TV Patrol

What has two eyes, perches on 22-ft. poles, can see half a mile in nearly total darkness, throws fear into lawbreakers and costs $47,000? The answer, known to everyone in suburban Mount Vernon, N.Y., is an ingenious new television system that untiringly watches over the town's main shopping street, relaying what it sees to police headquarters.

The two TV patrol cameras, which last month went into operation for a one-year test period, may have already reduced crime in Mount Vernon. During the first three weeks after their installation, there were no known crimes committed along the street, compared with four during the same period last year. The cameras are on duty 24 hours a day, remote-controlled by a patrolman at police headquarters, several blocks away.

By pressing buttons in front of two monitoring screens, the patrolman can revolve either camera 350DEG or sweep it up and down through an angle of 120DEG. Other buttons operate zoom lenses that enable the monitor to swoop in without hesitation on suspicious activities half a mile away from the cameras (which are located two blocks apart). When the patrolman on monitoring duty spots a crime in progress, he can immediately dispatch the nearest squad car to the scene.

The versatile cameras, developed by GTE Sylvania for military use, have light-amplification scanning tubes that provide night shots of daylight quality. They can photograph a man or record a license number half a mile away at night.

Big Brother. Defending the $47,000 cost of the electronic surveillance system. Police Captain Michael Court notes that "it would take three men to patrol that area over a 24-hour period. That's $30,000 a year, so in about 19 months we break even." The police force in Hoboken, N.J., plans to install a similar system by mid-June, and Sylvania reports that 50 other police departments have requested demonstrations. Thus the TV patrol may well appear in high-crime areas across the nation, peering through darkened stores and examining dark alleyways. To some, that prospect invites comparison to Big Brother in George Orwell's 1984. But Sylvania Spokesman Gene Toner, for one, is not disturbed. "The TV system is no more a threat to privacy," he says, "than the police radio was when it came in back in the early '30s."

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