• Constitutionality of a city’s fixed camera monitoring program 
• San Diego’s “City I.Q.” camera streetlight program 
• The intrusiveness of a fixed camera monitoring program and the Fourth Amendment 

A fixed camera monitoring program spread throughout parts of a city is constitutional. 

Defendant Kevin Eugene Cartwright and his accomplice, Lorena Espinoza, robbed a flooring store in downtown San Diego on October 10, 2018. Espinoza went into the store first and led its owner and operator, identified as G.R., to the back of the store. Cartwright entered the store shortly thereafter “wearing a granny mask and sunglasses” and “incapacitated” G.R. by first kicking him, then shooting him three times, killing him. Cartwright then pried open the cash register and took its contents. 

Unbeknownst to Cartwright, his actions before and after the robbery/murder – getting out of a GMC Yukon and entering the store, and walking to the rear of a nearby clothing store and removing his mask, then using two different sedans to leave the area as Espinosa drove the Yukon away – were all recorded by the city of San Diego’s City I.Q. camera streetlight program. The clothing store’s security camera also showed Cartwright’s movements. 

The cameras that comprise the City I.Q. program were described by the court as being attached to various streetlights. However, they were not “situated so (that) they could peer into businesses or residences,” capturing “only the ‘public right of way.” This camera system was further described as having a “fixed position and located throughout downtown San Diego and other parts of the city. The devices capture ‘environmental data, like temperature, humidity, pressure...traffic data, like car speeds, car counts, pedestrian data, bicycle data, and even video data.’ The video feature creates high-quality, wide-lens footage, but the devices do not record sound and do not act as gunshot detectors because the city did not ‘enable the microphones.’ Footage is stored on each camera’s hard drive for five days; if it is not retrieved within five days, the camera records over the footage.”  

Via this system, the license plate on Cartwright’s Yukon was recorded, leading officers to identify him as its registered owner through DMV records, and arrest him. In a subsequent search, evidence was found linking him to both the robbery/homicide at G.R.’s flooring store, as well as having committed another robbery of an adult-content store and theater the day before. 

Cartwright was charged in state court with capital murder and a host of related charges, with eight (yes, count ’em, eight) “strike” convictions alleged. His pretrial motion to suppress the products of the City I.Q. camera streetlight system was denied. Convicted on all counts and sentenced to an indeterminate prison term of life without the possibility of parole plus 50 years to life, and a determinate prison term of 20 years and four months, defendant appealed. (The co-defendant, Espinoza, pled guilty to second-degree murder and admitted a firearm allegation, resulting in a prison sentence of 15 years to life, plus one year. She did not join in this appeal.) 

The Fourth District Court of Appeal (Div. 1) affirmed. 

Cartwright’s sole contention on appeal was the legality of the City I.Q. camera streetlight system, arguing that its use violated his Fourth Amendment rights and that his identity would never have been discovered without it. In advancing this argument, he cited the U.S. Supreme Court case of Carpenter v. United States (2018) 138 S.Ct. 2206. Carpenter dealt with the constitutionality of a warrantless collection of cell-site location information and its subsequent use in reconstructing a suspect’s movement over the course of 127 days. The Supreme Court held in Carpenter that the government’s acquisition of the cell-site records constituted a “search,” and as such, when done without a warrant, invaded the defendant’s reasonable expectation of privacy. (pp. 2219, 2223.)  

Here, Cartwright also cited the federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision of Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore Police Dept. (4th Cir. 2021) 2 F.4th 330. Following the reasoning in Carpenter, the Fourth Circuit in Beautiful Struggle held that an aerial surveillance program operated by the city of Baltimore, where it collected both traditional surveillance data and aerial photographs, violated the Fourth Amendment. That’s because — as ruled by the Fourth Circuit — the police could effectively track someone’s every movement throughout the city retroactively over a 45-day period.  

This integrated surveillance program, the Fourth Circuit concluded, was an incursion into personal privacy directly comparable to the cell-site location information accessed in Carpenter. The Ninth Circuit, however, held that Cartwright’s situation was not comparable with the situations in either Carpenter or Beautiful Struggle.  

Per the court: “Neither Carpenter nor Beautiful Struggle can be read to indicate that the review of footage from the streetlight cameras in this case amounts to a search subject to a warrant requirement.” The court concluded that “(r)ecordings from cameras, such as the ones that captured Cartwright’s movements in the downtown urban environment in the middle of a weekday, do not rise to the same ‘unique nature of cell phone location records,’” as occurred in Carpenter. To the contrary, a person traveling around on the “public thoroughfares” do not have a “reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another.”  

When Cartwright drove his gold Yukon downtown and parked it in front of G.R.’s flooring store, “the movements of the vehicle and its final destination had been ‘voluntarily conveyed to anyone who wanted to look.’” As such, he did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy when he chose to expose his presence to the City I.Q. camera streetlight program. The court differentiated San Diego’s program from the cell tower situation described in Carpenter and the aerial surveillance program as occurred in Beautiful Struggle by noting that the “streetlight cameras, only capture ‘short term’ movements rather than ‘everyone's movements across the city.’” They are “fixed in place,” “only capture individual trips,” and do not create “a retrospective database of everyone's movements across the city.” Due to these inherent limitations, stationary cameras merely “augment...ordinary police capabilities.” They “modestly supplement and enhance, to a permissible degree, warrantless capabilities the police had even before the technology.”  

As such, it was noted that the City I.Q. streetlight camera program was no different that the private security cameras employed outside many businesses. In fact, when Cartwright moved to the rear of a clothing store and removed his mask, his movements were recorded on that business’ security camera as well. Given this reality, the court held that “Cartwright could not maintain an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in the downtown, urban public spaces when any number of private businesses may have maintained similar cameras that capture similar images.”  

Comparing this limited use of San Diego’s City I.Q. streetlight camera program with the cell tower and aerial surveillance programs described in Carpenter and Beautiful Struggle, where massive amounts of information was collected on anyone and everyone in the area, the court noted the comparative limited use of the former. Thus, the court concluded that “Cartwright had no objectively reasonable expectation of privacy when he used the public streets and sidewalks downtown in a manner readily observable to passersby.” The court held that “the police did not conduct a ‘search’ when they accessed footage from city’s streetlight cameras and, accordingly, there was no violation of the Fourth Amendment.” 

If the above reasoning is bit confusing, think of it as merely comparing the overall intrusiveness of the various programs on a sliding scale, nothing more than a matter of degree. 

Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court specifically indicated in its Carpenter decision that its holding was a “narrow one” and not intended to extend to “conventional surveillance techniques and tools, such as security cameras.” (138 S.Ct. at 2220.) Undoubtedly, San Diego’s City I.Q. streetlight camera program is less extensive than the vast amounts of information collected by the vast network of cell towers that now exists throughout the nation.  

I understand that the “Big Brother” aspects of such monitoring — via cell towers or fixed cameras throughout the city — might be a little troubling for some of us. But note that as pointed out by the court, San Diego’s streetlight cameras aren’t much more intrusive than all the security cameras that many private businesses use to monitor the goings-on inside and outside those businesses. Either way, what a great tool for law enforcement. We shouldn’t be hesitant to use this information in our investigations to bring a little justice to our streets.