Comment by squigz
4 months ago
> What people don't get about this is that a lot of normal, reasonable people see these cameras as a very good thing. You can be upset about that or you can work with it to accomplish real goals. We got upset about it.
An alternative is you can try to convince those people that, while their desire to reduce crime is perfectly understandable, this might not be the way to do it effectively, to say nothing of the potential avenues for abuse (and in current day America, I'd be very wary of such avenues)
It remains an issue of trust for me. You not only have to trust your police and government(s), but you have to trust Flock too - and that trust has to remain throughout changing governments and owners of that company. I have a healthy distrust of both, particularly lately.
Just as importantly, but more to the point, is still the question of whether they're actually useful. To that end, does not the same logic apply to being able to pressure nearby municipalities to remove the cameras?
In any case, while I remain fundamentally opposed to such surveillance, you raise very good points, and I appreciate you taking the time to explain your position in this thread.
I'm fine that we took the cameras down. As you can see from my first comment on this part of the thread: they weren't working, and before we stopped our PD from responding to stolen car alerts, they were actively doing harm. But I disagree with you about the long-term strategy. I'd have kept the cameras --- locked down (we had an offer from Flock to simply disable them while leaving them up, so that they wouldn't even be powered up) --- and written a formal ALPR ordinance. Then I'd have worked with the Metro Mayors Caucus and informal west suburban mayor networking to get other munis to adopt it.