Candidates for State College Borough Council sounded off last night on the controversial decision to install surveillance cameras downtown earlier this year.
The question of how candidates would vote on the camera issue if it were to come up again was one of many posed to candidates during a forum sponsored by the Centre County League of Women Voters at Mount Nittany Middle School, 656 Brandywine Drive.
Six of the eight candidates said they would have voted for the cameras, but some said there are more effective alternatives for law enforcement downtown.
Incumbent Republican Tom Daubert, who voted against the cameras in May, and Independent Jeff Deitrich said they would not vote for cameras under any circumstances.
"It was a knee-jerk reaction and a knee-jerk response," Deitrich said.
While saying the installation of cameras was certainly legal, Deitrich called it a back-end solution. He said he supported a community policing effort proposed by Independent Jeff Kern earlier in the evening, adding a better use of borough funds would be to put more officers on foot patrol downtown.
"We have one of the largest police forces for a town our size, and most of them are in cars," Kern said. State College, with about 9,000 people per square mile, is comparable in population density to large cities such as Philadelphia, and needs foot patrol to make the town safe, he added.
Kern said he experienced some hesitation at first, but ultimately agreed with the decision. Democrat Craig Humphrey said he felt the same way.
"As a professor at Penn State, my first reaction was that this was an insult to the students," he said.
However, after listening to State College Police Chief Tom King discuss the importance of hand-held cameras in apprehending suspects in the Beaver Canyon riots, Humphrey said surveillance is a necessary evil.
He added that if elected, he would make sure the use of cameras does not extend to other areas.
Independent Richard Garis agreed that more foot patrol is needed, but said the cameras are not an invasion of privacy. He would have voted for them.
"When you walk down the street, everybody sees you anyhow," Garis said
Democrat Theresa Lafer said, "I had that 1984 feeling, when they first started talking about [the cameras]." But most people are aware that cameras are used in many places including retail stores and banks, she added.
Daubert disagreed with that rationale. "We don't have to go into stores and go to ATMs," he said. "We do need to walk the street."
Incumbent Democrat Cathy Dauler, who voted for the cameras and suggested that council consider them in the first place, said she thought about the decision and consulted with police for months, and would vote for them again if given the chance.
Democrat Mary Barnes said she would have voted for the cameras without reservation.
"They are a perfectly legitimate way for the public sector to be able to observe what's going on in the public sector," Barnes said.
Student candidate Kevin Talley attended neither of the two forums this week. The first debate took place Oct. 26 and will be televised on C-NET this Sunday at 2 p.m. and again on Monday at 11 a.m. Yesterday's debate will be televised at 9 p.m. Friday, also on C-NET.
