The city of Indianapolis has come up with an "innovative" way to fight crime. It apparently can't afford to beef up the police department, so it is putting surveillance cameras in "high crime areas":
Instead, the mayor and the sheriff stood in the cold morning rain to announce the modest but encouraging crime-fighting initiative. With people being mugged on the Monon Trail and other places as often as Indiana kids drop out of high school, Peterson said the cameras were part of an effort "to undertake new and creative ways of fighting crime."That's good, because the old ways -- such as not hiring enough police officers and spending a year debating the color of new uniforms -- certainly aren't working.The 27 cameras will be placed in rough locales throughout the city, such as the Eastside intersection that hosted Thursday's news conference.
Sadly, I think we're so used to the disappearance of our privacy that no one even pays attention to surveillance cameras anymore. (Have you noticed all the crimes on "Cops" and other shows that are shown to us courtesy of those cameras?) The surveillance might make it easier once in a while to get a conviction against a criminal, but I don't think it's much of a preventive measure.
