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Smile: Old Town Surveillance Command Center Is Now Operational

The Wichita Police Department’s new Old Town surveillance system is up and running.

The city has installed about a dozen cameras throughout Wichita’s Old Town neighborhood. In total, about 70 cameras will be placed throughout the district as a way to monitor crime.

The new 10-screen monitoring and command center in City Hall was unveiled on Thursday.

“It’s not only a security tool, it’s also an economic development tool," said Police Chief Gordon Ramsay in a press briefing. "We know that there are some previous studies that there is concerns about safety at nighttime, and these are gonna help us address those concerns.”

Installation and maintenance for the first two years will cost the city about $750,000. Ramsay says his department hopes to expand the use of surveillance cameras to other areas of the city.

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Nadya Faulx is KMUW's Digital News Editor and Reporter, which means she splits her time between working on-air and working online, managing news on KMUW.org, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. She joined KMUW in 2015 after working for a newspaper in western North Dakota. Before that she was a diversity intern at NPR in Washington, D.C.