City Murder Titles

In My Humble Opinion
1

So I’m sittin’ here watchin’ the sicking evening news.

Old black woman is sayin’ we’re gonna stop this.

Next news paper in every American city… 3 died/shot this week…

Supposide sp? leaders say: We are sick of this shit and we’re going to do something about this

I want cameras all along every city street that has problems.

It’s not a violation of 1st amendment privacy rights.

  1. Police will never be laid off. It’s polical suicide.

  2. Kids can think about something else. There is something to be said about emotional stability.

  3. Killers will always be killers. Just like every other murderer, the smart won’t do it in front of the cameras.

2

I don’t see a General Question here (or, really, any question), but I’ll comment.

The murder rate in the USA overall (and in most big cities) has been going down for the last few years. So while a cluster of 3 killed in one week, may seem high, the overall trend is downward. I don’t see that as “sickening”.

Also, about “cameras along every city street”:

  • in the current economy, where is any city going to find the money to buy them, and install them & the miles of wiring needed?
  • and where is the city going to find the money to hire enough people to watch all of them?
3

DC put up about 75 cameras in high-crime areas. It hasn’t really been a resounding success:

Link.

The problem with having a lot of cameras is that you have to have people watch them, too. And they have to be pointed in the right direction.

4

I wonder if that would be needed. The cameras could record what they see, making it easier, when a crime is committed, for police to catch the perps.

Whether the idea is practical, i do not know, but I do know there would be no need to man the cameras for them to play a useful role.

5

Indeed, the murder rate in the U.S. is approximately the lowest that it’s been in about forty or fifty years. martin34, turn off the local news whenever there’s a story about some supposedly sensational crime. Never watch those cable channels that consist of screaming paranoids shouting about crimes going on halfway across country (and sometimes halfway around the world) which you would otherwise never hear of. Read some crime statistics instead. You’ll make yourself much happier and the crime rate won’t be affected either way.

6

What language is this?

???

I got nothing. Guesses? Hints?

7

I took it to be an attempt at spelling “supposed” with the sp? to indicate possible spelling error.

8

Thanks, that does make sense. You the man!

9

You should also consider that only 22% of victims are murdered by strangers. TV cameras on the street aren’t going to help much on the other 78%.

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/expanded_information/homicide.html

Indeed, if you are a woman it drops to 2%.

http://malini.data360.org/graph_group.aspx?Graph_Group_Id=1177

10

Why do you assert its not a violation of privacy rights? That very issue is being hotly debated now.

Why do you assert police would be laid off & hence political suicide (presumably for the politicians who would approve teh cameras)? In fact it would take an army of extra governement workers inside the police dept to watch all the cameras. We don’t yet have good enough software to tell a mugging from two friends meeting & yakking. And a camera system that just recorded the crimes for later investigation but did not result in summoning someone to help as teh crime is happening would not get much support. More spending for law and orer would seem to appeal to the demographic you’re asserting would complain.

11

You would need a full time worker, 24/7, to change the tapes in the video recorders. And another 1 or 2 file clerks to label the tapes, and file them properly, so the right one could be found when needed. And a sizable file room to contain all of them. Or several rooms, depending on how long you keep them.

It’s not really practical, given today’s technology (and the limited resources of most cities).

12

I think it’s a pretty well established point of law that a person has no expectation of privacy when they are on a public street.

This has been covered in Court many times, by people suing news photographers when the person appears in a photo or video of a newsworthy incident. The people sue to have the pictures not shown, or their faces obscured, or (more commonly) to collect some money for being shown in the picture. The Courts almost always rule against them.

13

What about a neighborhood watch program to watch the camera? There’s a lot of people that might keep a window on their computer open to watch a webcam set up to cover a particularly crime prone area. There’s a lot of busybodies out there with time on their hands and a restless need to meddle in their neighbor’s lives. It’s an untapped resource.

14

There have been proposals for that. Or putting them live on the internet.

When there was a program to put cameras on the main downtown shopping street (Nicollet Mall), one of the features was that anyone could watch them online. But it never happened. Apparently it takes a fair amount of technical resources to do this, and keep it working. The Highway department has a whole bunch of traffic cameras online, (http://www.dot.state.mn.us/tmc/trafficinfo/metrocams/mapindex.html) used by the news media a lot, they have a staff working on them, and still frequently have some offline.

And such a program would do nothing about keeping the video for use as evidence in court, to actually convict someone seen committing a crime on camera.

15

They just had a big news story on Camera in Chicago.

What they found is putting cameras in didn’t result in any drop in crime. But it made a huge difference in the apprehension rates.

Which goes to show you, crims still do it with or without a camera, but they are now getting caught more.

They had an excellent example of a man being mugged and they put it on the news, it was a very clear image and the cops had the man doing the mugging in custody by the end of the newshow. People called and turned him in.

I understand the OP frustration. For instance in Chicago, we have gangbangers hanging around with no purpose other than to intimidate others.

I would glady forgoe some of my rights to associate and such to pass a law to allow people like that to be picked up.

Yeah it’s wrong and it’s not constitutional but that’s how I feel.

Look at the Els or subways? You go onto the platform. One train goes north, one goes south. So why are these thugs sitting on the platform all day. There’s no reason for that. They are there simply to intimidate people.

But no one can do anything to them. But when crime gets so high or obvious it’s frustrating.

Look at Palmer Square in Chicago, you can go out there any day in decent whether and see drug deals. The police station is like two blocks from there. How hard would it be to clean that place up? Evidently it is, because no one, not the cops, not the mayor not my alderman have ever done a thing to stop it.

Now I don’t know why this is, I mean, maybe they are only doing “minor drugs” so it’s not worth the effort. Or the cops feel if they confine it to one area, then the other areas won’t get bad.

I guess there’s a reason for everything

16

Since there doesn’t seem to be an actual question in the OP, this is probably better suited for IMHO.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

17

Tapes? It would probably be all digital, stored on hard drives. In any event, most of the big cities are already pretty wired up. According to Wikipedia, New York City had 3,000 cameras in 1998. I guess the NYPD doesn’t release the numbers; the number 3,000 came from a group of people who counted the cameras themselves. They probably did not get them all and I’m betting a lot more were installed after 9/11.

They don’t really work to reduce crime. I don’t think anyone looks at the cameras until after the crime was committed. Having people stare at public spaces would be an enormous waste of resources. That could be done without cameras. The cameras are there so that police can figure out what happened after the crime. They are also useful in tracking people and for looking at areas without leaving the station.

The cameras are also hidden, so it’s not like criminals will think twice because they know they’re being watched.

18

Here in Minnesota we have laws addressing that; it’s called loitering or loitering with intent. Somewhat vague, but they seem to have held up in court so far.

19

Thanks for all the replies guys. Sorry I didn’t state my question clearly, I was a little intoxicated. It is this: Why don’t cities with typical gang activity/drug crime intall cameras to slow the crime?

Chicago has a murder epidemic. City proper has on average 500/year. That’s 5000 every decade just in my Chi.

I spoke with a Chicago beat cop about the current cameras intalled in high crime areas. They are a big white box on a pole with a black surveillance sp? lol bulb on the bottom and a blue squad car like strobe light on the top. I asked are they working and he laughed and said the dealers just move to the next street over to where they are out of view. A light bulb went off and I thought well why don’t we paint the whole neighborhood with them? After studying the 1st amendment in college I know you don’t have a right to privacy in a public place. (Fist bump to t-bonham)

I was talking to an extra from NY on the set of Couples Retreat and told her my theory. I also asked her why she thought the murder rate in NY is 1/3 of that in Chicago. She said she didn’t know, but that they have had cameras all over NY for years, and a lot of 'em. (props to Lakai on that piece of data.)

As for the technology, I use to manage an apartment building and had a security system intalled. The cameras all fed to a harddrive that recorded 24/7 for 3 months. Take that data, burn it to a CD or better tech, and store it. Also, these cameras can broadcast wirelessly as I see many on the side of the highway do, and be solar powered. I think one option would be to go to the tech companies and ask for donated tech. Large Co.s are always donating money/tech/labor to lessen tax liabilities.

On a hypocrytical note, in Chicago and some surrounding suburbs they have been installing red light cameras that send auto matic tickets to drivers with links to a website that can show digital video of you rolling a stop or going through a yellow light. Great idea right except not only has car accidents risen in 60% of the camera intersections, but by spending that money to generate revenue on tickets instead of protecting or citizens we are sending a pretty fucked up message.

As for the murder rates, if you look at the c of Chicago’s crime website, you’ll see it’s not just murder. It’s armed robbery, burglery, theft, car theft, criminal damage to property, aggravated battery and rape. These high crime areas aren’t just where murders happen. Parent’s are afraid to send there kids to school.

I think the best addition to my theory is that we could have it live streamed or manned by local nosey neighbors or volunteers who want to make a difference. Possibly wannabe detectives living a little fantasy with real results.

The only reason I mentioned the cops is because when I was talking to a close friend who is CPD and asked if his job was like that of The first 48 TV show he laughed and said not a chance. He said it was really sad at how little attention any investigation got. He said the main goal was to close the cases ASAP no matter what. Sad but true.

One last example of how cameras can help. A couple months back a kid was beaten to death by a group of neighborhood boys who didn’t know him. A girl took out her camera phone and caught some of it. It cause a national outrage and I think most of 'em got caught. Had she not taped this I’m convinced no one would have gotten caught. It’s the Don’t Snitch code.

20

Chicago is not having a murder epidemic. The murder rate in Chicago peaked in 1992 and has mostly gone down since then:

This is what has happened all over the U.S. The rate of most crimes in most cities and states dropped rather steadily throughout the 1990’s and continued to drop, although more slowly, through the 2000’s:

In general, the murder rate in the U.S. has dropped back to what it was about 1965.

Incidentally, I’ve read statistics that compared the number of criminals who were caught because of closed-circuit cameras with the cost of these cameras. It showed that the money paid for those cameras was quite high per criminal caught. It’s arguable that that money could have decreased the crime rate more if it had been spent on other anti-crime measures.