Surveillance Cameras

21 Mar 08

Once again, the conspicuous impotence of surveillance cameras in preventing violent crime, is on display:

"At the Van Dyke Housing Project in Brooklyn, NY, there are over two-hundred surveillance cameras. Live video is displayed on thirty, tiny, outdated TV monitors. Not surprisingly, cameras and monitors are the cheapest, chintziest attainable. Each camera's view is shown for only sevenseconds, before the monitor automatically switches to another camera. Resolution is so poor, facial identification is seldom possible. The mind-numbing job of viewing these thirty monitors is dumped onto a handful of bored-to-tears police who are on medical leave, face disciplinary action, or, for some other reason, can't carry a weapon. Predictably, the Department uses this assignment as a form of punishment.

Yesterday, a woman was raped in this project. She was assaulted as she exited an elevator, dragged into a staircase, and sexually victimized at knife-point by a single, male VCA.

The attack was partially filmed, but, as it was actually happening, none of the officers watching monitors noticed it. In fact, the crime was not discovered until the victim herself reported it. Due to inadequate resolution, no identification of the suspect was possible.

This crime, like most other violent crime in the projects, remains unsolved. No arrest has been made, nor is one likely."

Comment: A sign at this project should read, "You're on camera! Please smile when attacked." Once again, none of those cameras, which were naively touted as the ultimate solution to violent crime, were of the slightest benefit to this latest victim.

As has been pointed out before, surveillance cameras are valuable only to media ghouls, because they provide valuable filler (masquerading as "news") that the network can use (along with today's car-chase in Los Angeles) to jam between ads for pills. Boosts their ratings, you know!

When a crime "solution," like surveillance cameras, incontrovertibly proves itself, over and over, to be inefficacious, as this latest, unsolved, violent crime so copiously demonstrates, the typical government answer is predictable: "Let's do more of it!"

The real answer, which is to allow, indeed encourage, good citizens to effectively defend themselves, via concealed guns, is, of course, unthinkable to nanny-state politicians, the only species you'll find in New York! Violent crime generates a fearful electorate. Scared, dependent, hopeless, defenseless people are easily deceived and intimidated into voting for overbearing despots. It's a principle not lost on aspiring autocrats, who thus look upon violent criminals as a critical resource and asset, and which is why they ever insist that VCAs be out, committing violent crimes, and not in jail.

Conversely, proud, independent, self-reliant citizens resent being smothered by inefficient, uncaring, ever-dithering, bloated bureaucracies (is there another kind?). These are the kind of people nanny-state politicians simultaneously hate and fear. They're not an easy source of votes, and not easily conned. Accordingly, they are marginalized, punished, and suffocated at every opportunity.

"Our elections are extravagant farces; theatrical enterprises in which the great amalgam of gullible fools selects from the most pernicious among us, ego-maniacal charlatans with insatiable appetites for adulation and power, the reckless but persuasive, pandering parasites we all must suffer, engorge, and submit to for the next short while."

KR Mudgeon

/John