Big Brother in the Burgh (Pittsburgh: work, high crime, banks)

[PPG]

Mayor, DA want to link Pittsburgh surveillance cameras - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Thanks Luke, now I have to tint my windows. I dont want to be on video tape picking my nose.

Also, this is coming from the same people that promote violent criminals.

[subdivisions]

Originally Posted by PPG

Mayor, DA want to link Pittsburgh surveillance cameras - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Thanks Luke, now I have to tint my windows. I dont want to be on video tape picking my nose.

Also, this is coming from the same people that promote violent criminals.

Tinted windows, huh? You know that will automatically make you a criminal, right?

Just kidding. I totally agree with you.

[Hopes]

This Big Brother plan really means that the police don't want to actually patrol those areas. I think it's rediculous that police won't respond to calls in some of Pittsburgh's more dangerous neighborhoods. Isn't fighting crime the reason they became police officers?

My BIL is a city paramedic. He responds to shootings without police protection. Apparently, police take their time arriving to make sure the risk of gunfire is over. Thankfully, paramedics care more about human life than police officers or the city homocide rate would be much higher because many of the crime statistic "assults" would become "homocides" if the paramedics left people to die in the streets because they were too afraid to arrive at the scene like the police officers are too afraid. Meanwhile, police have guns, paramedics do not.

[pghlibrarian]

I'm on the fence when it comes to "crime cameras" placed in neighborhoods that have had a history of violent crimes. I can see both sides of the argument.

This has been tried in other cities (Baltimore and DC come to mind) and I haven't seen a dramatic drop in the rates of violent crime in these areas. Personally, I think the "beat cop" approach works the best - putting the resources where they are most needed - on the ground and in the neighborhoods.

Most bank security personnel will tell you that having surveillance cameras in a location does little to deter crime, but it can be useful in identifying those who perpetrate crime after the fact.

[Gerbil]

I think it would be more for identification than prevention. I don't mind it. I doubt people will actually be watching all the time, but if something happens then they can "go to the tape" to see evidence. So no one'll see you picking your nose unless you happened to be passing by when a crime took place

[Elder18]

It's gotten to the point where if I'm out in public, I assume that something is taping everything I do.
Call me paranoid if you will, but that's how I feel, and I think that attitude, which many people probably share, does affect feelings of freedom and liberty.

It goes back to the question of how much people are willing to sacrafice in order to feel "secure."

Personally, I'm aware that right now, someone could randomly come up to me and shoot me for no reason and no camera is going to stop that.

So is it worth it?

[Drover]

Originally Posted by Elder18

It's gotten to the point where if I'm out in public, I assume that something is taping everything I do.
Call me paranoid if you will, but that's how I feel, and I think that attitude, which many people probably share, does affect feelings of freedom and liberty.

It goes back to the question of how much people are willing to sacrafice in order to feel "secure."

Personally, I'm aware that right now, someone could randomly come up to me and shoot me for no reason and no camera is going to stop that.

So is it worth it?

What do you believe you have the freedom and liberty to do in public without cameras that you do not have the freedom and liberty to do with cameras monitoring public spaces? What exactly are you sacrificing?

If you believe cameras are not going to stop someone randomly shooting you, then you must also believe that nobody is sensitive to deterrents such as the likelihood of being identified by witnesses, a notion dispelled by the fact that most shootings take place at night in non-crowded areas. Cameras are not designed to deter ALL crime. They are designed to enhance the deterrent effect, and absent that, to record an event where there may be no witnesses or where the witnesses do not feel at liberty to speak up, or to corroborate witness accounts.

Is it worth it? Ask the family of 14-year-old Roberto Duran who was gunned down by punks who mistook him as a rival gang member. The CPD used cameras to catch the perpetrators. Are cameras going to stop you from being shot? I don't know, but cameras got these dirtbags off the street so they are a lot less likely to shoot more people in the future.

[Elder18]

Is it not reasonable to have the expectation, as free people in a supposedly-free society, to be able to go out in public and not be under surveilance? I think it is, and the fact that I'm not allowed to have the expectation any more is upsetting for many reasons, Constitutional ones not withstanding.

While cameras may help catch criminals in some cases, I'm not aware that they do much as far as deterence, and isn't this the point?

It's one thing to take an emotional, terrible case like a 14 year old being killed and point to how cameras were helpful in catching the people who killed him (although not in preventing the killing from happening in the first place) and quite anoter to display a long-term benefit in rates of crime decreasing.

Come on Drover, I thought your intelligence was greater than that.

[Chicago Tim]

In Chicago they put up blue blinking lights with police cameras in many high crime areas and in fact crime in many of those areas went up. Plus, it's inviting for addicts, you see the cameras you know your in the right area, just go a few blocks away from the cameras and you've got a hook up. It also took 4 years for one of those cameras to help solve a murder

Do cop cameras give crooks the blues? Jury is still out: Statistics Chicago Sun-Times - Find Articles (broken link)

[PPG]

I think it has nothing to do with preventing crime. It has to do with the nation/world wide police state that we've been warned about from those conspiracy theory wackos. Yes, they do want people in jail to support the industrial prison complex. Every day on the news we see people holding up banks and mini-marts. Evidence that cameras are not a deterent.