The reason for the camera stories in the Sunday News (Aug. 16) was that Renee Baumgartner, leader of a serious camera opposition movement, used the Right to Know law to force the city to turn over all City documents relating to the LCSC. The released documents, amounting to 160 pages, were then copied and given by a member of her group to Gil Smart. The Sunday News stories gave the impression that it was their reporters who dug up all the information when, in fact, it was not.
Furthermore, in a related story, “Off camera”, the SN staffer responsible for this article wrote that F&M has 25 cameras “on campus”. That’s true only if Charlotte, New, Lemon, Mary, Pine, Frederick and James Streets are part of the F&M campus! The camera map published in the Sunday News did not show any cameras at all on these streets, when in fact there are at least 12 F&M cameras video-taping residential streets east of the campus. The majority of these cameras are on the quadrant of the City that is bounded by Charlotte and Lemon Sts., College Ave. and Harrisburg Pike.
This information was reported in a letter-to-the-editor by Baumgartner (copied below) that was published last Wednesday, well in advance of the Sunday News deadline for stories. In addition, there have been numerous references in newspaper stories beginning in 2006 in which College officials announced plans for security measures, including cameras, on city streets east of the campus.
We can only believe that the Sunday News chose to ignore the fact that F&M has its own street surveillance system in the part of the city that F&M considers its “sphere of influence” – an arrangement that Baumgartner, in her letter, referred to as “a city within a city”. Mayor Gray and the members of City Council appear to accept this arrangement as the “status quo” and completely acceptable, while at the same time citizens are complaining of “taxation without representation” because City officials refuse to interfere with any of John Fry’s expansionist plans into the residential areas surrounding the College.
