In a decision that could impact cities such as Lancaster that use surveillance cameras to fight crime, an official with the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board has ruled that monitoring similar cameras in Reading is police work - and should be done by $48-an-hour police officers, rather than $10-an-hour civilians.

The ruling came in response to a complaint filed by the police union in the City of Reading and could force the financially strapped city to curtail use of its 25-camera system. Reading is appealing the decision to the entire Labor Relations Board and ultimately could take the matter to the courts.

Christopher Manlove, a spokesman for the state Department of Labor & Industry, said the ruling is specific to Reading and wouldn't automatically apply to cities like Lancaster. But both backers and opponents of the 134-camera, local surveillance network are keeping an eye on the Reading case.

There is, say proponents, a key difference between Reading and Lancaster: Here, the system is privately run; in Reading, the cameras are owned and operated by the city. Lancaster Chief of Police Keith Sadler said local police have never sought, and do not want, to run the local system.

Renee Baumgartner heads a group called Citizens Against Public Surveillance, which opposes the local network of cameras. She said she'd actually feel more comfortable with police monitoring the system, rather than the coalition. "At least there would be some oversight," Baumgartner said.

"But personally, I don't think we should have surveillance cameras at all," she said.

Civilians on watch
Reading installed its first 25 security cameras last year, at a cost of $1.48 million. It plans to expand the system to 75 cameras, and unlike Lancaster, the city monitors the system, hiring civilians to do the job.

Reading hired its first civilian monitors last December; the police union, the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 9, filed a complaint almost immediately.

In it, the Reading FOP charged that the city violated the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Act when it "unilaterally assigned the work of proactively patrolling the City, which was exclusively performed by Union members on a twenty-four hour basis, to non-bargaining unit civilian City employees."

City officials argued that monitoring the cameras does not rise to the legal definition of police work, and that the city couldn't continue the program if ordered to pay police officers to perform the work.

The hearing examiner for the Labor Relations Board, Jack E. Marino, ruled that, "The use of cameras to look at activities on City streets is a form of surveillance and patrol historically performed by police officers." The camera technology, Marino wrote, "has simply enhanced the patrol work already performed by police officers."

There is, he wrote in his decision, "no meaningful difference between an officer observing a City street corner from his police cruiser one hundred yards away and a person observing that same street corner from the VSU [video] monitors on the other side of the city. ... The City's police officers have historically and exclusively monitored and patrolled the city."

Marino then ruled that Reading must turn the duties over to the police department.

Reading Police Chief William Heim, a former Lancaster police chief, said the police union filed the complaint unbeknownst to him. "It never occurred to me that police might think of [monitoring the cameras] as their work," Heim said. He calls the cameras "a really effective tool for us," one of several things that have helped put a lid on crime in the city.

But Reading, facing fiscal disaster - officials have asked the state to take over the city -!\qplans to lay off at least 11 police officers. Heim worries that cuts, coupled with the uncertain status of its surveillance camera system, could cause crime to creep up again.

No impact here?
Joe Morales Sr., a Lancaster City councilman who serves as director of the Lancaster Community Safety Coalition, the private organization that operates the cameras and hires the civilians who watch the video feeds, said he didn't think the Reading ruling would ultimately impact Lancaster. "This was never a police-run organization," he said of the coalition, "so I don't know it could be argued that police jobs were given to civilians."

A similar ruling here would make it difficult to keep the camera system running, he said.

"Cost would obviously be an issue," said Morales. "We paid staff a total of over 7,000 hours to date this year for monitoring the cameras, about $10.65 an hour," said Morales. "We spend around $70,000-plus. To do it at $48 an hour - you'd be talking $350,000."

Chief Sadler said police don't have the manpower to monitor the video feeds. "Would you rather have an officer patrolling the streets or sitting inside" watching the monitors, he asked.

Christopher Erb, president of the Lancaster Police Association - the police union - said the issue has never come up in negotiations. "In Lancaster, police have remote Internet access to the video camera system at anytime they wish to access it," he wrote in an e-mail. "It is very costly to have a patrolman monitor cameras in many ways."

The city can't spare the patrolmen. The police department is already understaffed, and the city is facing a budget shortfall of $5.4 million in 2010. City officials are devising an early retirement program to try and cut personnel costs. They will meet with the three unions representing city workers - including the police - this week.

Reading is in even worse fiscal shape after being accepted into the state's Act 47 program for fiscally distressed municipalities earlier this month.

Manlove, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry, said Reading's appeal to the full board could take a year to resolve, and if the city were to appeal an unfavorable ruling to Commonwealth Court, it could take several more years before a final decision is reached.

"It's too soon to say now what the impact of this will be," Manlove said. "We're still in the middle of the process."

Renee Baumgartner is keenly interested in the outcome. "My biggest concern now is that there's no oversight" of the Community Safety Coalition, she said. "Would it help if [responsibility] were moved to the police department? I think it's a baby step; we would at least have some oversight. But [police] have so many other things going on in Lancaster, and what if you had police brutality - could the video disappear?"

Better, she says, to not have the cameras at all. "Who's monitoring the cameras is one of our arguments," she said. "But this is about the potential for abuse," which will remain no matter who watches the screens, she said

Gil Smart is Associate Editor of the Sunday News. E-mail him at gsmart@lnpnews.com.