DETROIT – Project Green Light Detroit is a system of monitored, interconnected security cameras outside businesses and it has spread from the original eight businesses to more than 400 across the city.
More cameras are coming as the service has been extended to Corktown. Six businesses along Michigan Avenue have all signed up to create a whole corridor of Project Green Light cameras.
Corktown is a thriving neighborhood, but also has seen a lot of car thefts in the area. Business owners in the area banned together to say enough is enough and now some are joining Project Green Light.
"Everybody wants to know about Green Light," Detroit police chief James Craig said.
"As we continue to expand cameras, we're gonna have to replicate the real time crime center and have more locations," Detroit mayor Mike Duggan said. "This is the big thing in policing today as far as proven strategy."
There will be 20 cameras throughout Corktown, those cameras will be feeding live video back to the city's real time center.
Stephen Roginson, co-owner of Batch Brewing Company, said he's seen his fair share of crime.
"We've had the building broken into a couple of times as well, and the reality is that this is going to happen in any big city," Roginson said.
Roginson believes creating a Green Light corridor in Corktown was the right thing to do.
"This is a deliberate approach to making it more secure and safer for people that are coming here," Roginson said. "It's important that when people are walking away from Corktown they're not saying, 'Ugh, the last two times I was here cars got broken into.'"
The businesses involved in the Green Light project are working together for at least the next three years. City leaders believe this is just the beginning of creating safer communities throughout the city of Detroit.