When Biko’s mother went to Tilden the next day to review footage of her son’s arrest, which had been captured by security cameras installed in the school hallways, school staff denied her permission. Once she was able to view the footage on a computer, she saw that it was not the raw footage, but had been edited. Biko says that even the timestamp had been changed.
The cameras that captured this incident are part of the Department of Education’s new Internet Protocol Digital Video Surveillance (IPDVS) system, intended to reduce violence in public schools and serve as a tool for law enforcement. The brainchild of City Councilmember Peter Vallone, Jr. (D-Queens), the creation of IPDVS was passed into law by the City Council on Nov. 10, 2004.
Two and a half years later, camera installation has gained momentum even as concerns about the police atmosphere in city schools are being voiced ever louder and more frequently. It's an academic environment in which principals “are becoming corrections wardens,” according to State Senator Bill Perkins, who was a City Councilmember representing Harlem at the time of the vote.
While Vallone and Department of Education (DOE) officials hail the system as a success, based on positive feedback from school administrators, others are raising questions about the implications of such wide-reaching surveillance in public schools. The public schools already are manned by 4,625 safety agents – a larger force than the entire police departments of Baltimore, Boston, or San Diego. In addition to this, the new systems called for in Local Law 52 include cameras linked by a network to a main server in each school. Video is watched live by school safety agents from a monitoring console. Design requirements state that “both live and archived video can be viewed locally on LAN (Local Area Networks) and remotely over DOE WAN (Wireless Area Networks).”
A large high school such as Tilden may be equipped with 64 to 96 cameras, which cover all exterior doors, the cafeteria and auditorium, selected hallways and stairwells and some outdoor locations such as athletic fields, entrances and loading docks. Although a "fair number of schools" were equipped with video cameras before IPDVS, according to DOE Planning, Research and Development Director Robert Weiner, New York City public schools had no single integrated video system until now.
Council Votes for Video
Local Law 52 called for the installation of security cameras in schools “where the chancellor, in consultation with the New York City police department, deems such cameras appropriate for safety purposes.” Cameras were to be placed in “any area of the school where individuals do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy,” thus excluding bathrooms, classrooms, and gym locker rooms (although students' lockers are under video surveillance, as they are located in hallways). The legislation also called for a DOE report on “potential installation of cameras” in all schools to be submitted to City Council by the end of 2006 – but Council has not received it. According to both DOE and NYPD representatives, the police have yet to sign off on the report.
