Uruguay. Video surveillance, installed in the Ciudad Vieja, Cordón and Centro neighborhoods as a way to combat crime, is one of the most precious programs of the Ministry of the Interior. It is that Ciudad Vieja, the first of the neighborhoods in which the Safe City Program was installed, became in 2014 the safest neighborhood in the city, with a decrease in robberies of 67% in a year.
The program also allowed about 115 people to be processed in that year taking images from the cameras as evidence.
Due to this positive experience and in an attempt to fulfill the promise of President Tabaré Vázquez to reduce the plunders 30% during his administration, many of the strategies with which it is intended to improve security in the capital involve the use of technology.
Thus, the Ministry of the Interior now plans to install around 200 new cameras, which will be added to the 1,100 that are installed throughout the country and will be located, for the most part, in a "saturation" regime, that is, concentrated in a certain space, in the environment of shopping and educational centers.
One of the neighborhoods in which they plan to locate is Pocitos, which as in Ciudad Vieja will have the purpose of limiting the robberies or being able to apprehend the criminals in flagrante delicto.
In Montevideo, the Ministry of the Interior already has cameras in Paso Molino, Unión, General Flores Avenue and in the accesses to the city. These cameras, according to the Minister of the Interior, Eduardo Bonomi, have a preventive purpose, since they allow to identify both people and car license plates, "which favors that no crimes are committed."
The candidates for mayor of Montevideo agreed in the campaign on the need to exercise control of the city through video surveillance, which would go beyond public security, also extending to traffic control or cleaning.
One of the proposals of the elected mayor Daniel Martínez to improve security in Montevideo is to seek an agreement with the Minister of the Interior, Eduardo Bonomi, within which an attempt will be made to carry out a joint expansion of the video surveillance camera system, incorporating the passage of audiovisual information released between the Police and the mayor' office.
In addition, through the cameras, Martínez intends to improve one of the issues that most concerns citizens in the capital: garbage. The plan is to install them next to sensors in the containers, which allow to know when they are filled so that the trucks pass to empty them. They will also be used to control traffic.
