Baltimore seemed like his best shot to date, one that could lead to more work. His company had been trying for years to snag a long-term contract with an American metropolitan police department. Since this discreet arrangement began in January, it had felt like a make-or-break opportunity for McNutt. McNutt said something about not being able to control the weather, pretending to shrug it off, but he was frustrated. The police want us to keep flying, but the clouds are getting in the way.” “A few protesters on the corner, and not much else. The riots that convulsed the city after Gray was killed wouldn’t be repeated. Photographer: Philip Montgomery for Bloomberg BusinessweekĪ half block from the city’s central police station, in a spare office suite above a parking garage, Ross McNutt, the founder of Persistent Surveillance Systems, monitored the city’s reaction to the Goodson verdict by staring at a bank of computer monitors. The footage from the plane was instantly archived and stored on massive hard drives, allowing analysts to review it weeks later if necessary. The plane’s wide-angle cameras captured an area of roughly 30 square miles and continuously transmitted real-time images to analysts on the ground. Pritchett had no idea that as he spoke, a small Cessna airplane equipped with a sophisticated array of cameras was circling Baltimore at roughly the same altitude as the massing clouds. Do they use them for justice? Evidently not.” But I’m thinking they’re there to just contradict anything that might be used against the City of Baltimore. I thought the cameras were supposed to protect us. They could have watched that van, too, but no-they missed that one. “In fact, they observed Freddie Gray himself the morning of his arrest on those cameras, before they picked him up. “This whole city is under a siege of cameras,” said Pritchett, a house painter who helps run a youth center in a low-income, high-crime neighborhood called Johnston Square. In a city with more than 700 street-level police cameras, he wondered, shouldn’t the authorities have had video of Gray’s ride? He chewed on a toothpick and shook his head slowly. Ralph Pritchett Sr., who’s spent each of his 52 years in Baltimore, stood on the sidewalk among the protesters. The verdict trickled out of the courthouse in text messages: not guilty, all counts. Photograph by Philip Montgomery for Bloomberg Businessweek
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