Smile for the camera, criminals

A robbery in progress? Say cheese. Brandishing a firearm? Take a snapshot. Fleeing the scene of a crime? Capture a photo of the license plate and put it online or give it to police.

Smile, criminals: You’re on candid camera phone.

Since the installation of cameras in cellular telephones, more ordinary citizens have been using their camera phones to dispense high-tech, low-cost justice.

“The appeal of camera phones is that people carry cell phones with them all the time,” said Tony Henning, Mobile Imaging Analyst for the 6Sight Future of Imaging Conference, in Monterey, Calif. “A camera phone is a phone — and you don’t leave your house without your phone.”

In the past, the high-expense, low-quality camera phone was a poor substitute for regular cameras, used primarily for grainy portraits or documenting damage after fender benders. Now that higher-quality camera phones have become increasingly less expensive — with some given away with the purchase of a cellular phone plan — more than 257 million camera phones were shipped worldwide in 2004.

“That means that the opportunity to photograph things that you wouldn’t automatically have thought about photographing or would have the chance to photograph has grown exponentially,” Mr. Henning added, saying there will be more “people preventing crimes, providing evidence of crimes [and] exonerating people accused of crimes because they happened to have a camera phone with them at the right place at the right time.”

Alan Reiter, president of Wireless Internet & Mobile Computing in Chevy Chase, said that because of wireless capabilities, “someone can see government abuse — [perhaps] it’s an officer beating a suspect — if you have a camera phone, you can snap that photo or take a video and very quickly transmit that image around the world. … You can’t do that with a camera except if you have one of the very, very few digital cameras that have WiFi built in.”

One of the first instances of camera-phone justice was in August 2003, when a 15-year-old boy from Clinton, N.J., took photos of a would-be kidnapper after being approached by the man and told to get into his car. These photos — which included the make of the assailant’s vehicle and license plate — led to the arrest of 59-year-old bartender William MacDonald.

In Queens, N.Y., two Catholic schoolgirls made the cover of the New York Daily News in May 2005 when they snapped a picture of subway flasher Wilfredo Ponte, which led to his arrest. In April of the same year, photos stored in Orem, Utah, resident Jacabo Javier Rivera’s cell phone led to his arrest in connection with child pornography and the sexual assault of at least two children.

Borderline vigilante groups include the Web site HollabackNYC.blogspot.com, which allows New York women to vent their frustrations and post camera-phone photos of men ranging from chauvinistic to vulgar.

In Manteca, Calif., mothers wielding camera phones have helped police control vandalism in parks.

On Aug. 7, PowerPhone Inc. added cell-photo delivery to its Total Response Computer Aided Call software. The application allows users to transmit camera-phone photos directly to a 911 operator.

Perhaps the most powerful use of camera phones to record crimes was after the London subway bombings in July 2005. Cell-phone footage provided the first images of the destruction.

Verizon spokesman John Johnson said, “That’s the first time in my recollection that a camera phone image has made it around the world.”

Since then, CNN, AOL, NBC, YouTube and other sources have asked citizen journalists to submit photos and videos. Network competition to secure contracts for such images has become fierce.

The trend concerns some law-enforcement officials.

“We’re not encouraging people to use theircell phones as crime fighters,” said Officer Richard Henry of the Fairfax County PoliceDepartment. “We don’t want people to put themselves in harm’s way to take a picture. [But] if they do get it, it may be of some assistance.”

He noted that one victim in a string of thefts in Reston last year eventually had her phone returned and “saw there were several photos on the camera that weren’t hers,” Officer Henry said. “Several of the photos appeared to be of a teenage boy.”

These photos allowed police to identify two suspects, who said they “had purchased the stolen phone from a friend.” The three were charged with larceny and possession of stolen property.

Officer Henry said a witness’ picture helped build evidence toward arrests in a shoplifting attempt in December at a West Springfield area supermarket, where an employee trying to stop one of the two suspects was struck in the head by the other.

He said camera-phone images do not always lead to convictions.

“One of the sex-crimes detectives [from Springfield] was telling me he was investigating a sexual assault,” he said. “He was able to clear the suspect because the crime was taped by phone.”

Mr. Reiter still calls the trend beneficial.

“If you ask 10 people at a crime scene what happened, it’s quite possible you’ll get 10 different variations of the same story,” he said. “There are details that might be picked up by a photo that even eyewitnesses might not notice … [and] there are times where taking a photo is faster than writing it down.”

Mr. Johnson agreed: “Citizen journalism, I would argue, is a very good thing.

“Virtually anyone with a cell phone can capture an image — not just a static image, but video and sound, as well.”

The quality of the images is improving. Verizon has released a 3.2 megapixel camera phone, rivaling many digital cameras. Mr. Reiter said some camera phones in Asia reach up to 10 megapixels.

“One reads about something like this on a weekly, if not daily basis,” Mr. Henning added, calling the trend “one of global proportions” and unlikely to end any time soon.

“These incidents are going to grow in frequency,” he said, “because you rarely will get out of sight of someone who will have a camera phone.”