Surveillance and Government Transparency. What we don't see.

Eric C. Williams

Managing Director @ Detroit Justice Center | Founder @ Eric C. Williams, PLLC

February 12, 2024

 One year ago yesterday, I was asked to comment on a report by the U.S. Department of Justice’s research arm, National Institute of Justice (NIJ), rating Detroit’s surveillance program, Project Greenlight (PGL)

[1], as having “no effect”. I wasn’t surprised. When asked for comment, I said:

Part of me wants to say, ‘I told you so.’ The other part of me is looking forward and saying what is the response? Does DPD double down on this? Do they find fault with the study?

Needless to say, the Detroit Police Department doubled down on PGL. The same day I was interviewed, Detroit Police Chief James White made the media rounds to explain what was wrong with the NIJ study. “It doesn’t take into account the expansion of real-time crime center, the expansion of Greenlight. I think 2016, 2018 we had about 200, we got over 800 now," he said.

One year later we have over a thousand PGL locations. What we don’t have is any evidence the program works. Chief White’s defense of the program, essentially the data using 800 locations was too small, is odd because DPD declared the program a success based on the data from only 8 locations. The NIJ report flatly refutes those early assessments. (I called BS on them at the time) However, even if we’re open to the possibility that the NIJ study is flawed and PGL does work, where is the proof?  Well,  quite frankly, there is none. In the early days of PGL, 2016 or so, then DPD Chief James Craig promised that a study would be done to evaluate the program. In 2020, Michigan State University School of Criminal Justice published an evaluation report which states: “Overall, we found limited impact of [PGL] participation on trends in crime.” Not surprisingly, that report has had no impact on PGL’s expansion and there haven’t been any subsequent attempts to see if the impact has grown.

If you’re wondering why the general Detroit public isn’t up in arms over the growth of an intrusive surveillance program that has “no effect” on crime, you’re missing an important point. DPD claims the program doesn’t cost the city anything, so many Detroiters figure it’s like drinking Vernors when you’re sick: It can’t hurt. (Sorry, inside Detroit joke.) The only problem with that attitude is that it’s based on a lie. Sorry.  I mean, it’s based on the public statements of representatives of the Detroit Police Department.

From PGL’s very first day, it has been the mantra of DPD that the program is cost-free to Detroit. Most recently, during a Board of Police Commissioners community meeting on January 25, 2024, a DPD representative said: 

"The City, Detroit, the police department. We’re not paying for Project Greenlight.”

This is not true.

While the cost of lights, cameras, as well internet bandwidth and storage all fall on participating businesses, Detroiters pay for the rest of the infrastructure. Infrastructure that exists only for PGL. In fact, Project Green Light is estimated to have used between $21.7 and $22.7 million dollars in public funds from 2016 to 2020, including:

• $1.2 million - facial recognition software in 2017 

• $7.5 million - expansion of the Real Time Crime Center in 2016 

• $4 million - expansion of Real Time Crime Centers in 2019 

• $220,000 - Data Works LLC contract renewal in 2020

These numbers don’t include civilian and police personnel assigned to Real Time Crime Centers. It’s also likely there are expenses we don’t know about because, and I’m not joking, PGL isn’t a line item in DPD’s budget. The most highly touted crime fighting tool in DPD’s toolbelt is a fiscal mystery. It’s virtually impossible to determine how much public money is being spent on surveillance in Detroit because so much of it doesn’t show up in the budget.  The numbers above come from secondary sources, such as news articles. 

When it comes to primary sources, like public budgets, it’s impossible to calculate how much we’re paying. Detroit's public budgets describe only bureau-level funding allocations and don’t include PGL expenditures as line items. Further, funding appears to be split amongst different departments. For example, the Real Time Crime Centers are administered through the Police Department’s Criminal Investigative Bureau while Mayor Duggan’s proposal to expand the city’s traffic cameras will be conducted through the Department of Transportation. Cameras from the Department of Public Works’ existing network will be brought into the scope of the program. This decentralization makes estimation impossible. I plan to file a request under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act in the near future, but I shouldn’t have to. Then again, I shouldn’t have to write this article to point out the lies DPD is telling the public.

Of course, financial costs aren’t the only hidden costs here, and those costs have historically been borne by religious and ethnic minorities, labor unions, and challengers to the economic and social status quo. COINTELPRO, the Ghetto Informant Program, and the illegal surveillance of Muslims nationwide after 9/11 immediately spring to mind. What will happen in a city that is a historical center of Black, Arab, Muslim, and labor activism?  Throw in the use of facial recognition, notoriously bad at identifying Black people, in a city that is 85% Black and the cost of PGL gets even higher.

[2] Detroiters deserve to know these costs. All of them. Government transparency is always important, but even more so when it comes to deploying an expensive technology that not only diverts resources away from other critical programs, but also poses a dire threat to our civil liberties. Maybe we would be willing to compromise our civil liberties for safety. But with Project Greenlight, not only is the safety an illusion, we aren’t even being told how much that illusion cost.

[1] Project Greenlight is a surveillance program that allows private businesses to have their own cameras stream directly to a Detroit Police Department “Real Time Crime Center”. The business pay for the cameras, bandwidth, and storage. Go here a more brief description of the program: https://60us393.wordpress.com/2017/07/08/project-green-light-part-i-what-it-really-is/ for a more detailed description, check out https://www.americaunderwatch.com

[2] Detroit is already home to three documented cases of false arrest based on faulty facial recognition identification.