MNPD Wants Nashville Metro Council To Allow Access To Private Business Cameras

MNPD Wants Nashville Metro Council To Allow Access To Private Business Cameras

MNPD Wants Nashville Metro Council To Allow Access To Private Business Cameras

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The Tennessee Conservative Staff –

The Metro Nashville Police Department has plans to ask the Metro City Council to allow them to remotely obtain camera footage from commercial businesses when needed for a criminal investigation.

According to Greg Blair, MNPD Deputy Chief, video can be essential in those investigations, but it can be extremely time consuming to get that footage.

“When the detective goes to a market and they try to get video, nine times out of ten, we can’t pull the video,” Blair told News 2. “No one’s there to manage it. We can’t get access; it’s in the wrong format. We come back here – it doesn’t work.”

What MNPD actually wants is for businesses to install a device that would allow police to access outdoor surveillance cameras remotely. They claim this would increase safety in the city because they would be able to solve crimes more quickly.

Critics of the idea argue that people should have an “expectation of privacy and the police shouldn’t be able to tap into private cameras in order to surveil the public at large.”

MNPD says they only would like to have access to cameras from commercial businesses, and those businesses would have the option of whether or not to allow that access. Businesses would also be able to set time limits surrounding what video can be obtained.

“Everyone’s recording everybody at any point in time. It’s a fact of life,” said Blair. “We’re only looking to build criminal cases.”

The request will be up for consideration at the Metro Council’s meeting on October 15.

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