TAMPA, Fla. -- The Republican National Convention won't just bring pomp and pageantry to Tampa this summer, it will also bring permanent security improvements in the form of eyes in the sky.
The City of Tampa has budgeted $2 million of its $50 million in federal convention security funds for 60 surveillance cameras to be installed downtown. Six companies, including IBM, recently submitted bids, which will be unveiled in February.
The Tampa Police Department says the high-tech eyes will help reduce the number of officers' eyes needed. Thousands of protesters are expected at the week-long event.
But critics of the cameras say the $2 million could be better spent.
"Not only is it an invasion of privacy, but it's a huge waste of taxpayers' money," said John Dingfelder, the senior attorney for the American Civil Liberty Union (ACLU) of Florida.
Dingfelder, a former Tampa city councilmember, says the only evidence needed is a controversial face-recognition program in Ybor City that was scrapped in 2003 under Mayor Pam Iorio. Two years earlier, Mayor Dick Greco and then-councilmember Bob Buckhorn both supported the cameras.
Tampa police say although the facial-recognition program didn't yield many results, the cameras have helped immensely with crowd control in the district over the past 10 years.
Meanwhile, St. Petersburg has experimented with surveillance cameras in recent years too, but the technology has yet to provide the city with any tangible results. St. Pete spent roughly $10,000 on approximately 10 cameras and uplinks in 2009.
Not only can police not attribute a single arrest to the cameras, but they don't have anyone monitoring them. Mayor Bill Foster admitted the technology's value is limited without monitoring.
"Do we have the data to show they've been a great deterrent?" St. Petersburg Mayor Bill Foster asked rhetorically. "Probably not."
Foster says St. Petersburg hasn't had the money to move its surveillance program past the pilot stage, but someday hopes to expand it when money becomes available. He cited grants or seizures as possible funding sources.
"It's all about public safety and it's just an extension of eyes and ears," Foster said.
Tampa police echoed Foster's praise for the technology, calling it "an extra layer of security."
"It gives us a bird's eye view of what's happening," said Tampa Police Department (TPD) spokesperson Laura McElroy, "so that we can very quickly deploy officers to quell a situation...before it gets more serious."
TPD plans on spending roughly $33 million to bring in the same 3,500-4,000 officers as Minnesota had for the last RNC convention. But critics of the cameras would rather see more officers than surveillance cameras.
"Law enforcement officers do a great job," said Dingfelder. "But they also love their toys and there's a lot better ways to spend $2 million of taxpayers' money."
Dingfelder suggests if the cameras are necessary for the convention, the city should re-coup some of the expenses by selling them afterward. But TPD plans on keeping the cameras downtown year-round for a bird's eye view of major events like Gasparilla and New Year's Eve.
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