Visitors to Meridian Police Department will see two large screens behind the front counter showing video feeds of the goings on throughout the city, but beyond those coming to pay a fine or request a copy of a police report, it is unclear if anyone else is watching.

In a work session Tuesday, Police Chief Deborah Naylor Young and former Chief Benny Dubose, who is Young’s mentor, explained the faults in the city’s current camera system and what changes they’d like to implement going forward.

MPD currently has a 5-year agreement with Mississippi Power to lease cameras installed throughout the city. The agreement includes real-time monitoring by a third party, but there is no evidence to show if the cameras are being watched.

“Right now, we don’t have any proof,” Dubose said.

Assistant Police Chief Patrick Gale said MPD has a number to call if the cameras go down, but the company monitoring the city’s camera network does not report crimes caught on video or call about suspicious activity.

The police department does have access to the feeds and can rewind footage to see if an incident or suspect was caught on video, Dubose said, but a lack of real-time monitoring hampers how effective the cameras can be.

After a visit last year to Jackson Police Department’s Real Time Crime Center, a centralized monitoring area for cameras citywide, Dubose and Young went to work designing a camera system that would be best for the city of Meridian.

Their plan calls for a network of cameras equipped with license plate reading technology stationed around the perimeter of the city to monitor incoming and outgoing traffic. License plates would be run through nationwide databases for stolen vehicles or other crimes, Dubose said, and could alert officers when a suspect vehicle was found.

“I think that would do a lot better than what we have now,” he said.

Even without real-time monitoring, Young said the city’s current camera system has been helpful in some cases, including a local homicide that took place late last year. With ownership of the system, she said the cameras could be even more useful in cleaning up crime in Meridian.

Over the past few months, MPD developed a list of 29 locations for the cameras based on local traffic, and officers have been checking out those locations to narrow the field further, Dubose said. As an example, he said the initial list included cameras at the intersections of Highway 19 and 20th Street Extension, Highway 19 and North Hills, and Highway

19 by the Walmart Supercenter.

“We don’t need three cameras to cover a quarter-mile area,” he said.

The new cameras and equipment would be owned by Meridian Police Department and monitored by Meridian Police Department, Dubose said. In addition to the cameras, he said MPD currently has six unfilled positions for employees who would be responsible for monitoring the cameras at all times.

“If we’re going to invest in a system that works, we need to own it,” he said.

If the council approves the cameras for Meridian’ s perimeter, Dubose said the police department would eventually come back and ask the council for cameras inside the city as well. The city also plans to continue using the cameras from Mississippi Power as it is locked into the lease agreement until 2026.

An estimate of the initial cost for the new system was put at about $470,000, but the purchase price would be beyond what the city could legally do with a single source quote. City Attorney Will Simmons said the council would need to draw up specifications and put out a request for proposals to move forward.

Dubose asked the council for 30 days to draw up the system specifications and gather the information needed to advertise the system for bids.