Police to use fleets of cameras downtown.

[davewindsor]

Simple:

You're driving home from work. There's an accident on a surface street, the road is all messed up. You check your GPS and see a sidestreet takes you to the next major intersection after the crash. You head down that sidestreet.

A vicious home invasion is committed in the same subdivision as you're driving through it. The investigators check the red light camera - that takes pictures of every car going through an intersection. Your plate number comes up.

So, what exactly were you doing in that subdivision? An accident? Oh, sure. Nobody else took that detour, did they? Let's just check your background...

Of course, the assailant could be from the neighborhood, but you aren't from the city, and citizen-on-citizen crime looks bad, and, hey, technology doesn't lie, right?

WTF? Do you understand what the standard of proof is in a criminal court? Guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The only evidence to link you to your hypothetical scene of a home invasion is that the police have a bunch of plate numbers that went through the neighbourhood intersection from a camera and they pick one and whoever they pick is automatically convicted of a home invasion? The state hasn't produced any evidence that you were at the address like eyewitness testimony that you entered the house, fingerprints at the scene or bullet shells matching a gun registered to your name, yet the state has proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Ya, that line of logic makes a whole lot of sense in showing why we should be afraid of CCTVs.

[davewindsor]

The fuzz mounted some cameras on top of the power poles at the corner of my boyfriend's street about 7-8 years ago [[in decoyville). Within days, the cameras were shot out. Then the fuzz hung new cameras in a different position shielded with metal plates. The trappers paid crakheads to climb up the poles and knock them down [[the camera pieces laid in the street for days). Then the fuzz set up shop in a former storefront and pointed cameras at the entrances and exits of the sub from inside the building. The place was outed by a DPD officer who had family in that sub, and the building was broken into and the cameras were stolen.

The fuzz got pissed off and showed up in their raid vans, rounded up some of the well-knowns, who were promptly replaced by their workers, a few people shot each other, and the beat went on...

Still goes on.

I've got dozens of stories just like this one.

The fuzz ultimately rounded up the well-knowns. And your point is?

[detroitsgwenivere]

The fuzz ultimately rounded up the well-knowns. And your point is?

Well, if you had kept reading you would've gotten the point.

Which was: 1. Nothing changed, because the element didn't change. 2.The cameras didn't help bust the well-knowns, on the ground fuzz did.

AND you apparently have no sense of humor...

[hamtown mike]

So just where were you July 12th at 9 pm?
I can't remember.
Oh wait, you were on Monroe st. 5 miles from where the crime took place. You're free to go.