This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.

  • City leaders discussed the new security along the Lafitte Greenway on Friday
  • Work on the upgraded security begain in 2017
  • The system includes 53 new security cameras
  • The cameras are not used for surveillance but can be viewed instantly if needed at the city's Real Time Crime Center
  • 18 new call boxes were also added
  • Each call box also has a camera

NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans city leaders revealed the new security features for the Lafitte Greenway.

The corridor now has 53 security cameras along with 18 emergency call boxes.  Each of the call boxes is also equipped with a camera.  Whenever someone uses a call box, a call center answers the line and can quickly contact 9-1-1 if necessary.  Also, the new security camera can be viewed by the city’s Real Time Crime Center.

But city workers don’t want people to feel like the additional security is an invasion of their privacy.

“We have one of the most conservative privacy policies for a real-time crime center anywhere in the country. And we did that intentionally,” Collin Arnold of the New Orleans Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness told reporters on Friday.  “We are a complaint based system. The way this system works is that when a complaint is made to 9-1-1, cameras spin up automatically. There is not active monitoring of these cameras. There is not surveillance. This is an incident based, complaint based system.”

Work on the new security began in 2017.  The Lafitte Greenway is 2.6 miles long and stretches from Armstrong Park almost to City Park.

Lafitte Greenway workers say about a thousand people a day use the corridor and that number rises by about 10% every year.