Most surveillance cameras are operated by local businesses that install them to help prevent theft and for liability purposes. Whenever a crime is reported, police routinely scan the surveillance footage from nearby businesses, which, if they have it, usually hand over the video voluntarily.

Police also monitor cameras installed in some public places. There are cameras in the parking garage, for example,and also one at the Jackson Hole skate park on High School Road. But there may also be a few cameras the police don’t want you to know about, according to one Jackson cop.

“There are a couple of cameras I can’t tell you about because it wouldn’t be within our policy,” said Det. Russ Rushill, an investigator with the Jackson Police Dept. Rushill explained that the authorities can install cameras only in very public areas, where someone does not have a right to privacy.

“A lot of people think there’s too much big brother power,” Rushill said, referring to the term for a totalitarian state spying on its citizens. “We only put cameras where you don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

Cameras in the parking garage have kept the town’s largest blank structure free of graffiti and thwarted auto burglaries, Rushill said, and the eye on the skating park is aimed at underage drinking.

Surveillance cameras are by no means a new phenomenon. Local law enforcement have relied on video evidence for more than two decades. But the cameras at the parking garage, completed in ‘08, and the skate park, where a camera was installed in the last year, represent relatively new eyes in the community.

Public cameras have also expanded out of the realm of security and as a 21st century form of entertainment and marketing. In recent years, Web cams pointed at some of the area's more photogenic locations have become popular attractions on the Internet, including for skiers who want to suss out parking at the top of Teton Pass or snow coverage at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.
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