The police won't get to watch patrons down beers at Shirley's Honey Hole after all.
Baltimore's police commissioner is planning to veto a condition worked out by the bar's owner and a city attorney that would have allowed law enforcement to monitor live video feeds from surveillance cameras inside the tavern, according to the department's chief spokesman, Anthony Guglielmi.
It was one of several concessions the owner, Shirley Barner, had agreed to this week to keep authorities from padlocking her business after a spate of shootings outside and accusations that drug dealers were using the vestibule to sell and store narcotics led police to label the bar a public nuisance.
The police spokesman said other parts of the settlement remain in force, including the requirements that Barner have cameras with tapes that last for four days, hire a security guard and shut down for all of October.
The idea that police, who already keep watch over the city's residents with more than 450 surveillance cameras aimed at public spaces, would soon be able to have live video access inside a bar raised concerns that government would start intruding deeper into people's personal lives and private activities than ever before.
Guglielmi said that after several days of review, Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III decided that the real-time video access to the interior of Shirley's Honey Hole, even with the owner's consent, raised concerns about liability and police resources that are already stretched thin.
Bealefeld ordered an aide Thursday to draft a new settlement agreement that will be presented to Barner and her attorney, possibly today. It will require Barner to turn over tapes of surveillance footage to police at their request, which was part of the original agreement, but Guglielmi said it "does not include the ability to remotely view real-time live film or any other images being captured by the security camera."
"It comes down to resources," Guglielmi said. "The Police Department cannot be a private security company for every bar in the city. That's not our job."
He also said that should officers monitoring feeds at the busy Citiwatch command center happen to tune into Shirley's Honey Hole and see someone do something wrong, "We'd have to act on it because we witnessed somebody commit a crime. We just don't have the resources to be everywhere." Police also feared the live feed could allow Barner to shift responsibility to the police for illegal activities inside her bar.
