View from the cop: Crime & punishment
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AJC.com > Metro > View from the cop > Archives > 2007 > June > 18
Monday, June 18, 2007
Smile for the video, please
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Smile
Video surveillance has come a long way from video tape and VCR machines. Now almost all effective systems are digital and can be monitored from any location thanks to your computer’s hard drive. Camera systems have come down in price and as a result, many individual homes as well as communities have purchased systems to aid in the overall security plan.
Any new business should include video as part of its start up costs. More and more, residential communities are looking at video surveillance as part of the security plan. Common objections to video security fall mainly into three categories: Budget; Responsibility for day to day maintenance, and The Big Brother Conspiracy
The second best thing to preventing crime is catching the criminal after the crime. You see it every day in the news. Video footage from all kinds of businesses, both inside and outside, have accounted for the arrests of criminals from petty theft to murder. Video is most often associated with banks and they have certainly led the way with video technology. As video becomes more state of the art, the price of a good system has come within range of individual smaller businesses, residential communities, and individual homeowners.
Fair Warning
A significant part of video surveillance has nothing to do with video capabilities. The posted sign warning “THIS AREA UNDER 24-HOUR VIDEO SURVEILLANCE” is enough for many crooks to use the risk versus opportunity formula and find that opportunity somewhere else. The warning offers crooks the opportunity to change their mind before committing the crime. The smart ones will re-think it. With so many targets, why take the chance?
Good Clean Fun, Infidelity, and Gossip
The first thing we do in Neighborhood Watch is ask the residents to call in suspicious cars. In the swim and tennis neighborhoods, we soon get suspicious-car calls that result in Mrs. So and So and Mr. So and So, married to other so and so’s back home, getting caught at the pool on a late-night rendezvous. It’s all part of the fun but with cameras, the fun comes with evidence. Be careful all you wild and crazy suburbanites.
There is opposition to cameras. Some people don’t want other people watching people doing whatever it is they do. This is where I have some conflict. Professionally, I love video because we catch more bad guys and have better evidence. Personally though, I’d like to think that I could walk the big dog down the street without a camera following me. I don’t want folks to know which yard she poops in. I’ve got a list. You know who you are.
Look at all the media we have all around us. Google-Earth for crying out loud! I told my kids I could watch them on PGE with is Parental Google Earth. It allows us to watch them in real time from space, no matter where they are, all the time. The secret is the tiny chips we had implanted when they were young. It’s really sad when they reach the age when they realize you made all that stuff up.
The fact is that if we didn’t have all these screw ups and lazy bottom feeders stealing and robbing and killing people, we wouldn’t need such technology for crime prevention. Neighborhoods and businesses wouldn’t need cameras everywhere. It’s a tough call as to what is more important. Most of us just want to be left alone to do whatever we want, evident by my old friend Ronnie, from my Navy days, who sent me a letter telling me two things: One, he was moving to Montana to escape all the technology of the world. He said that it was the only private place left, other than Pleasantville. The second was to inform me that I won the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes. He was an okay guy but did too many drugs in the 70’s. Every once in a while he has a flashback and thinks he’s Ed McMahon. He keeps getting locked up going house to house. When the resident answers the door he gives them a frozen waffle and tells them it’s a check for a million bucks.
Video is a good tool for evidence. Bad guys need to go to jail and whatever helps get them there is good. At the same time, it seems that the world is getting smaller and smaller. Sometimes life can be smooth as glass and other times bumpy as a frozen waffle.
