Next steps for Downtown BIA’s camera pilot project

A pilot project spearheaded by the Downtown BIA has wrapped up, but the cameras are still in use.

An artificial intelligence (AI) camera at The Bitcoin Building on Pelissier Street caught someone trespassing on Monday.

“Once the person trespassed, police were here within, two to two-and-a-half minutes,” said building owner, Ray Blanchard, who is very happy with the response time.

His camera was one of five used for a pilot project to make downtown safer.

Project Green Light ended almost two months ago, but owners, like Blanchard, have kept up the service.

“The Downtown Business Improvement Association (Downtown BIA), we started this program as a pilot project,” Blanchard said. “The city really saw the value in it and now the city has basically taken over the project and they're funding it.”

The project used ACS Security as the watchdog and provided the city with important data.

“We've actually had over 1,500 incidents happen strictly in downtown alone and of those 1,500 incidents, the police have been involved directly in 500 of them,” he said.

According to Hassan Ajrouche, business development executive at ACS, not all of the calls to service resulted in arrests.

ACS Security is working with other communities and BIAs to help develop a security approach like Windsor's.

“There's no room for mistakes because other jurisdictions have made those mistakes, and they've been very costly mistakes,” Ward 3 city councillor, Renaldo Agostino said while pointing out there have been countless meetings about security cameras for downtown.

“I think there's a really good combination here about public-private partnership that's going to be the most effective. Good things are still happening.”

Blanchard is hoping the city program is similar to the pilot.

“My hope is that when the city rolls out this program, that they're going to adopt the same standards that we already have, the same quality of cameras that we implemented for Project Green Light,” said Blanchard.