RALEIGH -- Twenty feet up, anchored to a telephone pole, a dangling electronic eye watches all who pass down North Tarboro Street - a stretch of sidewalk that recently saw three gunshot deaths in three years.
The cameras, three of them hanging within a few blocks of each other, mark the first time Raleigh has tried video surveillance to police violent crime on public streets. The idea: show would-be felons that someone is watching and give officers an extra crime-fighting tool.
Police won't be watching 24 hours a day, said Capt. Stacy Deans, and details are still being hammered out on how and when officers will access the footage. But neighbors on these Southeast Raleigh streets wanted cameras, Deans said, and police aren't hiding that they're up and rolling.
The 300 block of Tarboro Street claimed a teenage boy in 2008, a homeless handyman in 2007 and a 22-year-old man in 2005. Apart from the people who died, dozens were robbed or assaulted within sight of the day care at Tuttle Community Center and the front gate of St. Augustine's College.
"These kids are leaving campus to go to Cook Out late at night," Deans said, referring to a nearby franchise of the fast-food outlet. "There's no problem with that. They should be able to do that."
Since the 2008 fatal shooting of Adarius Monquell Fowler, 16, a case that is still unsolved, Raleigh police have opened an office in the Tarboro Road Community Center, where one of the cameras hangs. Two others hang on the 300 block of Tarboro Street, where the three men were shot, and at the Lane Street Mini Park, built partly with volunteer labor last fall.
Deans pointed to a 34 percent drop in violent crime in the district over the past year, and no homicides in 2009, compared with four in 2008. Residents and businesses welcomed more eyes on the street.
"If they actually roll the cameras back and solve some crimes with it, I think it will work," said Marcus Roper, a sophomore at St. Augustine's who said student robberies were common in his freshman year. "Cops don't sit on the curb at 2 in the morning while we're going to Cook Out. They don't."
The day care on Tarboro's 300 block presents a colorful contrast to the loiterers outside convenience stores, and the strip of barbershops and beauty salons decked out with signs to discourage them. But in 2007, a homeless man named Ricky High was shot to death just outside that day care, and neighborhood activists said the staff's concerns about violence have been some of the loudest. At Tuttle, director Mildred Goodson was optimistic about the new strategy.
"We have the surveillance cameras in the day care," she said. "Before we put those cameras in, we had at least three break-ins, and wehaven't had any since."
But the new park sits at Lane Street and Idlewild Avenue, and in recent years, neighbors say, it was common to see prostitutes there waving at passing cars. They haven't vanished with the arrival of playground equipment, say neighbors, who are grateful for any kind of scrutiny. Last month, officers said, the park was covered with graffiti."
"I told the police, 'You can stable your horses in my backyard,' " said Joanna Crell-Arias, a neighbor on State Street. "They can eat my grass."
