Watching you in April: External Security Cameras Coming to 'Real Time Crime Center'

[megimoo]

OGDEN -- Attempting a police omniscience seen in only about 20 U.S. cities, the Ogden Police Department is gearing up for a "real time crime center" to be operational soon after its Crime Blimp launches.The center hopes to eventually be linked with the thousands of private and government security cameras around town, including the city's own inventory of some 200 cameras.

Utah Department of Transportation and Utah Transit Authority are already on board to share their cameras with Ogden police in the video center planned for soon-to-be-remodeled offices in the department headquarters.....Officials are shooting for an April launch date for the blimp, under construction by Weber State University's Utah Center for Aeronautical Innovation and Design, which will feed video to a fledgling version of the RTCC. They hope the center is fully operational by July.

A civil rights debate is likely to flare at some point..."Scary," was local defense attorney Bernie Allen's reaction to the coming integrated camera system and the blimp.

"Talk about your Big Brother, it's 'A Brave New World,' " he quipped, referring to two famous novels about futuristic worlds surveilled by oppressive governments....An inventory of the city's central business district, between 18th and 28th streets, Adams and Wall avenues, has identified 37 businesses with external security cameras, said Dave Weloth, the OPD crime analyst who is overseeing the real time crime center's development and will likely be its manager.

Owners are being asked if they'll integrate their security cameras with OPD's, a slower process than Weloth's inventory...So far, half a dozen have signed on, he said, although less than half of the 37 have been approached.

http://www.standard.net/topics/ogden-police-department/2011/02/27/external-security-cameras-coming-real-time-crime-center

[Novaheart]

I wonder to what extent a municipality can limit the application of its surveillance technology.

A couple of years ago, when a woman hit my brand new truck, I found myself wishing there had been a redlight camera at that intersection to prove she ran the light. There was a witness who said she did, but Geico (her company) still tried to refuse to pay the claim. They eventually paid it in arbitration. A number of people have expressed doubt that the worthless bloodsucking patronage scam company that operates redlight tax collectors would have provided the evidence requested. But I digress.

I'm wondering if a municipality can limit the application of surveillance cameras to violent crimes and property crimes and refuse to share them in civil matters. I should think that would lower resistance to the cams. On the other hand, local governments and states have a huge investment in law enforcement and incarceration.

[Rockntractor]

As communities become more and more strapped for cash you will see a huge increase in cameras, look for jail sentences to be scrapped and huge fines with time payment plans put in place. Suddenly criminals deemed unsafe to be loose in society will become safe, as long as they are paying their fine of course.

[Novaheart]

As communities become more and more strapped for cash you will see a huge increase in cameras, look for jail sentences to be scrapped and huge fines with time payment plans put in place. Suddenly criminals deemed unsafe to be loose in society will become safe, as long as they are paying their fine of course.

I don't see how economically enslaving people is preferable to physically incarcerating them. Neither seems too redemptive.

We have a lot of people in jail for simple drug crimes. The first place that people go with this is usually that such criminals eventually commit other crimes, but we don't generally punish people on that basis. Drugs are unquestionably destructive, but looking at the sheets of the guys who get arrested, it seems to be habitual with some and not others.

I've often wonder why it is, when we spend so much money keeping a juvenile in DOC custody almost always with disappointing results, we don't spend the same amount of money to send these guys to well disciplined academies, either existing ones or ones created for troubled youth. I'm inclined to think that it is the return of these guys to their homes and environments which keeps them coming back.

[Rockntractor]

I've often wonder why it is, when we spend so much money keeping a juvenile in DOC custody almost always with disappointing results, we don't spend the same amount of money to send these guys to well disciplined academies, either existing ones or ones created for troubled youth. I'm inclined to think that it is the return of these guys to their homes and environments which keeps them coming back.

Years ago they did take the kids away and put them in reform school, I don't think it was necessaries a bad Idea. just calling them troubled is a bit naive, a lot of these kids are dangerous as hell!