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Monitoring budgets haven't kept up with the pace of police cameras in Dallas. Now the city hopes to reassess which cameras deserve live monitoring.

Spend time in downtown Dallas, and there's an increasingly good chance your movements will be caught on city surveillance cameras. Less certain is whether a police officer will be watching at the other end of that video feed.

The cameras have multiplied since the program began two years ago, and Dallas police say they have reduced crime.

Their number downtown stands at 82, and there are 14 more in Jubilee Park.

But as more cameras are installed and more neighborhood groups look at acquiring them, police say the city must figure out which ones get monitored and who is going to pay for it all.

"Cameras have helped reduce crime in such a dramatic manner that we are victims of our own success," Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Elba Garcia said Monday as she introduced the issue on the City Council's public safety committee agenda.

In the central business district, police say they've made 1,700 arrests during the last couple of years thanks to the cameras. Meanwhile, crime there so far this year is down 11 percent from 2008.

In September, the cameras helped capture a murder suspect after several people broke into a coin-operated newspaper stand. Police watching a video feed spotted the thieves trying to hide near the downtown library. Officers arrested two people, one of whom turned out to be wanted in a Fort Worth slaying.