The town of Sackville has installed new facial recognition surveillance cameras at the Bill Johnstone Memorial Park Activity Centre.
On Monday evening, public works boss Dwayne Acton told council that the system is an upgrade from the previous cameras, designed to give more detail in the event of property damage or theft.
“The cameras that are there are kind of outdated, and the RCMP cannot utilize the cameras to give enough detail to explore or to take it any further,” said Acton. “One of the difficulties that we’ve had over the years is the amount of vandalism at the building, in the washrooms, around the park.”
“I know over the last year, the building has almost burnt down twice where the fire department has been called to put out a fire that was started in the washrooms,” said Acton.
In light of that and a recent spate of break and enters, Acton says staff reviewed their options and “felt it warranted that we would spend some operational money to upgrade those cameras to something a little more substantial, to be able to give us some facial recognition, or at least some details that the RCMP could use.”
Councillor Sabine Dietz raised concerns over citizens’ privacy with the use of cameras, but treasurer Micheal Beal assured council the cameras are not connected to the internet, data is erased after a period of time, and images are only viewed in case of an incident.
CAO Jamie Burke told council that the camera in Bill Johnstone are just the first to be replaced, and that other security upgrades are coming.
“We’ve had other areas of our operations that have been recently broken into where we’ve had substantial loss,” said Burke. “I just want to make sure it’s clear that it is our intention to continue to upgrade our security systems in some of our facilities with the same type of system.”
Recently, at the end of November, the town’s garage was broken into and equipment stolen and vehicles vandalized, costing the town thousands of dollars.
Burke told council the hope for the new security upgrades is that “if we do get word of a break and enter and we are at a loss, then we do have some evidence that we can turn over to the RCMP that they can then pass along to the Crown to proceed with prosecution of these individuals.”
The Sackville RCMP have not responded to requests for information about the break and enter and theft at the town garage.