For Chanda Litten, light rail in Sacramento is the way to get around although she was sometimes faced with characters who made her uneasy. “It’s really dark, and you see some undesirables,” she reported to a local TV station. “It doesn’t happen often, but when it does it can be very scary.” Norm Leong, the head of Regional Transit Police in Sacramento, California, plans to improve the system through use of more video and patrol coordination with local police.

Tokyo tops the rankings for overall safest city this year, according to The Economist’s report: The Safe Cities Index 2015: Assessing Urban Security in the Digital Age. By ranking 50 cities under four main categories: digital security, health security, infrastructure safety and personal safety, the report found that the world’s most populous city is also the safest in the Index, especially with preparations underway for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Launched in 2007, Operation Shield is an initiative of the Atlanta Police Foundation and the Atlanta Police Department (APD) to generate effective communication between the APD and both the public and private sectors and create a force multiplier for crime prevention and emergency preparedness. Through the Operation Shield Video Integration Center (VIC), APD officers are able to use software to monitor video feeds from both public and private sector cameras.

Safe City initiatives typically start with the integration of security video. In most cases the cameras are operated by the police department or other local government entities such as Departments of Transportation, or Emergency Operations Centers.