The Cost of the Toronto G20: A billion dollars well spent?
In nine days, Canada's largest-ever security event will arrive in Toronto. The Mark looks at some of the social and economic costs of the G20, and asks whether they're justified.
CCTV
by David Murakami Wood
Associate Professor of Surveillance Studies, Queen’s University.
- First Posted: Jun 17 2010 05:25 AM
- Updated: about 5 hours ago
Estimated cost: Undisclosed
In addition to Toronto’s 18 existing closed-circuit television cameras (CCTVs), the Toronto police have installed 67 new CCTVs in Toronto’s downtown core. An additional 10 are reserved for rapid deployment. Constable Wendy Drummond, a representative for the Integrated Security Unit, says the “intimate details” of these expenses may be released, along with the total G20 budget, once the summit is over.
Precedents: CCTVs deployed in London during a G20 summit in 2009 helped investigators discover the events leading up to the death of Ian Tomlinson, a 47-year-old man who died of a heart attack after a confrontation with police.
In 2006 Toronto police installed temporary CCTVs along Yonge Street to monitor the Toronto Caribbean Carnival after a number of shootings at the festival. The Mark confirmed that at least four cameras are still in place at Dundas, Gerrard, and Gould Streets.
Quick Facts: Most of the cameras, marked "POLICE," hover in dense pockets within the security or "red" zone and traffic perimeter around the summit site. Check out the ISU's news release or the National Post's handy map for exact locations.
The Toronto police have stated that they intend to remove the new cameras once the summit ends.
Quotable Contrbutor
"Recent 'mega-events' have almost always produced a surge in the numbers of CCTV cameras. In Vancouver for the Winter Olympics, a new CCTV control room was even built, part of the 'security legacy' of the games, a trend which followed the Olympic Games in Athens and Soccer World Cups in Japan and Germany. But it is certainly not always the case that such installations are always permanent. These days, many mega-events come with ready-made security requirements and surveillance solutions, which descend on cities for the duration of the event, but then are just as quickly removed afterwards. And certainly, in the case of Toronto, the lack of consultation about extending CCTV would lead us to hope that this is not the start of an uninvited and unnecessary extension of video surveillance. David Murakami Wood
Comments