In an effort to curb violence in Youngstown--city officials welcomed Flock Security to its safety committee meeting Thursday.

The public safety company showed off its neighborhood surveillance system, comprised of a camera that takes pictures of the rear-ends of vehicles.  The goal is to provide law enforcement agencies with information such as model, make, color, and license plate--often the biggest lead for investigators.

"We've seen homicides solved with these cameras.  We see regularly missing persons found both children and amber alerts.", said Holly Beilin, with Flock Safety's external affairs.

Holly tells 21 News that these camera's not only lead to resolving crime, but reducing it.

"We see in cities across the country that after a few months of increasing their case clearance rate, recovering stolen vehicles, solving more violent and property crime--they'll actually start to see their overall crime rate start to decline.", she added.

These devices are solar-powered, and backed up by batteries.  Depending on infrastructure plug-ins are also an option.

Pictures and vehicle descriptions are relayed to a database, which can be accessed by authorized individuals, to help aid in solving cases.  In Ohio, the fourth-largest user of these devices, more than 100 crimes are solved per day,  and more than 1,000 nationally.  

Locally, Canfield and Niles lease the software from Flock Safety.  John Marshall, captain of the Niles Police department says they are incredibly happy to have it...solving several cases with relative ease because of the ability to have that information at hand.

Youngstown is in the early process of vetting candidates, as well as in-house options to provide this kind of service, many were in unison that more research needs to be done on the Flock Safety Cameras.  

"It's a good idea, it's a very good idea.", said councilwoman Anita Davis--adding that she'll look into the information presented.

Concerns over costs were raised at the agenda meeting.  Each camera costs $2,500 per year, $2,850 per camera the first year.  Installation, including polls for the camera, and software are all included.  It's something Youngstown Police Captain Jason Simon says they need to look into.

"Looking at the Youngstown Police budget, that could be a strain on the services portion of the budget--because it's already strained to begin with, with that portion.", Simon explained.

When asked if this software would've helped to bring justice to the case of Persayus Davis-May, a 10-year-old girl that was shot and killed in Samuel Street home last year--Captain Simon says those cameras would've had to been in the right place at the right time.

"In the case of the Persayus May homicide there would've had to been a camera pointed down that street in order to catch the license plate fleeing away or esle your just catching license plates on streets.", Simon added.