Company Tracks Crimes from the Sky
KEILAR: You're about to see some remarkable video of some deadly crimes. What makes the images so amazing is that they were recorded from a plane thousands of feet overhead. And CNN's Brian Todd is here with a closer look. This is pretty fascinating stuff.</s>BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is, Brianna. You know, this technology, this surveillance technology is so powerful it can track a person from two miles up and can cover 25 square miles at once. It's enough to make you feel like you're constantly being watched, but for law enforcement, this can be like having a slow-motion replay button to track back any crime scene.</s>TODD (voice-over): You're watching a murder unfold. Look at the cursor toward the bottom. In an instant, the suspect approaches, fires. The victim's down. The killer sprints off. This 2009 gangland shooting in Juarez, Mexico, was captured from 10,000 feet, about 2 miles up.</s>ROSS MCNUTT, PERSISTENT SURVEILLANCE SYSTEMS: You can see a whole group of people here reacting to the shot. They come over and look at the victim. Then they run down the alleyway, actually after the shooter.</s>TODD: From their specially-equipped Cessnas, Ross McNutt and his firm, Persistent Surveillance Systems, can monitor large sections of cities. Because they're in the air for hours at a time, they can track back to the moment of a crime and before it. In Juarez...</s>MCNUTT: They meet up three to four times prior to the murder including one time right outside the murder scene.</s>TODD: In the moments afterward...</s>MCNUTT: We actually can follow all of the cars. We're going to jump over and follow the car that the shooter got into and see where he goes to.</s>TODD: They tie in a Google Earth street view image to show police the house where the suspect went to hide. McNutt's team helped police make arrests in that shooting.</s>MCNUTT: We've actually witnessed three or four murders so far, and we've actually had confessions that account for 75.</s>TODD: Also in Juarez, McNutt's team captured the murder of a female police officer, circled in red. You dread it as you see her unable to outrun her killers.</s>MCNUTT: She was shot six times in the head and shoulders. We literally watch her run into this parked car here.</s>TODD: McNutt says they can pick out suspects by looking for strange behavioral patterns. Right after murders, the suspects in Juarez, he says, like many others...</s>MCNUTT: They drive like idiots: running red lights, swerving around people.</s>TODD: McNutt's team has monitored other high-crime cities: Compton, California; Philadelphia; Baltimore. They can replicate their operations center in Dayton, Ohio, anywhere. (on camera): In a typical operation, law-enforcement officers will sit in this area monitoring a police scanner. When a call comes in that a crime's been committed, these analysts immediately start to track back when and where it occurred. And sometimes, they can catch up to a suspect in real time. (voice-over): Dayton, 2012. They get word of a burglary, track the suspect in the white truck as he's getting away, and direct police right to him. Dayton's police chief says the technologies helped his depleted force.</s>CHIEF RICHARD DIEHL, DAYTON, OHIO, POLICE: Allows us to gain data on criminal offenses for which there are often not witnesses and clearly police officers are not there to prevent.</s>TODD: But privacy advocates say this smacks of Big Brother.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They might have actually crossed a line. This creates the opportunity after the fact to look at anybody for any reason.</s>MCNUTT: We're responding in support of law enforcement to reported crimes only.</s>TODD: And, McNutt says, they closely monitor their own analysts to make sure they're only tracking suspects.</s>TODD: Despite the controversy, Ross McNutt says police departments in at least ten different cities around the world are interested in buying his system to use on a permanent basis -- Brianna.</s>KEILAR: And you were saying before that just from that one, the images you were seeing of that one gangland murder in Juarez, maybe they solved that crime or they had evidence of that, but it led to a whole bunch of other information.</s>TODD: It really did. Just from that one gangland murder that they captured, Persistent Surveillance Systems tracked back through that video. They found two locations where drug cartels were operating from. They found 12 locations where the killers had been. They tracked 12 cars that were used in that crime. It opens up this web of information that they can track back and solve a lot of other potential crimes and get other potential suspects.</s>KEILAR: Fascinating. Brian Todd, thank you so much. Just ahead, new details about Pope Francis' surprise invitation to Israeli and Palestinian leaders to join him at the Vatican. He reveals what will be and what won't be on the agenda. And the USS Cole returns to New York City. Why this visit is so poignant.