Chile. The Mayor of the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, Cecilia Pérez, led the official delivery of 10 new security cameras for the commune of El Bosque, an initiative financed by the Metropolitan Regional Government and that in the last three years has allowed to provide more than 600 video surveillance devices to 27 municipalities of the Metropolitan Region.
The activity, carried out in dependencies of the 39th Police Station of Carabineros, was attended by the mayor of El Bosque, Sadi Melo; the deputies Iván Moreira and Tucapel Jiménez, and the Chief of the Eastern Metropolitan Area of the Carabineros, General Alejandro Olivares, as well as councilors and community leaders.
The Mayor indicated that this investment "will not have the expected effects if we do not have community authorities and neighborhood leaders empowered and willing to help us in our fight against crime," explained the highest regional authority.
Cecilia Pérez said that "an alternative is that we lower our arms and leave the streets and passages in the hands of criminals, and with our neighbors latticed inside their homes; and another is that, as the government of President Sebastián Piñera has done, we face crime together."
"In just one month of their launch, these 10 new cameras in El Bosque, located mainly on Av. Padre Hurtado, are already producing a positive impact, because, according to figures from the Carabineros, there is a decrease of 17.6% in drug trafficking crimes and 20.1% in robberies with surprise, apart from a shorter police reaction time for the procedures," cecilia Pérez reported.
Meanwhile, Mayor Sadi Melo, along with thanking the regional investment in security, indicated that it is expected that this initiative can be expanded in seven points – a project that has already been presented to the Regional Government – and stressed that this effort is added to the investment in municipal funds for the replacement of 11 thousand road and pedestrian luminaires, new communal security vehicles and community alarms in more than a thousand homes, among other measures.
The cameras are dome-type, allowing for 360-degree turns, with wireless connection and a security device that alerts when they try to attack or destroy them. They have a zoom with a range of up to 150 meters, even at night, and are capable of continuously storing 720 hours of recording (30 days).
From 2010 to date, 6 video surveillance camera projects have been approved and executed for 27 communes of the Metropolitan Region, with an investment of approximately 3,140 million pesos from regional funds and 430 new devices, which added to the existing ones give a figure close to 630 devices, allowing to triple the coverage with these devices in the last three years.
