For years, the city of Charlottesville has debated whether to install security cameras in public places.
Opponents have successfully argued that surveillance in public places is an invasion of privacy, but with the disappearance and death of University of Virginia student Hannah Graham, public sentiment may have shifted.
Since 2007, Charlottesville’s chief of police has been asking City Council to install surveillance cameras on the Downtown Mall. This week, he brought the City's top prosecutor to make the case.
"If it wasn't for the work of a detective in thinking, I'm going to go looking for cameras, and what might be the view we get going to the corner of Preston and 10th Street, we'd still be looking at the University Corner in the vicinity of University Avenue and 14th Street for a crime scene where Hannah Graham was abducted."
That's Commonwealth's Attorney Dave Chapman. He says cameras can identify suspects and exonerate innocents. In the case of Hannah Graham, for example, police spotted a man slipping into an alcove, then emerging to follow the 18-year-old; but another camera showed her in the company of Jesse Matthew Jr.
"We took someone out of play as a suspect who would have been given enormous scrutiny and turned attention to who turns out to be the person of interest."
But not everyone at this week’s meeting of City Council was sold on government surveillance. Attorney Jeffrey Fogel spoke against it.
"If we took DNA smears from everybody at birth it would help considerably not only the criminal justice system but many other systems. You would rebel at that thought, but you don't rebel at the thought of conducting a surveillance program on us all."
By a vote of three to two, city council agreed to move forward to investigate the scope of a public video system.