Antioch Hopes To Reduce Crime With More Surveillance Cameras
ANTIOCH (CBS SF) -- It's got a reputation as one of the Bay Area's crime hot spots. Now an East Bay city is going on the offense, putting extra eyes on the street.
The City of Antioch just signed off on new surveillance cameras. Three will go in one of the most dangerous parts of town: the Sycamore Drive area in West Antioch.
On Tuesday, the Antioch City Council voted to buy more security cameras for police -- they already have seven like the ones mounted on City Hall -- but when you see the crime numbers, you'll understand why they want more.
Josie Monahan, with East County Veterans thrift store said, "You knew your neighbor, you would go out and greet people coming to the community, everyone helped one another."
But that was 20 years ago. Today, Antioch is a small town community with big city problems. Sky rocketing poverty and a decades-long uptick in violent crime.
"Now, unfortunately, its very frightening," Monahan said.
So the city has voted to install three new cameras that can zoom, tilt and pan. They'll go in to low-income parts of town that have become crime hot spots, such as Sycamore Drive.
Antioch police Chief Allen Cantando said "If a crime should happen in the area of these cameras, that's going to give us some intel that we are going to be able to follow up on."
Next door, Pittsburg has 120 similar cameras .In the five years after the first ones went in, crimes dropped from 394 per 100,000 people to 234 per 100,000 people.
Meanwhile, during that same time period, Antioch's crime rate almost doubled.
"Our numbers have actually come down in the last three or four years…but it's still way above the state and national average…we are working on that," Cantando said.
And that's progress. The folks in Antioch hope the cameras will help decrease crime.
"That's what we want, we want to work with city council, with police, with business owners and make it a better place.
The city council also voted to approve more license plate cameras with the hope that it will help fight crime as well.