URBANA (AP) — The University of Illinois had 13 surveillance cameras on its Urbana-Champaign campus in 2008. Five years later that number is at 900 with police saying they hope to increase it to 1,100 by the end of the year.

"It has always been our intention to try to cover as much of the campus as we can," UI police Detective Tim Hetrick, who leads the department's security camera project, told The News-Gazette (http://bit.ly/YGL74w ). "The cameras help us to solve reported crimes that couldn't be solved any other way."

The first cameras went up in 2008 to prevent theft at food storage facilities. The next year Hetrick said the chancellor's office gave police more money to pay for 18 exterior cameras in areas that police believe criminals frequented.