Gentile warns crooks, ‘Smile, you’re on camera!’
The area in and around Bay Ridge’s Fifth Avenue is going to be a lot safer once the New York Police Department installs new hi-tech Argus surveillance cameras on the shopping strip, Councilman Vincent Gentile predicted.
“It could solve crimes very quickly,” said Gentile (D-Bay Ridge-Dyker Heights-Bensonhurst), who obtained funding in the city budget for the purchase of three of the cameras for Fifth Avenue – at 72nd, 76th and 82nd Streets. Suspects seen committing crimes on camera are subject to prosecution. “The film can be introduced as evidence in the case,” Gentile, a former assistant district attorney, told the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
Bay Ridge is one of several communities around the city where council members have successfully pushed for funding for the Argus cameras. New York City currently has 315 of the devices on the streets, the bulk of them, 145, located in Manhattan. The cameras are stored in large white boxes depicting the NYPD logo and are placed approximately 20 feet above ground. The city installed the first of the cameras in 2006.