Camera Deficit and Low Quality Affects Crime Fighting

Luis Alberto Ruiz Noboa, 40, was shot by a gunman who, through the window of his house in block 12 of Bastión Popular, shot him 15 times on Sunday, January 30. A week earlier, on Saturday January 22, an Albanian foreigner was also gunned down in a restaurant in northern Guayaquil.

The murder of the Albanian was recorded on the restaurant’s security cameras, unlike the death of Luis Alberto, a winemaker who worked in a yogurt company. In his case, the criminalistics agents raised the ballistic evidence and unsuccessfully searched to see if any device in the neighborhood recorded the assassin.

The security cameras, which focus on public roads, represent one of the most effective tests to catch the criminals responsible for the deaths in Guayas, a province that last year accumulated 1,365 murders, contract killers, homicides or femicides, 48% at the national level, according to data from the Prosecutor’s Office.

In January 2022 alone, this province recorded 183 of these crimes, 108% more than the 88 deaths reported in 2021, 33% of the 359 murdered in the first month of this year at the national level.

Guayaquil concentrated 30% of these crimes in January, with 120 violent deaths, although most were not captured by security cameras, a technological equipment whose deficit affects the investigation of crimes against life in the country, according to a police report that, in addition, emphasizes the urgency that businesses and commercial premises, large and small, have these security devices.

We want to engage people who have commercial economic activities, through different locations, to help by placing more modern security cameras, with better resolution.

Dorian Balladares, substitute director of the Dinased (National Directorate of Crimes against Life, Violent Deaths, Disappearances, Extortion and Kidnapping)

They even propose security experts and from Dinased itself, an ordinance should be created so that it is included as a requirement to obtain the operating permit that commercial premises place security cameras that focus on public roads. “Chambers that not only house information in the VVL, information storage system, but also do so through the computer cloud or data storage, and this will allow us to have elements of conviction that through scientific technical expertise establish the identity of the participants in the different events”, explains Balladares.

Since 2012, a municipal ordinance requires companies and public institutions to place their own surveillance cameras in outdoor areas, but this measure does not apply to small businesses or businesses in the city. Through this ordinance some 640 cameras have been installed, little for the 500 per year that had been planned at the beginning.

The 1,340 municipal security cameras in Guayaquil are not enough for the number of crimes that are committed daily. These teams or those of ECU911, says Dinased, do not cover all dangerous areas either, or due to their resolution they do not help identify suspects. In the city, according to César Barberán, Director of Operations of the Corporation for Citizen Security of Guayaquil, CSCG, most of the cameras are located in the north (517) and northeast (210) sectors, in the center there are 246 and the rural parishes have 12.

Instead, in the south there are 248 and in the suburb 107 video surveillance devices. However, it is in these last two sectors that the municipality -through ECU911- has recorded the most violent deaths in 2021 and 2022. The highest number of shots and armed people are also recorded in the suburb and Guasmo.

In the sector known as La Playita del Guasmo, on January 21, an attack by hitmen was recorded that killed 5 people and injured 11, while in the suburbs a man was killed who, together with another on a motorcycle, tried to assault some policemen dressed in civilian clothes on Calle 33 and García Goyena.

“Since the beginning of the Ojos de Águila project (2002), coordination was made with the National Police for the location of the video surveillance points. Subsequently, the number of cameras has been increasing, with the aim of creating security rings and corridors according to the needs and geography of each area”, says Barberán. (I)

15,000 new cameras, 1,800 to see faces

Of the 15,000 cameras that the Guayaquil Citizen Security Corporation (CSCG) will install in the city, 1,800 will have a system that will be able to recognize the faces of criminals on the streets, by searching for them with the photos that the Police have in their base of data.

These devices, which record audio and video, can also detect suspects or vehicles that have passed the same site more than once; vehicle plates and details; and will alert if there are people in ‘threatening poses’ or without a mask.

Mayor Cynthia Viteri ratifies support for the Police with the renewal of the truck contract, and announced that 15,000 cameras will arrive in the coming months to strengthen security in Guayaquil

This is how the CSCG details it in the contracting of this technology, which is in the question and answer stage and whose cost amounts to $29.5 million for four years of service, which includes the placement of the cameras in the first year of the contract, 113 posts, 50 terabytes of storage for the videos that will be sent to the Prosecutor’s Office or Judicial Function, 12 consoles, 16 monitors, among others.

With the videos of the 1,800 cameras, grouped into 450 connection points (nodes), these ‘advanced’ analyzes will be made once a day, according to the process. And with the other 13,200 cameras -in 3,300 nodes- it will be possible, for example, to count people and vehicles and alert if there are crowds.

The system, according to the CSCG, is automatic and “specializes in the imitation of human cognition to monitor and capture images” that will be sent to the response entities.

This February 24, it is expected to award this service to Telconet or CNT, the only providers that have the certification (TIER III or IV) that is required in the purchase. (I)