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GREENSBOBO — Everywhere you look, somebody is looking back.

Downtown officials say they want the city to install as many as eight video surveillance cameras in the center city along Elm and Greene streets. 

That’s twice the number police advised the City Council about last week.

“We are recommending additional locations, and the police concur,” said Ed Wolverton, president and CEO of Downtown Greensboro Inc. “It’s another public safety tool that will help deter crime and investigate anything that might occur.”

Four of the cameras will be paid for from the police department’s budget. Those will be posted at Elm and Bellemeade Street, Elm and Friendly Avenue, Elm and Market Street and Elm and Washington Street.

The rest would be paid for by DGI. Those will go up at Elm and McGee Street, Elm and Lewis Street, Greene and Friendly and, perhaps, Greene and Washington.

Collectively, the system will cost $45,000 and should be operating sometime next month.

The cameras will be mounted on utility poles and have the capability to scan, tilt and zoom. There will be a single console for monitoring pedestrian and vehicular traffic.

The cameras will operate around the clock but may not always be monitored, police said.

“I don’t want to mislead people into believing that just because a surveillance camera is there that it is totally safe and you can walk around with a one hundred dollar bill hanging out of your pocket,” said Assistant Police Chief Anita Holder. “It’s not a foolproof solution.”

Officials at the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina agree, saying cameras give residents a false sense of security.

“Generally speaking, surveillance cameras may not always be the best use of taxpayer dollars,” said Jennifer Rudinger, the organization’s executive director. “Some people like to believe they work as a deterrent, but there is no way to prove or disprove that.

“If a crime is taking place, the camera cannot intercede and stop it. We have argued that a better way to invest dollars is hiring more police officers.”

As for privacy issues, Rudinger said she would reserve comment until she learns specifics on how the system will be used.

But she added, “The trade off is that all of us are losing any sense of privacy when we step outside of our house .... We don’t like to be spied on. It’s a little creepy.”

Police say that if a person is in a public place, then authorities have the right to record them. They say they are working on policies about how the system will be used, how long the images will be stored and under what circumstances the images will be made public.

They say they are unaware of any organized opposition to the cameras.

“I don’t have a problem with it unless you have something to hide,” Bill Heroy, owner of Old Photo Specialist on South Elm Street, said of the cameras.

“The whole idea of surveillance is to be able to identify troublemakers. If you have troublemakers, you’ve got problems.”

Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com