Is Big Brother Watching

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

By Ben Cannon

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-After the conclusion of an instantly legendary party last month to celebrate a local snowboarder magazine, someone put a few of the party’s attendees in an unfortunate situation. The Jackson Hole Snowboarder magazine party was legendary thanks to a surprise performance by Justin Timberlake, who happens to be one of the most famous music talents of the day. But a few partygoers will also remember that night for someone’s reckless actions.

As people spilled out from the party at the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar, someone – who police suspect attended the party and was probably drunk – got behind the wheel and sped in the wrong direction down a one-way street. Playing a one-sided game of chicken, the driver rammed his or her SUV into three parked vehicles before hauling off into the night.

A few witnesses watched in disbelief as the SUV, charging the wrong way in front of the Wort Hotel, down the single one-way block of Glenwood Ave., smashed into not one, but three cars, and sped away before anyone got the license plate. An owner of one of the damaged cars was among the witnesses to the rampage.

Despite eyewitness descriptions of the SUV, which resembled a grey Jeep Cherokee and had a rocket box mounted on the roof rack, investigators have struggled to locate the car or identify the driver, who inflicted several thousand dollars in damage. The victims are 20-somethings living on resort town wages and only had liability coverage, one law enforcement official said and without the person responsible, they will have to find a way to pay for repairs themselves. 

[Full disclosure: this reporter drives a grey Jeep Cherokee with a rocket box, and was called in for questioning. The police were interested in the damage on the front end of my vehicle, but on closer inspection they observed the slight rust that proved the body damage has been there for years.]

Authorities have obtained a Wort Hotel surveillance video that shows the wanted SUV but didn’t capture the license plate number, and so far it has not proven to be a crucial key to solving the case.

However, police had a more productive experience with surveillance footage in December, when a door camera at a Town Square bar helped authorities peg a case against a Jackson man accused of brutally beating a Wilson man into a coma.
The two surveillance videos indicate how parts of downtown Jackson are under constant video surveillance.

Most surveillance cameras are operated by local businesses that install them to help prevent theft and for liability purposes. Whenever a crime is reported, police routinely scan the surveillance footage from nearby businesses, which, if they have it, usually hand over the video voluntarily.

Police also monitor cameras installed in some public places. There are cameras in the parking garage, for example, and also one at the Jackson Hole skate park on High School Road. But there may also be a few cameras the police don’t want you to know about, according to one Jackson cop.

“There are a couple of cameras I can’t tell you about because it wouldn’t be within our policy,” said Det. Russ Rushill, an investigator with the Jackson Police Dept. Rushill explained that the authorities can install cameras only in very public areas, where someone does not have a right to privacy.

“A lot of people think there’s too much big brother power,” Rushill said, referring to the term for a totalitarian state spying on its citizens. “We only put cameras where you don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

Cameras in the parking garage have kept the town’s largest blank structure free of graffiti and thwarted auto burglaries, Rushill said, and the eye on the skating park is aimed at underage drinking.

Surveillance cameras are by no means a new phenomenon. Local law enforcement have relied on video evidence for more than two decades. But the cameras at the parking garage, completed in ‘08, and the skate park, where a camera was installed in the last year, represent relatively new eyes in the community.
Public cameras have also expanded out of the realm of security and as a 21st century form of entertainment and marketing. In recent years, Web cams pointed at some of the area's more photogenic locations have become popular attractions on the Internet, including for skiers who want to suss out parking at the top of Teton Pass or snow coverage at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.

The younger generations of residents who transplanted to the valley will include members who occasionally stand in front of the main elk antler arch and wave, fulfilling the wish of a loved one, often a mother, looking at the Town Square from a computer screen in some other part of the country.

And while policing society may not be the primary purpose of Web cams, if an eye is fixed at a popular location long enough, sooner or later it's going to see something that interests authorities.

Take, for example, an incident from May of last year, when concessionaire employees in Yellowstone National Park were terminated and temporarily banned from the park

for urinating in Old Faithful. Someone outside of the park reported the episode to park officials after watching it unfold live over the Web cam pointed at America's most iconic geyser. Oh, and by the way, according to a park service Web site, the Old Faithful Web cam attracts more than 2.5 million unique visits annually making it one of the most viewed Web cams in the world.

Some people say the presence of all the cameras raises questions about the balance between privacy and security. Linda Burt, who heads the Wyoming chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said this is a unique issue for a state known for its small-town feel.

“We’re always very leery of these kinds of invasions of privacy, and I do think they’re an invasion of privacy,” Burt said.

While she conceded that a right to privacy does not always trump the desire for security, Burt said a community has to ask itself some tough questions.
“You always have to weigh that freedom and how invasive you’re willing to let your government be,” she said.

County Attorney Steve Weichman said that even while surveillance footage has helped his office win some memorable cases, he has mixed feelings about living in a society that can seem like it’s constantly being watched.

“It is interesting to me the extent to which privacy is a mirage,” Weichman said. “Just like we’re living axle-deep with grizzly bears here, we’re axle-deep in cameras.”

It would be difficult to quantify the number of surveillance cameras in Jackson, but it’s resonable to assume that a majority of businesses around the Town Square utilize them for some added peace of mind. 

Business owner Mark Loebe, who runs the Boardroom of Jackson Hole, said he would feel more secure with a surveillance camera, but it’s not in the budget of his independent snowboard shop.  

“I’d like to have one but just don’t have the coin to do it,” Loebe said, citing the initial expense. He remembered an ocassion when a camera helped police nab a woman who had been writing bad checks at a neighbor business.

Surveillance cameras have played a key role in solving some crimes in recent memory. Video footage from a camera at the former Rancher bar helped law enforcement identify a key witness to the two sexual assaults that occurred near the Town Square one night in the summer of 2005, shaking the community to its core.

“I don’t know if we would’ve resolved without [the surveillance footage],” said Capt. Scott Terry, who is now with the sheriff’s office but was a Jackson Police officer at the time of those crimes. “It gave [investigators] the tools they needed to dig a little deeper.”

Four men were eventually convicted of the crimes, including two who were extradited from Mexico two years later, in what authorities hailed as triumph for the tenacity of local law enforcement.

In a lighter instance that occurred one night in March 2008, two men were filmed stealing an American flag outside the county courthouse. While the crime may have seemed more or less victimless, the fact that the flag was flying in honor of a particular Wyoming soldier killed in Iraq didn’t help the thieves get away with it. Jackson cops posted the video on YouTube, and someone eventually identified the pair, allowing investigators to track one of the men all the way to New Zealand, where authorities there retrieved the flag and sent it back – along with a written apology from the thief.

“The video was pivotal, I mean absolutely critical, in solving that case,” Terry said.
Some law enforcement officials, including Terry and others interviewed for this story, said they would like to see more surveillance cameras in the community. Their presence, even when they’re not at the scene of a crime, can help law enforcement piece a mystery together.

When a car is burglarized, a crime that periodically hits the valley in a wave, police can look to see who may have been out in the middle of that night.

“We frequently look at [recorded images of] vehicles available from the Loaf and Jug,” Terry said, referring to the popular 24-hour mini-mart. “When you look for auto burglars, you look and see who was out there buying cigarettes.”

It has become the norm in this country for police to constantly video record their interactions with people – from routine traffic stops to witness interviews and even while processing detained people into the local jailhouse. While prosecutors watch the footage to see if it provides damning evidence, video documentation can be used by attorney’s on either side of a case.

In a recent episode, a Jackson attorney challenged the Teton County Sheriff’s Dept. to provide video he said may reveal that his client, a DUI suspect, was improperly given a breathalyzer test. David DeFazio, the attorney, said authorities told him that releasing the video could raise some privacy and security concerns by allowing people to peek into a past moment at the jail.

“We might be getting them a video of their client, but there might be other people in the video and then their privacy is being invaded,” Weichman said. “It gets complicated in the jail context.”

It gets complicated in the community context, too.

As the population of Teton County inevitably grows, crime will increase, Weichman said. And while surveillance cameras will undoubtedly play a role in solving crimes for a long time to come, more hi-tech methods could one day allow authorities to keep tabs on certain citizens. 

While authorities will have to navigate the same legal avenues they do today, GPS technology in cell phones could allow law enforcement to pinpoint someone’s location on a computer screen mounted in a police cruiser.

“I could see that technology. I know it’s possible,” said Cpl. Andy Pearson, a Jackson police officer versed in some of the latest crime-fighting technology. 
Police are still looking for the person who crashed into the cars after the snowboarder party. They believe he or she may have fled the scene because alcohol was involved. But even digitally enhancing the video won’t give investigators any clear clues, like the license plate number.

If there were more cameras keeping an eye on downtown, police may have gotten their person by now. JHW


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