Somebody's watching you!

I may be wrong but it seems to me the security cameras inside my neighborhood 7-eleven store are better than the cameras that cover the subway system in the Nation's Capitol! The convenience store cameras have videotape that capture images of everyone who enters the business. You know where I'm going with this... Local Police and FBI have used those images to track down missing or kidnapped children; robbery and murder suspects. We've aired some of those tapes on channel 9 when asking for your help in identifying subjects. The cameras that hover above us in clear view in the Metro tunnels have no videotaping capability! They are mere cameras, erected before the 911 attacks so that Metro employees including police can monitor passenger and train traffic while guarding against rare petty crimes that occur down under. People have been nabbed eating and drinking on the platforms and trains which are prohibited and have produced some arrests, although not recently.

Today Metro has bigger problems! Most center around possible terrorist attacks! The Metro cameras should include videotape. Such capability in the London subway system enabled authorities there to screen tapes following a subway terrorist attack. The London tapes produced suspects. Their images were broadcast throughout the country. In a very short time authorities were able to make arrests.

On Wednesday while reporting on a forty percent cut to the DC region's Homeland Security funding, I talked to Metro riders who were surprised to learn the cameras that were watching us do not contain videotape. I should also write that train operators tell me there are serious communications problems down under: that in case of emergency, in some parts of the tunnel system, the drivers and metro central are not able to communicate with certainty! Some drivers have resorted to carrying their own cell phones, not trusting the phones on board the trains.