The Nampa Police Department is asking community members to register their exterior facing security cameras.
“The sole purpose of this program is to build a database of camera locations within the community,” read the Department’s announcement on Facebook.
In the event of an incident, officers would reach out to owners in the registry and see if they would like to share relevant footage, the post explained.
“That would be the first place that I send our detectives and our patrol officers to go and just ask if they could look through their cameras,” said Jacob Peper, the officer in charge of the program.
“We just want to be more efficient and effective in partnering with our community because there's a lot more people out, neighbors in our community that have eyes out there, a lot more cameras,” he added.
In the announcement, the Nampa Police repeated several times the program was strictly voluntary.
A few people expressed concern under the NPD’s social media post, with one writing “What is this, 1984?” in reference to George Orwell’s dystopian sci-fi novel criticizing ever increasing surveillance states. Other commenters wrote in support of the initiative.
“We have no desire to try to surveil anybody or anything else like that,” Peper said.
He added while privacy concerns are fair, the program does not ask for access to the cameras. When registering online, participants can share as much or as little information as they want and can bow out of the process at any time. Participants don’t have to disclose the exact location of the cameras either, he said.
“If you want to participate, sign up,” he said, “if you don't, you don't have to.”
As of Thursday, Peper said two camera owners had registered.
