Leaders in Montgomery County, Maryland, plan to have a security camera incentive program up and running by September, according to law enforcement officials who spoke during a county council meeting on Monday.
Under the program, an individual, business or nonprofit will be able to apply with the county’s police department to receive a voucher or rebate to offset the cost of a security camera on the applicant’s property.
The department will reimburse eligible applications up to $250 for one camera per qualifying resident, and up to $1,250 for five cameras for qualifying businesses or nonprofits.
There is a similar program in D.C. that creates a rebate for residents, businesses, nonprofits and religious institutions to purchase and install security camera systems on their property.
“There are areas that I think probably can benefit from the usages of these cameras from a safety perspective,” said Marcus Jones, the county’s police chief.
Jones said cameras tend to increase the solvability rate in many cases.
“We are seeing incredible results as a result of investigative leads in order to be able to help identify individuals that may be involved in criminal activity,” Jones said.
In one specific example, Jones said there was an incident this last weekend in Silver Spring where someone tried to abduct a 2-year-old child.
The parents were able to prevent the abduction, according to Jones, and police used nearby camera footage to identify the suspect and take that person into custody.
“Having that individual identified, they were able to locate him and actually placed them under arrest as a result of the cameras,” Jones explained. “Otherwise, we don’t know how long it would have taken us to solve that particular attempted abduction.”
Not everyone in the county will be eligible to be reimbursed for a camera.
Those qualified must live in a “priority area” where crime levels are elevated.
The police department will use a crime “heat map” that updates every two days, showing locations of various crimes and how often they occur.
“We can narrow those down and say relative to the rest of the district where we experienced a lot of these incidents,” said Lt. Dan Helton with the county’s police department.
The county has more than $250,000 for the program, which should provide reimbursement for more than 1,000 cameras.
Evan Glass, president of the Montgomery County Council, said he expects the program to be extremely popular.
“We are going to be inundated by constituents who are asking to participate,” Glass said. “I think the applications for this program (are) going to go so quickly, that the requests for those funds will move within a matter of days or weeks.”
