and I’m glad to know that we were able to play a part in helping to solve that problem,” said McEntyre.

Atlanta Police credited security cameras for helping catch the man they say stabbed a woman inside her gated Buckhead community in December.

Also in December, the Atlanta Police Department said surveillance footage helped them identify the man who killed Fulton County Sheriff’s Deputy James Thomas while he was off duty.

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In January, cameras captured a man murdering someone he knew at a Taco Mac in Cobb County.

The footage is so critical, police say, that they are renewing their push to get residents and businesses to link their systems to the department.

Community members can go to connectatlanta.org and register their camera location.

By registering personal surveillance cameras, police a map of where surveillance footage could be. Then, when a crime happens, officers can send a text to camera owners in that area, asking them to upload the video that detectives can review for suspects.

Residents can take that a step further by buying a device that allows officers to watch videos themselves. Police admit some critics do have privacy concerns with that.

“They can totally say that, hey, we want the PD to have access to it on demand in real-time, or they can say only in the event of an emergency we would like you to stream that footage,” said Marshall Freeman.

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Freeman is Deputy Chief Administrative Officer. “You absolutely can turn it off at your discretion, and totally, I can tell you, with having just under 15,000 cameras in the network, big brother is not watching you today.”

McEntyre said in the recent murder cases, owners of the surveillance footage handed it over to detectives.

In the Buckhead and Cobb County cases, officers caught suspects in 48 hours or less. In the case of Deputy Thomas, officers had a suspect in jail within five days.

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