- A gunman shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on December 4 in New York.
- The New York Police Department has launched a manhunt but has so far failed to capture the suspect.
- The suspect’s escape exposed flaws in surveillance, but police say it’s only a matter of time.
The Manhattan shooting on Wednesday Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare was captured by a surveillance camera and shared on social media, where the footage has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. Authorities later released color surveillance images of the shooter, including one showing him with his mask down and smiling.
Yet the shooter remains at large after four days, despite a citywide manhunt by the country’s largest Metropolitan Police force. Authorities told CNN on Friday that they believe the shooter managed to leave the city by bus.
The shooter’s ability to evade arrest so far has highlighted the limits of surveillance, even in a city like New York, where authorities have access to necessary information. thousands of cameras which can track millions of people daily.
“You have to remember that he was running in a city of 9 million people,” Joseph Giacolone, a former New York City police sergeant and professor at the John Jay School of Criminal Justice, told Business Insider. “You know, it’s not that easy to spot someone on the street, especially if they’re all buttoned up.”
New York City is under constant surveillance by police and residents
After the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, The administration of George W. Bush surveillance extended to the entire country.
Bush signed the Aviation and Transportation Act in November, creating the Transportation Security Administration. That same year, the Bush administration ushered in the USA Patriot Act, which expanded law enforcement’s ability to use surveillance.
The US Congress then created the Department of Homeland Security. The department launched a national campaign – “If You See Something, Say Something” – encouraging citizens to report suspicious activity to law enforcement in order to prevent terrorism and other criminal acts.
Since then, the emphasis on surveillance and security has spread across the country, including New York, where cameras are now everywhere.
Amnesty International, a human rights organization, said there were more than 25,500 surveillance cameras in New York in a 2022 report. The NYPD used footage from the ubiquitous cameras to track crimes and use them In facial recognition software.
The NYPD’s “Facial Identification Section” received 9,850 comparison requests and returned 2,510 possible matches in 2019, a match rate of approximately 25%. The agency said it was not aware of any cases in New York in which a person was wrongly arrested because of a facial recognition match.
Last May, New York City Mayor Eric Adams launched a pilot program focused on using technology to increase public safety. The “community security camera integration platform” will allow companies to “voluntarily share real-time information with the NYPD through existing closed-circuit television cameras,” according to a press release.
The emergence of Amazon’s Ring cameras and smartphones have added another layer of surveillance. In 2022, the NYPD said it would join and monitor the Neighbors appwhere residents share information about crime and safety.
“While the NYPD will not monitor the app 24 hours a day, they will have the ability to view, post, and respond to crime and safety-related information publicly posted by app users “, says a press release.
NYPD ‘processing enormous amount of evidence’
Commissioner Jessica Tisch told CNN on Friday that the department had already collected “a lot of forensic evidence” and was “processing a tremendous amount of evidence in this case.”
She added that there is also “massive camera surveillance” of the suspect’s movements across the city.
Additionally, a law enforcement official told CNN that investigators found a backpack in Central Park that they believed belonged to the suspect, but had not officially confirmed its provenance. Authorities took the backpack for testing.
Giacolone told BI that even though the shooting suspect has evaded capture for now, it will be difficult for him to elude authorities as they collect more evidence. The NYPD will seek what it called “the three horsemen of forensics” to solve the case, namely video surveillance, cell phone records and internet records.
“I participated in these investigations,” Giacolone said. “They know what hole he came out of, what hole he went back into. As far as I’m concerned, they already know who he is. They just have to find him.”