two three four extra units at ten thousand six was melted essentially what you takin off on foot nine on money emergency I'm not in school pew-pew and me I was a streetcar in a foot pursuit we got the guy in custody subject was current potential carjacking those are just a few of the calls that all came from the same area on the school and Main Street in Mesa while our officers routinely patrol the area we analyzed the crime trends here and realized there was more crime happening here than other areas in the city so it made sense to try to problem solve the issue by thinking outside the box in January Mesa police launched the Alma school project which included working with area businesses on crime prevention ideas and enhanced and expanded patrol in efforts to solve and suppress crimes in the area one of the latest tools the Mesa police are trying out is an overt camera system at Alma school and Main Street to help combat crime and keep our residents commuters and businesses safe lieutenant Tim McCleary talks about how the system works if you die in this area if you were a commuter every day in this area and there was a lot of crimes going on how would you feel about that our concern was just we want to make people who use this area in Mesa to feel more comfortable with commuting dining shopping and living here and this is just a new way to make this area safer you'll notice that there's cameras all around us a convenience store across the street all this and over camera in contrast to a covert camera which are the ones that are hidden around the area here this one's not hidden it's right here in plain view it's a safety zone high enforcement it has Sesa areas under surveillance by the police basically so we have it marked on all four sides on the camera system itself so we're not hiding anything it's here and we're hoping that just by having the signs that people are going to be like if I'm gonna sell drugs I'm not going to do it in this neighborhood you know or if I'm going to commit a robbery or an assault this would not be a good place to do it so our hopes is to suppress crime by having it right out in their face it's not hidden it's right there for you to see we can actual monitor it at peak times and when a crime happens an actual sworn officer can be watching it and give live real-time information to the officers in the area to know who they're looking for and what direction they went we have officers who are on light duty for the most part who are doing the monitoring the great thing about that is we're not taking away from resources who are on the street currently we need every officer out there we can these are officers who are very well trained they know what to observe they know what kind of things look like crimes what things are suspicious what things we should be looking at and they know how to communicate well to their partners and their counterparts who are actually out here on the street we've already had just in the last few weeks very several successes of where our monitor officer noticed something suspicious going on called in officers arrests were made for warrants and for drugs and that sort of activity so those are things we may not have seen going on but a citizen or a resident of this area might have noticed it but we weren't there so able to see it through the camera system able to call officers who are out here in the street over to the area to see what's going on before we started the project our crime prevention officer and a community action officer actually went around and spoke to the business owners spoke to the residents in the area and the neighborhoods up here and down south and asked them about what they thought about us doing this project or they thought about actually putting this camera out here because it's in their neighborhood and in the last two weeks we actually did a survey that was anonymous and online and we also again received about a 94% positive rating from those who responded that they liked the idea so part of our Alma school project is to partnership with the community with social services with our community court and and with businesses in the area and with law enforcement probation and prosecutors so this actually is just a test project so we're trying this out for several months just to check it out would love your input on how you like the idea especially if you live in this area do you think we're doing a good job