Tribune News Service — The city of Midland is working to improve safety at parks through cutting-edge technology.
City Council has approved the purchase and installation of four mobile surveillance trailers and 22 pole-mounted cameras, provided by GoView LLC using AI technology.
The purchase, which has a total cost of $412,956, is intended to help increase security in public spaces.
“We as a council are very focused on the safety of our citizens, and I was looking at this as a step forward and just making sure that our citizens stay safe, especially those who are visiting parks, and the potential of being able to use some of these and other areas and events of that sort,” said Councilman-at-Large John Burkholder. “There’s been a significant amount of investments that are on those, and we’re going to have a lot of traffic and a lot of kids that are going to these parks as well. So we want to make sure (we) have the proper surveillance to make sure that people going to those parks are safe and they can enjoy them.”
“(The trailers) are mobile; they can go anywhere, anytime the city has any kind of events,” said Midland Chief Information Officer Gorgees Eskander. “The police department can tow these and can activate them.”
While the four trailers will be used around the city, the 22 pole-mounted cameras will be installed at different parks around the city, such as Centennial Park and Beal Park; in the case of the latter, the promise of these cameras was cited as a reason why the city was able to secure up to $20 million in funding for Beal Park’s renovation project. Of these, 12 of them will be installed at Reyes-Mashburn-Nelms Park. These locations were chosen because they had been identified both as hot spots for activity and as places where they needed to gain a better viewpoint.
Each of the cameras will utilize AI technology to detect specific red flags, such as if someone is in possession of a weapon or if a fight breaks out, and then immediately send a 911 dispatch alert. The cameras will also record all of their activity for crime records purposes.
In the ideal outcome, this will eliminate the need for a security officer to visually identify activity themselves, or as Burkholder said, “This is like putting police officers on the street without actually having police officers on the street.” However, the city admits that the technology is still a pilot program with room for improvement. In order to eliminate as much error on the part of the AI as possible, Eskander says that he and his team have been working on solidifying the AI for about 30 days.
“If we can get video cameras and AI to help, and kind of get an automatic alert to dispatch, that’s like putting officers on the street in these high-traffic areas and high-issue areas,” said Councilman Brian Stubbs. “I kind of hope that this is a pilot program, and that we continue to see if this works and move forward.”
The city hopes to give groups such as MPD more flexibility and resources to focus on other areas of growth.
“We really want all of the folks that are engaged in public safety to have the resources that they need,” said Mayor Lori Blong. “Hiring is a challenge in Midland, (including) to be able to get enough folks to do (public safety), and so this helps to alleviate some of that strain.”
Some of the funding to purchase these cameras comes from the city’s general fund and from funding on both the old and current Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone. The specifics on how much money will be derived from each will be deliberated on at Midland City Council’s December meeting.
A date for the completion of the installation was not confirmed, but should happen within the current fiscal year, according to Burkholder, most likely in spring 2026.
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