Hillsboro has a new addition of four cameras up at the four way stop at D street and Indigo. They were installed by Gary McCloud of Alarm Service, LLC, while Police Chief Dan Kinney assisted.
“We have a lot of business cameras in town now. We have burglaries and things at night, and now, we need to track them once they leave downtown. We haven’t had anything in this area that gives us an idea of which way they went, so we are hoping that helps,” Kinney said.
While the footage can be pulled and reviewed at any time, the goal of the police department isn’t necessarily to make sure all are coming to a complete stop.
“We aren’t going to monitor the intersection. This will help us if we have a suspect vehicle and need to identify them. And it can be helpful if we have an accident or something,” Kinney said.
This upgrade to security in Hillsboro is thanks to the generosity of McCloud and it didn’t cost taxpayers anything.
“I donated the cameras to the city through the police department since their budget got cut. The police department needs all the tools they can get,” McCloud said. “They have a responsibility to make our community a safe place to live, and I just put together something they can use to help with that.”
He emphasized the focus of safety and information gathering versus the need to catch citizens breaking traffic laws.
“Those cameras are just getting vehicle descriptions and tags. Everything that goes through that intersection, we catch. There isn’t anyone monitoring it. We recently had a trailer stolen, but we had no idea which way it went. With these cameras, if we have a vehicle that is stolen, we have that opportunity now,” McCloud explained. “There is too much information there for someone to sit and watch it 24/7. But now we have a resource to refer back to.”
The cameras are located up high on the poles. There are two in the southwest corner and two on the northeast corner.
