Sunday, April 11, 2010

Cameras enlisted to fight crime

From the Daily News:

Cops in northern Queens are building a database to map the locations of local business security cameras to help save time when looking for footage of a crime.

The pilot program, dubbed Operation Watchout, was officially launched at the beginning of the year, when cops began reaching out to the seven business improvement districts in Patrol Borough Queens North, sources said.

The initiative is designed for each of the eight precincts within Queens North - the 104th, 108th, 109th, 110th, 111th, 112th, 114th and 115th - to have a list of nearby cameras to immediately check any recordings near the scene of a crime.

"Instead of going door to door, [cops] can just go to where they know the cameras are," a police source said.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Operation Big Brother. Watch Out!

Alan Funt said...

Smile!

Anonymous said...

As people may know London is filled with high tech cameras all over the city and so is Chicago, but half of the cameras in the subway stations dont work where they are needed.

Even though London has these cameras they still have gone after the wrong person many times.

Anonymous said...

The Big Brother comments following these stories were getting tired and old in 1984 (no pun intended). Especially when one considers how many high profile violent crimes surveillance cameras have solved and thus gotten violent criminals off the street. As I always ask, and get no answer, how can surveillance cameras harm innocent citizens? As a matter of fact, if I'm an innocent person and being accused of a crime I DIDN'T commit, I would sure as hell hope I was filmed somewhere far away from the crime scene at the time in question. "Big Brother" comments are such IGNORANT comments in this day & age. Grow up babies!

LibertyBoyNYC said...

Let's put a few in the City Council chambers.

LibertyBoyNYC said...

Actually, the Big Brother comments are spot on.

Anonymous said...

We're giving up our freedom to an unspecified invisible enemy

Anonymous said...

The folks at Norwood Gardens asked Mr Public Safety to stop the rash of burgerlies and break ins from all that riff raff from the island that has destroyed 30th Ave.

Mr Public Safety, mindful of votes from the cafe/hooka set, claims that 30th Ave is not reponsible and if they want cameras they should buy it themselves.

Newtown Pentacle said...

anon 4-
So if you're not doing anything wrong, why shouldn't the cops have the right to come into your house and rifle through your drawers?

Anonymous said...

This should have been done long ago. Planning to create a blanket of cameras in Subways, highly foot trafficked shopping and tourist areas should have been in place long ago, LOL. London, Las Vegas, Singapore, Hong Kong, Paris all have some form of security via cameras to bolster Security and monitoring at little cost once the initial capital outley occurs!

Fuji Kodak said...

Some cameras are worth the intrusion...others not! Get the picture?

Anonymous said...

Hope they put cameras around Hart Park in Woodside where all the illegals congregate, litter and piss on the sidewalk. Do you think Immigration or Homeland Security will do anything about them if they have them on camera? Guess again.

Babs said...

I would like to add that I would like them also to be in judges' chambers too!

Anonymous said...

Public live camera feed from every government office/conference room, etc as well as within every police station.

Watch the watchers...

Joe said...

1984 Quote by Pink Floyds mastermind producer-engineer Alan Parsons

"I am the eye in the sky
Looking at you, I can read your mind
I am the maker of rules
Dealing with fools, I can cheat you blind
And you don't need to know any more then that"

Anonymous said...

The Big Brother comments only prove that your paranoia does not let you read the story and only the headline.

The police are not monitoring these cameras, only building a list of the security cameras these businesses already have. That way, if a crime is committed, cops already know where some cameras exist - saving them time from knocking door to door.

Remember Jack Price, who was beat up because he was gay? If it weren't for the video taken from a nearby store, and later released to the media, the attackers may still be on the street.

This "database" just speeds up that process. I'm sure you'd agree if you were ever the victim of a crime...so chill out.

Anonymous said...

I'd like to have the owner of these cameras be given a reward of $1000 if the video results in an arrest.

It's better to have these in private hands anyway, more than half the subway cameras are inoperable. The TSA's cameras at the Newark airport checkpoint were inoperable and they had to get the video from a airline.