Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
Available On Air Stations
Watch Live

Public Safety

Roundtable On Useless SDPD Surveillance System, No Convention Center Expansion, San Diego Court Backlogs

Roundtable On Useless SDPD Surveillance System, No Convention Center Expansion, San Diego Court Backlogs
No SDPD Surveillance, Convention Center Expansion, Relief for Court Budgets HOST: Mark SauerGUESTS: Andrew Keatts, Voice Of San Diego Liam Dillon, Voice Of San Diego Doug Sherwin, San Diego Daily Transcript

MARK SAUER: I am Mark Sauer and KPBS Roundtable starts now. Joining me today on the Roundtable are my guests are reporters Andrew Keatts and Liam Dillon of Voice of San Diego, and reporter Doug Sherwin of the San Diego Daily Transcript. Well, it was called operation secure San Diego, begin in 2010. It was supposed to be A high-tech marriage of surveillance cameras with computers and police squad cars and it was going to keep San Diego safer. Cops would have instant access to live images from cameras all over San Diego. Here is ex-Mayor Bob Filner touting the system in 2012, followed by officer Lloyd Cook explaining how it is supposed to work. [AUDIO FILE PLAYING] BOB FILNER: Operation Secure allows private cameras in private businesses to feed live streams of security right into police cars. It helps our first responders, and obviously any activity the police are involved with. LLOYD COOK: If I'm going to location, I can bring up this graphical map, and there are little red flags where my cameras are. I can click on it and go to the link, and click on the video feed. For instance, this is Hoover High School. [END AUDIO FILE] MARK SAUER: It was supposed to be operation big brother, now it is operation little brother. What was it supposed to be, and what is the reality of this? ANDREW KEATTS: The idea is, the basically said there are already have a cameras all over the city, that all of the smaller businesses, some of them are relatively elaborate systems that have 15 to 25 cameras. They are already out there, if we can pool resources together and pull them into a central operating system, we can use it as a force multiplier to increase the effectiveness of the police force when they are responding to crimes, and specifically first responders would be able to go to an active shooter situation and pull up a live feed of what was happening in know how to respond. That was the idea, it wasn't a secret, it was on the front page of the website and they held press conferences. They candidate, and it got media coverage. Recently, it occurred to us that we should look into it a little bit and see how things were going. MARK SAUER: How is that surveillance system? ANDREW KEATTS: Yeah, how is that surveillance system that we heard so much about four years ago and we heard a little bit more about it two years ago in 2012. Immediately it became clear that it was working well, because they didn't want to tell us anything about it. This will they said everything about the program is exempt for public safety reasons, we don't have to tell you anything, it's not subject to public record. And then, contradictory to that, they said here is a list of forty-one places that have the cameras, feel free to do with it what you want. By the way, the program has not been admitted, it is not operational. MARK SAUER: Two years down the road? ANDREW KEATTS: Yes. So finally we reached out to them and said explain the situation. If it's not operational, what is this list of forty-one cameras of? What are they a part of? Long story short, one of the quotes was it is operational, it's just not 100% operational. Which is pretty funny. MARK SAUER: Which is to say, it's not really working at all. ANDREW KEATTS: Yeah, I don't know what that means. Basically, they have forty-one locations that have filled out the form that gives the police department access to the feeds. MARK SAUER: So they got permission to use the images. ANDREW KEATTS: Right. Half of them can't be used at all, because of compatibility issues between the software of the cameras in the software the department uses. That was a complete surprise, they didn't realize different manufacturers use different software. So half of those, the feed is useless. The other thing they did not foresee is that the police cars that were supposed to be up to pull up the live feeds for this revolutionary response system, they don't have operating systems on their computers that are fast enough to pull up live feeds while they are in motion. So they need 4G modems in the computers to be of the do anything with it. Right now, every car in the department system has a 3G modem. Half of the feeds are useless, and 100% of the feeds can be accessed by the cars that are its make use of them. It is hardly the terrifying surveillance state that we had in mind. MARK SAUER: The Orwellian fears have not been realized. In your recording, you found they are going to try to remedy this, they're going to try to get cars up to speed fairly soon to get the higher read rate there. ANDREW KEATTS: They've been pretty open about the fact that this project has not done what they thought it would be able to do, it has not been as successful as they would've liked. They are trying to get 4G modems in the cars, but that is something they were going to do anyway. They are doing backend IT work to try to make these feeds more accessible, and they are still passively accepting forms from private companies that want to give their feeds to them, but they have stopped going out into the community and saying we have a great program, we should really be a part of it, and we can help you out if you become part of it. Now, it's just if someone decides on their own volition they want to be part of it, they can be. LIAM DILLON: Maybe you can speak to some of the larger issues here related to public safety, versus the concerns about oversurveillance from police that we're seeing a lot of in the news these days. It is good to understand it does not work now, but at some point when it might work, is this something that is going to be effective? Do we know? ANDREW KEATTS: I think that is what is ultimately important. There has been a forced decision that people have made, that we are willing to give up some level of privacy in exchange for some level of security. There are people who disagree with this, but that is basically what is happening around the country and around the world. Right now, there seems to be some level of privacy that is being given up. There is a complete inability to show whether there is any increased level of security that correlates with that loss of privacy. Right now, what they said when I said can you give us any indication that there has been any crime or issue resolved with the help of Operation Secure San Diego? You don't have to say if not for Operation Secure San Diego this perpetrator would be walking free, just did it help? Maybe, we can say for certain, it may have been of great use of maybe it did or didn't, and they said we don't have a statistical tracking system that would tell us that in any certain terms. To me, I think there's a level of responsibility if you're going to go out and actively request these feeds to bring them in and to do something that results in a fundamental laws of privacy, that you take the responsibility seriously and track to see that the public is getting some sort of return on that. There does not seem to be a situation where that is happening right now. DOUG SHERWIN: Do you think once it gets up to speed that it will be crossing that line? Do you think there will be more public outcry? ANDREW KEATTS: Yeah, there have stopped talking about it to some extent which seems to be there admission that this program has not gone anywhere. If it starts to go anywhere, it will be incumbent on them in the media to ensure that they have these conversations about what is being given up. Frankie, I think those positions to be happening now, hopefully that will start happening, but I think eventually if this is a fully operational and functional program, that's a conversation that needs to be there. MARK SAUER: To summarize, are there any plans to get this going? Specific budget line items to get this going? ANDREW KEATTS: They said there's no specific budgeting for this program, it's being operated by third parties. Things on their and our things they have to do anyway. They say there has been no money spent on it. Then again, we made a specific request to make sure that was the case, and that was one of the things that fell under the public exemption. As far as more money being spent or what money is being spent now, that is something we know right now. However, they have said that this pilot program at San Diego unified schools, there are two schools that have cameras linked into the system. In 2012, there was a discussion about expanding the pilot program, they said they have not completely given up on the thought of spending that. MARK SAUER: All right will see in the follow up if this comes together. City leaders were delighted when a Superior Court judge through the legal are water on a shaky scheme to finance a half-billion dollar convention center expansion, by taxing tourists. But the joy was temporary, a state appeals court reversed the original ruling, saying that taxpayers needed to approve the tourist tax by a two thirds margin. That was a big win for Corey Briggs. Let's start with that plan, give us the high points, how is that supposed to work? We should say they did not collect any money in this point. LIAM DILLON: In one sense, it was super simple. Basically people who stayed in hotels would pay more when they paid, and that would go toward the convention center expansion. That is the simple version. MARK SAUER: Tourists come in, pay 2% more and that goes to the convention center expansion? LIAM DILLON: It would depend upon where they were staying within the city, but yes, you go to a hotel within the city and you pay a little more, what you pay goes towards the expansion. That a simple way of explaining. The problem fell in because they tried to make that significantly more competent, which was having it a vote of the hotel industry to impose the tax on the actual tourists rather than the hotel businesses themselves. They tried to do that in a very convoluted and comp catered way, and the reason for that was to avoid the situation that we are now, which is likely that there would have to be some public vote rather than a hotel business vote for this to happen. It was a calculated risk that was more likely that this plan was going to withstand legal muster and people would vote for it on their own, it turns out that did not work out. MARK SAUER: The attorney that was successful in blocking this, that was Corey Briggs. Here's what he had to say it about it this week on KPBS about the successful lawsuit. [AUDIO FILE PLAYING] COREY BRIGGS: You had a group of people approving a tax, namely the hoteliers, that serve only to benefit. They bear no burdens whatsoever of the additional costs of tourists coming to San Diego. In our society, the Constitution says when you have a funding mechanism like that, when it is called a tax, everyone has to vote on it. In this case, the problem of coming up with a way for paying for the expansion, the cure was worse than the problem. Cure was disenfranchising all of us in our right to vote. [END AUDIO FILE] MARK SAUER: Now looking at that original scheme again, wouldn't this make San Diego less of a competitive city with other convention cities, if you're really checking the tax up on people coming here in buying hotel rooms? LIAM DILLON: If you subscribe to the theory that anytime you raise taxes, that makes situations more competitive, then sure. But to argue the opposite, right now the convention business is shrinking pie. Less people are going to conventions and meetings, it is easier to have teleconferences, and across the country other cities are expending convention centers. We have to make sure that San Diego is a great place to visit, and we get the best bang for the buck, and the biggest conventions. To do that, we need a bigger convention center to accommodate the giant conferences and those conferences that are rich. When the doctors and engineers come to town, they have a lot of money to spend around, and there are the dimensions that the city wants to attract but can't right now because the convention center is too small. ANDREW KEATTS: The thing that is funny about that, the convention center by is shrinking, and the convention space pie is expanding at the same time in every city in the country. Two things are happening simultaneously, and every single city is making the same calculations of the city of San Diego is making. But not only are they competing for finite conventions, it's a decreasing amount of resources. And yet, they are spending more and more money locked into this arms race situation. MARK SAUER: Comic-Con is the big dog in town, we keep saying that it has outgrown the convention center. We have to expand if we want to keep Comic-Con and get other mega conventions here. We have to do this. But we had Comic-Con here couple of weeks ago, the New York times did a story to this end of that saying that the geeks do not spend, they don't have the money. They are couch surfing or eating at Subway. Maybe is more lucrative to have a smaller convention center. Do we need this expansion? LIAM DILLON: Comic-Con and is not threatened to leave. It similar to the Chargers, they haven't threatened to leave, it's everyone else around has been speculating that they might go. It has been similar with Comic-Con. If you go down there, it's a zoo. There are a ton of people around all of the big hotels. It's all over the place. I'm sure they could benefit from a larger center the same way some of the larger conventions could benefit from a larger center. There has been no direct threat from them that they would leave unless the convention happens. MARK SAUER: So is it worth the half-billion dollars to expand this thing? DOUG SHERWIN: I think there's an easier way to get more space of the convention center without Billie more rooms. In a lot of the talk it's Comic-Con. Just make Comic-Con two more days, make it a whole week, all of a sudden you just increased the amount of space that you need by a quarter. It's very simple, and you're not spending taxpayer dollars to build for 11.5 months of the year that will go unused. I haven't heard any other convention saying that were not going to come here in this you expand. MARK SAUER: It is just Comic-Con. ANDREW KEATTS: Meanwhile, the Chargers are jumping into the fray, saying something similar, saying we have a solution, their solution is billed as a stadium and we will call that part of the convention center. MARK SAUER: So it would be football games, limited number impaired to baseball games, and he publicly financed Petco Park nearby, but all of the other days of the year you could spillover and use it to spread that out. ANDREW KEATTS: For their part, the convention center and the port and other people involved in that have been unequivocal about the fact that is not a good solution, that conventions don't want to send people five blocks away. MARK SAUER: I wanted to get back to Corey Briggs, the ubiquitous attorney, you profiled him recently. Tell us about him and some the lawsuits that he has been pushing against the city. LIAM DILLON: He's quite a character, you might remember him as being one of the people who first blew the whistle on Bob Filner. He is well known in the city for that, but around the state he has a different reputation. The California environmental quality law is one of the most notorious and famous laws in the state, it serves for any major project, it has to go a like the process of getting an environmental review. MARK SAUER: He plays it like a drum. LIAM DILLON: No lawyer in the state files more lawsuits under this law then Corey Briggs, which earned him enmity of a lot of developers in the state as a result. MARK SAUER: And cities up and down the state. LIAM DILLON: I spoke to the Mayor of Chino who said listen, if you want to build a birdhouse in Chino, Corey Briggs is going to sue you over it. He has been successful at adding settlements for this, solar panels that are environmentally friendly, but he is also very successful in living in a very nice house and having good welcome out of this. MARK SAUER: So he makes money this way, so let's get back to the convention center, who pays his fee on the convention center? LIAM DILLON: The appellate court said that he is entitled to these. MARK SAUER: So he was successful on the behalf of the public and the environmental standpoint. I'm sure we have not heard the last of Corey Briggs. We'll turn to another topic. It is a well-known legal maxim, justice delayed is justice denied. In a report this week released by the San Diego County Bar Association, it painted a bleak picture about how funding cuts over the last few years are delaying cases and delaying justice in myriad ways here in San Diego. Doug, tell us what that report says. What are the high points? DOUG SHERWIN: The court system in California laws $1.2 billion between 2007 and 2012. Now Brown is trying to say I believe we need to restore funding, it has gone too far. But he has done is not made more significant cuts, but hasn't added any money easier. Just to provide the services they are providing now, the courts said they needed about $200 million. They call it the treading water budget. MARK SAUER: Another $200 million just to keep the level they are at now, which everyone in the system is inadequate. DOUG SHERWIN: And they got $85 million. They are well short. It is creating real-world consequences. For example, the process of default judgment, which is when a defendant fails to respond to a lawsuit can take six months, when it used only take two weeks. There is an eight week backlog on the issuance of misdemeanor warrants for failure to comply with a court order. Another one that I like, landlords who have tenants who cannot pay rent and they want to evict them, they can't. They are having to wait seven, eight, nine months, to evict them. With California law, they have to still provide services like maintenance, parking, for tenants. The tenant can just wait it out and live rent free in the landlord can't do anything about it because of the long lines and the backlog of court cases that this deficit has created. MARK SAUER: So if you file a civil suit, it will take that much longer to get to trial, it is affecting the marriage and the family court systems. What about on the criminal side, there is a priority and criminal cases because of the constitutional right to a speedy trial. DOUG SHERWIN: Most of the brunt is being felt on the civil side because there are constitutional protections on the criminal side. ANDREW KEATTS: It's wild to me, is a most something that makes you think, plan people pay more attention to this? You see Family Court appointments going from two weeks to two months. That is on the lower end of the delay, but you are talking potentially serious by changing situations taking four times as long to play out. MARK SAUER: I notice on a statewide level, folks who have already have Mayor's dissolved, they want to get re-married, and the backlog is preventing them from getting the ink signed on the divorce. DOUG SHERWIN: A lot of times you can prevail any case, but to actually get the rewards of the victory, is taking so long because of the backlog. ANDREW KEATTS: Jerry Brown has been going around the state saying California's back, our budget is back, the economy is back, we are reinstating services that we cut during the recession. What will it take to get the court to the point that they are not just treading water, but actually doing what we expect them? DOUG SHERWIN: They need more funding. The San Diego Superior Court budget, they will have a six million-dollar deficit because the increased operating costs next year. MARK SAUER: What is the overall ballpark budget? DOUG SHERWIN: $167 million. MARK SAUER: So you're still looking at another $6 million cut? DOUG SHERWIN: And $3 million the next fiscal year. The San Diego Superior Court has been really good about this, they saw this coming down the road and made little cuts here and there and they had stashed reserves, but the reserves are gone, there is no more fat to cut, they're going into the muscle and bone now. MARK SAUER: More thing going around the civil side now, used to be able to get a court reporter and a transcript, if there's a appeal situation, for whatever reason new transcript, and that has gone out the window. That has been a direct impact of this. DOUG SHERWIN: If you want a court reporter at your case, you have to pay for it. A court reporter is crucial for appeal, because you have an actual record of what went on in the court. If you don't have that, you can't appeal a case, it makes it very difficult. For a lot of clients, who don't have the money to pay for an attorney and now you have to pay for a court reporter ñ MARK SAUER: It's just a much bigger hill to climb if you want to file a lawsuit. What did the San Diego Superior Court do here? They tried to find efficiencies and streamline things to mitigate cuts. DOUG SHERWIN: They tried to make some earlier cuts, and now they are doing information technology inside instead of outsourcing it. MARK SAUER: They had a lack, the paper mountains and the other parts of the government had become more efficient and digitalized. We have seen the courts lacking, I've seen that here in covering cases. DOUG SHERWIN: They have, they are starting to get better at that. They have been trying to slowly implement a paperless system over last few years to file e-documents. MARK SAUER: So maybe there is a silver lining? LIAM DILLON: Sort of, just as a member of the public who tries to find information about? Cases, it is extremely difficult to do that, in part because everything is on paper. In the criminal side is shocking, you go in and ask for a file and you have to wait in line for an hour and wait for the file, that takes ten minutes and you have to give the file back rather than having a series of computers so you could see it from home. MARK SAUER: Sitting from your desk. LIAM DILLON: Totally. The federal system cost money to do that, but you can look at your convenience, which saves the ability of having fifteen different clerks running around trying to find paper files. ANDREW KEATTS: I remember Judge Timothy Taylor wrote on some very high-profile cases, SANDAG long-term transportation plan and Balboa Park, he began some of this high-profile rulings with the lengthy diatribe with the effects of the budget cuts on the system and how it is delaying justice and all of that. MARK SAUER: We'll have to see how this plays out and cover it as we go along. That wraps up another week of stories at the KPBS Roundtable. I would like to thank my guests, and a reminder, all of the stories we discussed today are available on our website at KPBS.org. I am Mark Sauer, thank you for joining us today on the Roundtable.

No Snaps For SDPD Camera Surveillance

“Secure San Diego,” a surveillance network the San Diego Police Department began in 2010, was supposed to provide the agency with access to all private and public cameras all over the city to deter crime, provide live feeds of crime scenes, collect evidence and identify sketchy people and conduct.

These were either worthy crime-fighting goals or goals worthy of Big Brother, depending on one's perspective.

Advertisement

In any case, there are just 41 addresses with cameras around the city the police department has access to. Of these, 20 are actually inaccessible because the cameras use software incompatible with the department’s.

“Every camera seems to be a bit different,” department spokesman Mark Herring said.

Worse, all 500 of the department’s cruisers currently have 3G connections for receiving images, when they need 4G. The program has been announced, hyped and updated at various press conferences by various mayors over the years. But it is still not operational.

Convention Center Funding Plan Really A Tax

San Diego attorney Corey Briggs sued the city of San Diego because he thought the city’s plan to fund the expansion of the downtown convention center was really a tax levied by hoteliers without a public vote.

Advertisement

Yes, that would be illegal, said the court, agreeing with Briggs. The city is deciding whether or not to appeal the decision — which throws its largest planned construction project into jeopardy — to the California Supreme Court.

In the meantime, Briggs has several other lawsuits against the city queued up:

  • One alleging the Convention Center expansion violates environmental laws.
  • Another against the hotel tax to promote tourism.
  • A legal challenge to the use of a lease-revenue bond for infrastructure repair.
  • One that would require City Council President Todd Gloria and City Attorney Jan Goldsmith to produce emails and texts about city business sent from their private accounts.

San Diego Courts Take Another Budget Hit

Beginning in 2008 when the economy began its nose dive, the California judicial system was not left out of the pool. The system, already stressed financially, took a 30 percent budget cut.

Courts were closed one day a week. Some were shuttered altogether. The business offices of San Diego’s East and South County courts were closed. Most cases were delayed (some to the point of automatic dismissal), and lines for anything legal were — and remain — long.

Governor Jerry Brown’s 2014-15 budget increases funding for the courts statewide by $160 million. San Diego Superior Court, however, will receive a net revenue decrease of $1 million from 2013-14. Because of increased operating costs, San Diego will have to cut $6 million in the current fiscal year and an additional $3 million in 2015-16.

The delays and backlogs caused by the earlier cuts are already disastrous for many litigants and will only get worse.

KPBS has created a public safety coverage policy to guide decisions on what stories we prioritize, as well as whose narratives we need to include to tell complete stories that best serve our audiences. This policy was shaped through months of training with the Poynter Institute and feedback from the community. You can read the full policy here.