Surveillance system installed to allow view of Northfield activities

By Mark Winker
Norwich Guidon Staff Writer

The Northfield common is now under surveillance 24 hours a day. Common View, channel 16, set up on the common by Trans-Video, offers a birds-eye-view of the Northfield business district to residents of Northfield.

The mastermind behind the common view camera, George Goodrich Jr., manager of Trans-Video, says that the reason for the camera is to view the town common from your own living room.

"It's putting you in a chair right on the Northfield common," said Goodrich, adding that the response from the community has been "almost all good."

The idea came about last December. Prior to the permanent camera being put up, Trans-Video would take still shots of the common and air them from time to time on a local channel. The response from those still pictures prompted Goodrich to put up a permanent camera.

The cost of the camera and its maintenance costs are all paid for by Trans-Video.

"It's not included in the monthly rates; this is just a bonus," said Goodrich.

When speaking of town benefits from the camera, Chief of police, Paul Cucinelli, said, "It all depends on what day you watch it."

Cucinelli went on to say that there has been at least one instance when kids have mooned the camera, and he feels that in these types of instances there is not a benefit.

"We don't monitor it, if it reaches a point where something happened, and it results in a criminal activity, we would look at it to see if we could identify the persons involved. But for the most part it has nothing to do with us," said Cucinelli.

Checking for identification, however, would not be possible, because, according to Goodrich, "it is not taped."

The only instance where Goodrich recalled seeing any foul play was when a few female Norwich students ran "bare breasted" in front of the camera. Goodrich says that the camera was not put up to deter students from being mischievous, but rather for the older generation, who may not be able to get out as much as they would like to, to see what's going on in town.

Goodrich said, "There were some people who were upset that they would be filmed walking in and out of the legion," so the camera was positioned to get the whole sidewalk excluding the legion and the majority of the common including the church steeple and the mountains in the distance.

The owner of Ace Hardware, Dave Fernandez, said, "It's good for the stores in the community to let the kids know that they're being watched a little bit."

Even though his store is behind the camera, and he does not monitor it, Fernandez still feels the camera is a good thing.

Junior Brian Fitzpatrick, a 20-year-old criminal justice major from New York, said, "I feel that the camera is a waste of a TV channel and that it is more of a security measure for the town rather than a community benefit."

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