Video Camera

The latest weapons in the fight against drunken driving will be video cameras mounted in police cruisers, as county police hope to use videotaped evidence to strengthen their cases against intoxicated drivers.Aetna Life and Casualty, with help from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, has donated 29 video cameras to police departments throughout the state, with four of the cameras going to Howard County police."Our goal in MADD is to get drunk drivers off the road, and this is one of the best tools to discourage drinking and driving," said George Layman, a spokesman for the Howard County chapter of MADD.

Carroll school bus drivers soon will be getting the high-tech equivalent of eyes in the backs of their heads.This fall, Carroll County schools will install a video camera box on each of the 300 buses that transport students.And within a few months, each bus could also have a cellular telephone, to be used only for emergencies or when a bus is running late, but not when the bus is in motion.The cell phone proposal is contingent on approval by the school board and County Commissioners next month.

CHICAGO -- One afternoon in November, Houston Texans lineman Fred Weary was pulled over by Houston police for a traffic violation. The cops say he was belligerent and uncooperative. Mr. Weary's lawyer says he did as he was told. What no one disputes is that the story had an unhappy ending. The officer shot him with a Taser before handcuffing and arresting him. At times like this, wouldn't it be nice to know exactly what happened? Of course it would. It would also be easy - had the incident been captured by a video camera.

It was a few days after Christmas when 16-year-old Amanda Custer and her mom made a rare stop for a takeout burger. The indulgence ended badly for Amanda. Soon after, she said, "I felt real nauseous. Food was, like, gross. I got really bad cramps, a whole bunch of heartburn and an upset stomach. " And it didn't go away. "I would feel OK and try to eat something, and then I'd regret it," she recalled. "The pain afterwards was horrible. A couple of hours after I ate, I'd be going to the bathroom, feeling nauseous.

Scott Wanex hooked up a video camera to his computer to go live on the Internet. He captured a image of a theft suspect in his own home instead.A man hired to do odd jobs in Wanex's Northeast Baltimore home allegedly pilfered 129 compact discs. But before the discs were taken, the man posed for a computer portrait, apparently not realizing his image would be stored on a hard drive.So when Wanex and his wife, Carole Holmes, noticed the collection of theater and movie music, including the theme from "Gone With the Wind," was missing, they had a color photo to give police.

The recent arrests of seven people for various sex crimes at the Chatham Mall have prompted mall security to install a surveillance camera outside an illicitly used men's bathroom.Undercover county police officers began patrols of the restroom area approximately three weeks ago after getting reports that a group of homosexual men was using the restroom as a meeting place for sexual liaisons.Those arrested include residents of Columbia, Baltimore, Burtonsville and Marriottsville, although police and mall officials say that word is apparently getting out that the bathroom is off-limits.

Carroll school bus drivers soon will be getting the high-tech equivalent of eyes in the backs of their heads.This fall, Carroll County school system will install a video camera box on each of the 300 buses that transport students.And within a few months, each bus could also have a cellular phone, to be used only for emergencies or when a bus is running late, but not when the bus is in motion.The cell phone proposal is contingent on approval by the school board and County Commissioners next month.

A Maryland astronomer working in a back yard near Mount Airy during last month's Leonid meteor shower has been credited with making the first confirmed pictures of meteors smashing into the moon.David Dunham of Greenbelt said a starlike flash on the videotape he shot Nov. 17 closely matches the time of a flash seen independently from Texas. Since then, his tape has confirmed five more impacts videotaped independently by Leonid-watchers in Texas, Mexico and Maryland."I think this is the nail in the coffin," said Dunham, a space mission designer at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel.

The Baltimore Police Department yesterday released footage from one of its surveillance cameras that captured a man being shot during what authorities describe as a suspected drug deal on the western edge of downtown. A civilian observer who was monitoring the video feed as the incident unfolded about 3 a.m. quickly dispatched patrol officers, who police said stopped the getaway vehicle near the scene. Police said three men were arrested and two handguns were found in the car. The suspects have each been charged with attempted murder, said police, but their names were being withheld.

The video camera at work that you thought was just for security is turning into a monitoring device for bosses seeking out malingerers, grouches and incompetents.Already, several companies, including Baltimore-based Crown Central Petroleum Corp., have refocused security video cameras make them "management tools." With a briefcase-sized monitor, managers can use regular phone lines in homes, hotel rooms or offices to dial up cameras hundreds of miles away and secretly watch workers.That's the most recent innovation in a decades-long trend toward increased electronic surveillance in the workplace.