Police put skywatch on Washington and Sterling

King without a crown wrote: Actually there are many cameras in place all over the City monitored by the NYPD. For instance Utica ave-Sterling Plc. Utica ave-Eastern Pkwy. Next time you're over there, look up and smile for the camera.

im not sure if youve ever been to london or not, but i just thought id give the rest of us some context about exactly what "many cameras in place all over the city" means:

there are roughly 5000 security cameras visible from street level in nyc (http://www.nyclu.org/pdfs/surveillance_cams_report_121306.pdf). given that the city is roughly 500 square miles, then thats ten cameras per square mile. with about 3000 people per square mile in population, thats about one camera per 300 people, while london (as mentioned above) has about one camera for every 12 people AND a crime-rate SEVEN times higher than ours.

unless someone is only working with half a brain, i dont see how they could possibly read this fact and still think "wow, these cameras will make me safer! thanks, nypd!"

so... in regards to my feelings that this type of surveillance is not only largely an empty gesture but also wasteful and invasive of our personal rights to privacy, i once again submit that we have enough cameras already in nyc, thanks. lets dont become london who has been down this road and has an even HIGHER crime-rate despite their tenfold or more higher ratio of cameras to people than we have...

no, instead, lets spend that money and investment on technological infrastructure on our communities, on increased foot-patrol, and other more tolerable initiatives that have actually proven to work.

rhodamine wrote:

so... youre calling us all sheep? who need protection from ourselves? from security cameras?! WTF... speak for yourself, man, cause that sounds like one of the more stupid and wrotely offensive things ive heard today.

Wasn't trying to be offensive. Just an observation of the human condition. This is a open forum for discussion and ideas. The wolves are the people that prey on the good people that are going about their lives not hurting anyone or anything. If a camera is going to make people feel safer. Fine. It won't change a thing. I never said who will be a wolf or a sheep. People have to decide that for themselves. Are you prey? Or are you going to be victim. Plain an simple.

Watch the world change when people have no jobs, no food in their bellies and their I-pods go black. Cameras will not protect them. Cameras are unbiased. They only record a moment. Good or bad.

Smile.

Click.

Put on You-tube.

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Rorschach wrote: Are you prey? Or are you going to be victim. Plain a simple.

i vote neither!

rhodamine wrote: [quote=Rorschach]Are you prey? Or are you going to be victim. Plain a simple.

i vote neither!


Staying on the sideline.

Hurm.

Rorschach wrote: [quote=rhodamine][quote=Rorschach]Are you prey? Or are you going to be victim. Plain a simple.

i vote neither!


Staying on the sideline.

Hurm.

nope, i was just actually confused by your "are you prey or are you going to be victim?" statement..

if those are the only two alternatives you offer, i choose neither.

also: what does hurm mean?

wait, prey=victim in your analogy. i think you mean predator.

i also say "no, thank you".

Simple dichotomies will not do for this metaphor.

How about a 6-way choice:
Are you the hunter, or are you the hunted, or are you the weapon, or are you the ammunition, or are you hunting ground, or are you the shop selling beer, bait and ammo?

rhodamine wrote: what does hurm mean?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmen

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There is a skywatch parked outside of my office in midtown right now.. i've never seen one in Manhattan before so maybe they're just using them more frequently these days. It's probably a terrorism deterrent up here.

Downright panoptical.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

jarvis wrote: It's probably a terrorism deterrent up here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

i bet it's about as effective as a terrorism-deterrent as those endless police-car parades that go around and around union square and lower manhattan.

doctorj wrote: Simple dichotomies will not do for this metaphor.

How about a 6-way choice:
Are you the hunter, or are you the hunted, or are you the weapon, or are you the ammunition, or are you hunting ground, or are you the shop selling beer, bait and ammo?

i think i would most like to get some of that bait and beer, set myself up on a shady bank somewhere, and fish.

Rorschach wrote: Cry "Police State!" when there are to many cops around. Cry "Help!" when the cops aren't around. Ha.

at this point in the thread, thats one of the most cliche and presumptuous things you could possibly say. ha.

Flo wrote: I thought people were discussing what they liked or disliked about the police prescense in their neighborhood. I kind of thought that was what was encouraged in the democracies.

no, when you see someone trolling a forum with a recently-created account that has no posts on the site except for the argumentative ones in the thread in question under the premise of some sort of vague "Watchmen" tie-in, its pretty safe to assume theyre not interested in logic or fairness. what theyre interested in is making sure that everyone on the forum knows their opinion and that any that dont agree are made to look like odd-ones-out.

its pretty standard, actually, although the world is indeed much safer for outing us as the personal-liberties-loving commies that we are

GOD wrote: rhodamine: Looking back through this topic it seems that you're the one slamming your opinions down everyones throat. The person (Troll) clearly was messing you. But some of the things this Rorschach troll was saying was just a clever why of expressing an opinion about skywatch.

playing devils advocate is one thing, trolling is another. similarly, being outspoken about ones opinion and "slamming your opinions down everyones throat" are also two different things.

but thanks for your observations, Rorschach

Subject: Re: some stats

Flo wrote: Brooklyn is the borough with the most murders.

as nyc's largest borough, this doesnt surprise me. its unfortunate that you didnt take the next logical step and look at this factoid from a per-capita point of view, which would show you that brooklyn isnt statistically far off from manhattan in murders per person. this is even more profound if you look precinct-by-precinct. say 7 people were shot in a drug-related execution-style murder in a warehouse in south brooklyn... i think most would agree that this sort of thing has little bearing in general "public safety" as a whole.

Flo wrote: Of course, all of these areas have had substantial reductions in all crime beginning with Giuliani's first years, as is true around NYC.

Huh?! Your assumption that "all of these areas have had substantial reductions in all crime beginning with Giuliani's first years", though it sounds hopeful, is utter bullshit. Do take a look at 2001. Guess that was a bad year for the nypd and giuliani, huh? Don't take it from me, though, take it from the NYPD:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/crime_prevention/crime_statistics.shtml

I also thought every brooklyner concerned with brooklyn crime stats knew that crime has dropped in northern brooklyn in the past few years while rising dramatically in southern brooklyn. hmm.

Flo wrote: But too often it seems this forum needs a little less snarkiness and a little more fact.

I'm with you 100% Flo, but only if youre going to actually offer some facts, as opposed to assumptions and generalizations worded like facts.

Do look at most of my earlier comments- they feature links to actual... facts. The ones comparing NYC to London, in regards to their per-capita stats of CC cameras, is particularly prescient to this discussion.

But here are some more facts for you (from Wiki):

New York City is among the safest cities in the United States; out of 216 U.S. cities with populations of more than 100,000 in 2002, the city ranked 197th in overall crime (with about the same crime rate as Provo, Utah). Violent crime in New York city has dropped 75% in the last twelve years and the murder rate in 2005 was at its lowest level since 1963.

did they have/need "skywatch" in 1963?

No?

I rest my case...