A video-camera installation set up by downtown Chandler businesses in part to deter day laborers from congregating in the historic square recently made a quiet disappearance.
The cameras had no noticeable impact on day laborers, said Leah Powell, Chandler's diversity director.
"An overall decrease in numbers, no," Powell said. "Shifting, maybe, from where they stand? That's possible."
The summer heat likely played a larger role, she said.
"Everybody is pretty much looking for shade right now," Powell said.
The Downtown Chandler Community Partnership — a group of merchants who banded together to help promote and beautify the downtown Chandler area — leased the video cameras from ProGuard Security Services, a private company with offices in Phoenix, Tucson and Dallas. The cameras were installed in early March as part of a three-month trial to see if they would deter drivers from stopping and picking up day laborers downtown.
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The installation, which featured red and blue lights reminiscent of police vehicles, was not associated with any law enforcement agency. The cameras sat on a dirt lot on the northeast corner of Arizona Avenue and Buffalo Street, just north of Dr. A.J. Chandler Park.
The land is owned by Niels Kreipke, president of the downtown-based Desert Viking development firm and a member of the Community Partnership executive committee. Kreipke had said that deterring day laborers wasn't the sole purpose of the cameras, and that the tapes could be used to gather information on traffic and parking to help with downtown planning, to test whether the cameras might have a deterrent effect on crime in the downtown and to create a sense of safety.
On Tuesday, Kreipke said the cameras didn't pick up anything notable, and there are no plans to move forward with any report or study. The cameras were removed a few weeks ago, he said.
"That's the end of it. It's gone," he said.
Kreipke provided the $1,400 installation fee, and the partnership paid about $650 per month to lease the camera system. About 48 percent of the partnership's $266,000 budget comes from the city, but the decision to install and remove the cameras was left solely to the partnership, Powell said.
City officials had been open in their distaste for the cameras.
"That's not the way the city would have done things," Powell said.
When the partnership approached the city with the idea, city officials pre-emptively rejected any proposal to place video cameras on public property out of concern that it might be too much like "Big Brother," officials have said. Even so, the city did not object to the trial period as long as the installation was placed on private property.
None of the local loitering laws gives the city the authority to disperse day laborers, officials have said. But portions of Arizona Avenue have been made off-limits to parking or standing vehicles during certain times of the day in an effort to discourage vehicles from stopping to pick them up, thereby blocking traffic and creating a safety hazard.
Officials have said that the preferred method for day laborers to meet with potential employees is through the privately run Light & Life Day Labor Center at Fairview Street and Arizona Avenue, behind the Light & Life Free Methodist Church.
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