A new online platform called CommunityCam provides a crowdsourced map of surveillance cameras on the streets that could help investigators and the public find video footage that may prove useful after a traffic crash.
CommunityCam currently lists the locations of more than 1,000 "outdoor, public-facing security cameras," said Ellen Arndt, communications manager for VideoSurveillance.com, which hosts the map. "If a cyclist is hit and the driver fails to stop, he or she can look at CommunityCam’s map to determine if a nearby camera may have caught the incident on video."
Sadly, it has indeed come to the point where the public may have to do investigative work on traffic crashes for the SFPD. At least now, it's easier to find these cameras.
Aaron was the editor of Streetsblog San Francisco from January 2012 until October 2015. He joined Streetsblog in 2010 after studying rhetoric and political communication at SF State University and spending a semester in Denmark.