MORE SURVEILLANCE  WON’T MAKE YOU SAFE 

BY CLEVELAND PALESTINE ADVOCACY COMMUNITY



"You had to live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and except in darkness, every movement scrutinised." George Orwell, 1984


That camera posted over the red light might be keeping your car safe, but it does little to reduce violent crimes, costs a whole lot of money, needs a lot of expert personnel to be effective, and it is a slippery slope from keeping your car safe to an Orwellian hellscape. 


More digital surveillance technology in Cleveland is not a sustainable solution to increasing safety for Clevelanders. 


There’s a couple reasons why. 


First, Cleveland really isn’t set up to use surveillance technology well, for example by providing the constant monitoring of these devices that is needed for them to be effective.


Second, we don’t have the budget to keep trying out new technologies that end up not working. Take Shotspotter for example. We have spent almost $3 million dollars of tax payer money to introduce audio technology called ShotSpotter to detect gunshots and alert law enforcement of possible danger. While other cities were ending their shotspotter contracts because of their racist implementation and lack of efficacy, Cleveland was still holding on.         


During its tenure in Cleveland Shotspotter did not 1) show a  decrease in gunshot violence within our city; 2) an increase in public safety; or 3) resounding accuracy from the expensive technology. Signal Cleveland mentioned that after a five month pilot period using ShotSpotter, “88 percent of ShotSpotter detections were dismissed as non-gunfire sounds, and roughly 12 percent were sent to police as a gunfire or probable gunfire alert.” A recent report indicates that the city was unable to effectively use ShotSpotter, resulted in few arrests, and likely increased police response times for other calls. 


Those 3 million dollars could have gone towards supporting the city's Home for Every Neighbor program, or into one of the many affordable housing programs experiencing a funding shortfall. Because you know what the research does tell us? More people in stable housing equals less crime.


It’s easy to dismiss technologies like Shotspotter as a modern fluke, an artifact of modern digital fads. However surveillance was and continues to be a tool of a 400 year old colonial system used to control populations, extract resources, and assert political and territorial dominance. Surveillance today has been automated, but it is still used for the same purposes it has always been used, to extend the watchful eye of state governance for the purpose of control, sometimes sold to us under the guise of safety. But the conflation of surveillance and safety is a dangerous one. 


Palestinians from Jerusalem to Cleveland know this well. 


AI-powered surveillance drones, originally tested during Israel’s military operations in Gaza, are now widely deployed by U.S. law enforcement agencies to monitor protests and civilians in major cities. In fact, they were illegally used to monitor protestors here in Cleveland. These drones, developed by Skydio and linked to Israeli military contractors, raise serious concerns about civil liberties as they employ facial recognition, thermal imaging, and cloud-based evidence systems to track dissent domestically. 


Apparently these drones are some of Putin’s favorite. 


“Israel’s constant drone surveillance over Gaza also impressed President Vladimir Putin. Moscow needed reliable surveillance drones after it lost many planes during its war in 2008 against Georgia in South Ossetia. Tbilisi had used Israeli drones, and years later Moscow decided to follow suit. Having seen Israeli operations over Gaza, Russia licensed the Israeli Aerospace Industries Searcher II, renamed “Forpost” by its new owners, and it became a key asset in Russian support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.”― Antony Loewenstein, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World


Ample research shows that there are real community-care focused interventions that lead to decreased gun violence and crime. For example, programs that help address homelessness like NEOHC, food insecurity like Food Not Bombs, and direct crime deescalation programs like New Era Cleveland. New Era, a local organization within the Buckeye neighborhood of Cleveland focuses on exactly these interventions with community food and supplies distributions, afterschool programs, book clubs, neighborhood watches and deescalation, without even involving law enforcement and no longer receiving public funding at all. 


Could you imagine what these programs could have done for our city with 3 million dollars? But instead we sunk it into a failed surveillance experiment. Chasing shiny contracts with outside companies seems to be a Cleveland speciality. 

In October 2025, City Council approved an emergency ordinance authorizing a contract with Flock Safety for an “integrated technology safety solution.” The deal:

While marketed as crime-solving tools, Flock technologies raise serious privacy concerns including data-sharing loopholes. Cities like Cambridge, MA shut off Flock cameras after discovering data was shared with federal agencies despite promises to the contrary. Investigations also show Flock data has been used in immigration enforcement and abortion-related investigations, and lawmakers recently warned that stolen police logins expose Flock’s vast database to hackers.

Even where Flock claims success, like Denver, which credited cameras for arrests and stolen vehicle recovery, the cost both fiscal and social aren’t worth it. Denver council members called the program “incredibly dangerous” and accused the mayor of secret negotiations to get Flock contracts passed. Meanwhile here in Cleveland, former councilman Kerry McCormack left his seat to take a job at Flock Safety, and not soon after Flock was ushered into city hall. It’s worth better understanding the Flock contract the city has entered into, and McCormack's role, because if it looks like a conflict of interest and it smells like a conflict of interest…

If drones and license plate readers don’t seem that bad, police also want to have direct access to private security camera footage from residents and businesses, and are looking to obtain this footage without any need for a warrant. Since 2023, Cleveland has partnered with private company FUSUS for its SAFE SMART CLE Program, where residents can register their Ring or other security camera with CPD, allowing them to ask for footage without a warrant if they believe a “crime occurred” in the area. Businesses have been invited to “integrate” their security systems with the program, meaning police have direct, 24/7 access to their security cameras. 

Despite claims by city officials and FUSUS representatives that this system saves lives, there is no objective evidence to show this. Although Cleveland has been running the SMART CLE Program for 2 years, city officials have admitted “there is no data being collected” regarding its effectiveness. What IS  known is that since 2021 the City of Cleveland has paid FUSUS hundreds of thousands of dollars for its cloud software services to manage the department’s “Real Time Crime Center”, as shown by documents collected by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In Toledo, where data regarding the city’s use of FUSUS integration was made public, it was found that police spend twice as much time reviewing camera footage from cameras at public housing facilities and properties owned by private landlords. 

More money down the drain on digital surveillance systems with limited evidence of effectiveness will not make Clevelander’s more safe. You know what will? Unequivocally, backed by giant bodies of heaping decades worth of data, generalizable across every U.S. city? Putting money into people, into stable housing, better after school programming, food stability, place based interventions that increase lighting and dilapidated buildings, and community engaged programs. 


But here we are pouring all this money into fancy new third party companies without a strong evidence base.Why? Maybe because it’s the same people, like Dan Gilbert, pouring money into these companies and into candidates like Austin Davis, Kris Harsh, and Justin Bibb, who then vocally support tax payer money into these technologies.


Cleveland has so much to give, its people are resourceful, hardworking, steeped in powerful history. And the city keeps sidestepping us time and time again turning in our grassroots work for big company contracts, then wondering why no one trusts the city government and why crime is so high.. 


You want a safer Cleveland? Invest in people, not more robots.