The introduction of a new system of portable, Garda-operated, closed-circuit television cameras to areas plagued by violent crime and drug offences is being considered by Minister for Justice Michael McDowell and Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy following their visit to the US.
A Los Angeles system of making local police chiefs accountable for crime statistics in their own area is also being examined.
Speaking in New York at the end of a week of consultations with US law enforcement officers, Mr McDowell said that portable CCTV cameras had proved to be a highly effective evidence-gathering tool in Chicago.
"In the Garda Síochána Act there is provision for community CCTV and Garda-operated CCTV. In Chicago, they have portable units which they put up on lampposts which derive their current from the lamp. They are operable from a police station, from a command-and-control centre or even from a squad car. So somebody in the area could actually, if they see someone going down a street, bring in footage. This is definitely something which we're interested in," he said.
Mr Conroy accompanied a police patrol in Chicago to observe the cameras at work and watched as a shooting was caught on film and the investigation that followed. The cameras are clearly identified with a flashing blue light and Mr Conroy said that, after initial resistance, local communities in Chicago welcomed their use.
"When they first went up, people were a bit suspicious but when they tried to remove them to another area, they all kicked up and wanted to hold on 'to the cameras. They're bullet-proof, highly publicised but yet people forget that they work and they actually record stuff. The majority of people, no matter what area you're policing, want it," he said.
Mr McDowell and Mr Conroy met police chiefs in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York to study options for preventing violent crimes such as the recent spate of murders in Dublin.
