Officials Say Police Not in the Picture : Traffic: L.A. rejects the cameras’ use in fighting crime. The system soon will be expanded to the Valley.

Designers of a traffic-monitoring system that will eventually include 100 closed-circuit TV cameras posted throughout Los Angeles are trying to avoid being caught between police who see the cameras as a potential crime-fighting tool and civil libertarians who call them a threat to privacy rights.

Los Angeles city transportation officials reject both such characterizations, saying the cameras are intended for the sole purpose of easing traffic congestion on Los Angeles’ ever-crowded streets. Turning the system into a crime-fighting tool, they argue, would create a political “hot potato” that would diminish its effectiveness as a traffic-fighting tool.

“It complicates our work if we have to serve another purpose,” said Anson Nordby, a city transportation engineer who helps operate the program, known as Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control, or ATSAC.

Already, 25 cameras are installed atop traffic signals at various gridlock-prone intersections around downtown Los Angeles, Westwood, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and Los Angeles International Airport.

Over the next 10 years, the city plans to expand ATSAC to 4,000 intersections with 100 cameras at major street crossings throughout the city.

The next expansion of the system, to be completed by 1995, is planned for 400 intersections in the San Fernando Valley between Victory and Ventura boulevards, stretching from Calabasas to Burbank. The $31.8-million project will include 26 closed-circuit cameras.

Such traffic-surveillance systems are gaining popularity as a way to use 21st-Century technology to fight a problem as old as the car. Similar programs have been used in the city of Anaheim since 1991 and on the Santa Monica Freeway since 1992.

And for the future, several companies, including Hughes Aircraft Co., are developing systems that use cameras not only to watch traffic but read license plates. Such systems could be used, for example, to read a car’s license number when the vehicle uses a toll road. A computer could debit a motorist’s charge account directly, rather than requiring the driver to slow down to toss change at a toll booth.

But city traffic experts have been trying to de-emphasize their use of closed-circuit cameras--even failing to show them on the official sketches of the system’s components--for fear that law enforcement officials will suggest the cameras become an “eye on the street” for police. They also worry about increasing citizens’ fears that the cameras will be used by “Big Brother” government.

“Right now we have a useful tool and what it could become is just a political hot potato,” Nordby said.

He points out that the scenes captured by the cameras are not videotaped (although recorders would be easy to install). He said city transportation officials have a policy stating that the cameras will never be used by police, but have issued no written guarantees.

Although law enforcement officials have yet to formally propose using the surveillance equipment to fight crime, they are interested in the system’s potential and say the ATSAC cameras could, with some adjustments, be a useful tool.

“If something happened and we got an observing technical eye there, I don’t see what the harm would be of doing something like that,” said Los Angeles Police Deputy Chief Mark A. Kroeker, commander of the city’s Valley units. “What is the difference between that and posting someone there on a stakeout situation?”

But he added that even if police do someday take advantage of the camera system, its use would be limited because the intersections under surveillance may not be the trouble spots that police want watched.

Los Angeles Police Officer John Girard, who has overseen civilian surveillance teams using video cameras to catch criminals in the Valley, said the cameras would be more useful for crime-fighting if they were not stationary.

“But if it was something you could move around, that would make it feasible,” he said.

Such talk makes Jonathan Turley cringe. He is a professor of law at George Washington University who teaches and writes about constitutional privacy issues.

He sees the use of closed-circuit cameras on public streets as part of the proliferation of government surveillance programs that he contends are gradually eating away at America’s right to privacy.

Although city transportation officials have vowed never to let the cameras become tools of law enforcement, Turley said political pressure to halt crime could force city officials to change their minds.

“There is a discernible movement toward acquiring video cameras for crime-stopper programs,” he said. “Very few people seem to understand that cameras are part of a collective movement that is putting a great deal of pressure on our collective rights.”

Even if the cameras are never used to catch criminals, Turley said, the increasing use of cameras by government agencies has a chilling effect on society, similar to what happens when a tape recorder is thrust in front of a group of friends at a dinner table.

“Collectively, they kill our sense of privacy,” he said. “What we are slowly becoming is a fishbowl society.”

David Sadofsky, a political science professor at Cal State Hayward, disagrees. He argues that the right to privacy does not extend to motorists on a public street.

“For me, driving is a very public activity,” he said. “If police tell me the best way to prevent crime is cameras on street posts then, for me, that is an appropriate use . . . and I wish we did more of it.”

The ATSAC system uses sensors in the pavement and cameras atop traffic signals to monitor traffic. Images from the cameras and readings from the sensors are sent to traffic experts stationed at a control center in downtown Los Angeles who use a computer to adjust the signals to speed traffic flow.

ATSAC made its Los Angeles debut on streets around the Memorial Coliseum prior to the 1984 Summer Olympics. Studies have shown the system moves motorists along 12% faster.

The traffic lights on most major thoroughfares in the city are synchronized so that motorists driving the speed limit will have few delays. But unlike that system, ATSAC adjusts signal patterns at a moment’s notice to respond to traffic volume.

The California Department of Transportation also operates 19 closed-circuit cameras along the Santa Monica Freeway under a similar program. Plans are in the works to eventually install a total of up to 350 additional cameras on 225 miles of freeway in Los Angeles and Ventura counties to gather information about accidents, delays and weather.

Last year, in the most recent phase of that program, Caltrans approved an $8.7-million plan to install 47 closed-circuit cameras on 35 miles of freeway passing through Los Angeles, Burbank, Glendale and Santa Clarita. The cameras are expected to be installed later this year.

Caltrans uses the cameras along with electronic sensors, ramp meter controls, changeable message signs and low-powered radio transmitters to monitor traffic flow. The images and information from such devices are fed to a control center monitored by Caltrans and the California Highway Patrol. The two agencies use the information to send emergency crews to remove the causes of traffic jams. Caltrans studies indicate that the system improves traffic speeds by about 15%.

Caltrans spokesman Steve Janosco said Caltrans also opposes any suggestion that the cameras be used to watch for speeders or stolen cars. He said CHP officials understand that the effectiveness of the system would diminish if the cameras were used for such purposes.

Those who monitor the system “are trained for traffic,” he said. “They are not trained for other things,” such as tracking fleeing vehicles.

But CHP Officer William Preciado said that although the CHP has not formally suggested a crime-fighting role for the cameras, he cannot rule out the possibility that it won’t ask for just that some day. “Maybe in the future they can be of an assistance,” he said.

In Anaheim, city officials have for two years operated a system similar to ATSAC that includes nine cameras at intersections around Disneyland and the Anaheim Stadium. The system is primarily designed to ease traffic flow when the streets become jammed following a big event, such as a Rams football game at Anaheim Stadium.

Jim Paral, principal traffic engineer for the city of Anaheim, said the issue of using the system to help police track criminals has never been raised. But he said city transportation officials have made it clear that they oppose any such suggestion.

“If they want a system for that, they should design their own,” he said.

The ATSAC System Los Angeles city transportation officials plan to install 100 cameras and thousands of street detectors on about 4000 intersections throughout the city over the next 10 years. Control Center: System computers and the operator’s station are used to monitor traffic flow using information from video cameras mounted above traffic signals and detectors buried in the streets. An operator adjusts the signals to ease traffic. Surveillance Cameras: Mounted on street signals to monitor traffic problems such as a flooded intersection or a collision. Traffic Signal Control Cabinet: Operates the traffic signals. It receives information from the loop detectors and the cameras and sends the information to an ATSAC control center. The cabinet also receives commands from control center to adjust the signals to improve traffic flow. Communications Multiplexer: A device that sorts data flowing between the control center and the intersections. System computers Vehicle Loop Detectors: Electronic devices in the pavement that are used to monitor traffic problems such as a flooded intersection or a collision. Source: Los Angeles City Department of Transportation