Content area
Full Text
Police called it a dope supermarket, a notorious corridor on Yucca Street in the heart of Hollywood where cocaine dealers ruled the streets and residents hid behind their doors from gunfire after dark.
Law enforcement targeted the area, making scores of arrests and pressing owners to board up vacant buildings that had become drug dens. But impatient neighborhood leaders felt that more had to be done, so they decided to take up the fight themselves.
Drawing a lesson from the Rodney G. King episode, landlords mounted video cameras atop their apartment buildings and began conducting around-the-clock surveillance of their streets, turning over footage of suspected drug activity to police.
The video campaign on Yucca Street is a novelty for Hollywood, but those who launched it are hardly alone in their enthusiasm for electronic surveillance. Other groups in Los Angeles are expressing interest, and several communities across the country already have embraced the controversial crime-fighting strategy.
"You can't commit crimes if you know Big Brother is watching you," said James DiIorio, a property owner who spearheaded the year-old camera project.
On Yucca Street today, banners announce the new vigilance. "Buy Drugs, Go to Jail," one says. "Entering Videotape Surveillance Zone," another reads.
Most of the dealers who once filled the corners are gone. Some have been arrested with help from the cameras. Others have relocated after seeing their clientele drift away.
Many who live and work in the area say the video surveillance, combined with the police crackdown, helped bring calm to their neighborhood, a block from legendary Hollywood Boulevard and the landmark Mann's Chinese Theatre.
"A few years ago, I wouldn't have walked through this neighborhood at night," said Victor Barajas, 24, a tenant at the Lido apartment building, where a second-story camera scans the street corner below. "Now, sometimes we go out and get fresh air."
But the notion of Big Brother snooping around the nooks and crannies of neighborhoods has raised old questions about the balance between civil liberties and the rights of citizens to live free of fear.
"I am troubled by having behavior monitored directly or indirectly by the government, absent probable cause," said Erwin Chemerinsky, a USC law...