Fruit Stand Surveillance Nabs Thief

An enterprising farmer helped police nab a thief after he set up a surveillance camera at his Beamsville fruit stand.

Niagara Regional Police say the farmer installed the camera after he experienced ongoing cash shortages from the money box at his fruit stand.

Cameras Becoming More Common in Schools

Video surveillance cameras are becoming a common feature of student life - now even in middle and elementary schools - as local officials seek greater security for children and school property.

In district after district, the desire for additional security and the cost of replacing or maintaining property destroyed by vandalism have routinely overridden qualms about possible invasion of privacy.

In Lexington, the Clarke Middle School will be the latest to have a video security system installed next summer - becoming the third school in town to have one - but school officials have yet to draw up a written policy governing safeguards of civil liberties for those under camera surveillance.

"I would expect them to have a system in place to keep them private and for police use only," said Debora Hoard, copresident of the Parent Student Teacher Association at Lexington High School. "If there was an incident, then I would expect them to use them - but not the kind of daily monitoring that a Big Brother society would make me think of."

Lexington School Committee chairwoman Helen Lutton Cohen conceded there are no written rules in place that spell out who can see the surveillance tapes, how long they are kept, and what they are used for, to protect privacy.

School Surveillance on a High School Budget

There were few if any surveillance cameras in the high school when Jason Jones graduated from Wyoming Area 17 years ago. Today, the district is in the final stage of installing 63 cameras hooked up to a complete surveillance system that Jones designed, one that filled the district’s need for monitoring without emptying taxpayers’ wallets.

It’s an accomplishment in which he takes great pride, especially since it was for his alma mater.

“I love this school and the fact that we couldn’t see some incidents bothered me,” Jones said when he pitched the new surveillance system to the school board in August. With the new system, there are more than twice as many cameras capturing images with better resolution, and the images can be reviewed 16 at a time on one computer screen or on wireless devices carried by district personnel. Jones and district administrators can even sign on to the system from outside the school and see what is going on inside, he said.

All the equipment was carefully chosen by Jones to provide the most bang for the buck. He recalled reviewing initial specifications and an early project estimate when he first joined the district almost two years ago. “My first thought was I could put a smart board in every classroom for that estimate,” Jones said. He said while surveillance systems can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, he knew he could come up with a plan that would protect the school for much less than that.