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LAPD Surveillance Cameras Go Unused
First time accepted submitter Ethanol-fueled writes "Most of the surveillance cameras installed downtown and operated by the LAPD have not been working for two years, according to interviews and records reviewed by the Los Angeles Times. Many of those broke and were never repaired, and six cameras allocated to the Little Tokyo section weren't even plugged into the LAPD's monitoring bank. In one case, a 53-year-old man died after being stabbed and beaten in Skid Row — right below one of the malfunctioned cameras. It probably also didn't help that the cameras themselves were prone to being coated with pigeon droppings and the system backend being stored in a room so small that overheating was frequent. One LAPD Deputy Chief compared the situation to buying a used car without an extended warranty — 'We know the reasons it doesn't work. Now we're trying to make it work.'"
I'm sure all the politicians were patting each other on the back the day they installed it. And I'm sure their Security industry golf buddies got a nice contract and sent a fat kick-back.
I don't think anyone is surprised no one actually gave a damn about it.
First time accepted submitter Ethanol-fueled writes
Really? I am quite sure there have been stories by him before. He's a known long-time Slashdotter, after all.
Big Brother is lazy.
I've worked with cops and I'm not terribly surprised - "excessive" wear and tear was always a problem. This isn't the first expensive system I've heard of being kept in a closet. Give it a few years and the dust might have been a factor too.
(I'm not sure if it's actually a surveillance state if nobody's looking through the broken cameras.)
Indeed. Government has already made their money here. Once agan, I feel the need to point out that in the business of government -- where they spend other people's money -- there is no such thing as a loss. Even when they fail completely, they still win. Every dollar raked through the business of government increases their leverage, and their ability to exploit that cash flow for personal gain. It's no wonder that every year government costs more, both in terms of revenue and administration: that's exactly how the game is played, and that's exactly the kind of people who would desire power over others in the first place.
I don't think that surveillance was ever the purpose. Fear is the purpose: if we fear we are being watched then we are easier to control. It reminds me of the old East Germany. The secret police were overwhelmed with reports from citizens: they were effective not because they could actually see and respond, but because they could SOMETIMES see and respond, and nobody knew when or where. Fear does the rest.
"compared the situation to buying a used car without an extended warranty "
No, more like buying a new car and leaving it at the dealership, taking the keys. At best, it gets vandalized. At worst, it gets hotwired, joyridden, used for a few drivebys, and then stripped and vandalized. Oh, and you're still taking the bus.
Dumbass. He can't even illustrate the fail properly. Who gets fired for this? Oh, let's guess...
Yep, right again.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
A city overrun... by dumbshit Mexicans.
Now be fair. The cameras wouldn't have worked any better in a city overrun by dumbshit Niggers, Muzzies, Paddies, or Dagos either.
Bet you $100 that it was designed to fail from day 1. it was under funded, someone that has NO education at all in tech was in charge of it, and everyone involved that had a clue was ignored when they voiced their concerns.
This is typical of ANY local government project. some idiot in finance believe he can cut corners to bring the costs down.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
""compared the situation to buying a used car without an extended warranty ""
it seems that the Chief is an idiot, as 90% of the time the extended warranty is a waste of money and you come out ahead if you did not buy it and banked the cash. Consumer reports and tons of other places have this well documented...
The chief must not read much.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
My deepest and sincerest sympathies to the family of the murdered man but are cameras really the answer? How about more cops that know their beats and actually engage people without being dicks? That may actually make a real difference.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Given London has pretty much proved camera systems like this are useless when they DO work can't say this is much of a loss. Just turn the damn things off.
Look on the bright side, what with the police not liking themselves being filmed, what video evidence can there be of any police brutality with cameras not working?
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Ah, well, think of it like this. If the cops beat random citizens for recording them on cell phones...do you really think they want a city wide camera system that actually works? Of course not. They would probably be caught doing more illegal stuff than normal people, like beating random citizens.
Don't forget the dumbshit Crackers, or Wops, or Wogs, or Abbies, or ABCD's, or Beaners, or Camel Jockeys, or Ching Chongs, or Chugs, or Coonasses, or Dinks, or Flips, or Frogs, or Gaijin, or Golliwogs, or... hey did I miss anyone else?
They won't have to pay anyone. Go down to the closest retiree hangout and ask people if they want to help 'prevent crime' or 'stop criminals' or some such buzz words and you'll have more volunteers than you know what to do with. Several Seattle-area municipalities are doing this and the politicians love it, since it gets the people who are most likely to vote involved in a program connected with their name. The programs have actually done absolutely nothing at all to reduce crime, but the PR boost is priceless to a career pol.
This situation really does sound like the LAPD got some money that they had to spend or it would evaporate (probably from Fatherland Security). The major expense, the initial installation, has already come out of someone's pocket. Now that server and storage virtualization are cheap it should be fairly easy to implement a major backend upgrade to make the system usable.
coated with pigeon droppings
WTF??? The moron installers didn't even use a $1.50 chunk of bird spike to keep the housings clear? I bet I could name the company that did the installation then, our company has been hired numerous times to come along behind and clean up the mess left by their 'low bid' installations.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
I had to read the headline a couple of times before I realized it wasn't "LDAP cameras".
False sense of security.... millions of dollars. Real security.... about $500 and a concealed carry permit.
What is needed is more money, much more money. Only money can solve this problem. They need a new tax on all cell phones like the e911 tax. Once we have collected a few tens of billions of dollars will they be able to address this issue.
Do not worry about the cost though as I am certain right around election time a graph will show up explaining how this system will have saved us money due to the reduction in crime.
Money well spent!
Of course they will never have enough money so maybe more taxes and people will solve the problem. All of the money collected will of course go into the general fund and be allocated for more important things, hence always needing more money.
Cameras not working.... this is a bad thing because....?
It isn't necessarily a waste of other people's money. I work for the Feds and see all sorts of waste that happens on 'good' ideas.
Surveillance of a high crime area is a good idea. But collecting data and saving it is not a police skill, it is an IT skill.
The issue is that many govt ideas (pushed by voters as much as contractors) entail new skill sets or new directions that a business might think twice about before pursuing but that any govt org gets no chance at all even for input once the voters/politicians decide.
Seriously, if you want to correct the issues of governance, identify the exact problem and quit spewing ideology of right, left or contractor 'malfeasance.'
FTA "But the system sometimes overheated because it was placed in a room the size of a closet."
A closet is "A small room or cupboard used for storing things".
They used this room for storing the system, so by definition they stored the system in a closet.
hey did I miss anyone else?
The Martians.
Historically, a beat cop's job was to go around and black-jack the thugs into the shadows and make the street safer for the tax-payers. Somehow a confluence of enforcing numerous new laws and civil-rights lawyers for the unlicensed thugs has made actual public service a lower priority; A pretext now, actually- if crime rates continue to fall, expect new laws to criminalize more of the tax-payer class as they are much safer and more convenient to arrest and incarcerate than professional felons.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
The Honkeys.
If in a private company you spend a lot of money on a system that totally doesn't work, eventually there are problems and people find out and things change.
Companies often can overspend or get people who get kickbacks from suppliers, yes. But in the end even though they may have overpaid they get a system that roughly at least works.
In government as we can see from this story there is NO limit to the scope or size of failure that is simply accepted with a shrug, and there is no responsibility whatsoever - because in government you are playing with funny money where in a company the people at the very top are losing real money if they let corruption and incompetence continue without end.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The thing is that while what you say is true, most companies have a large degree of incompetence, it's a self-correcting problem - because companies have limited funds they can only become SO incompetent and still survive at all. While it's true in large groups humans allow incompetency to thrive through inaction, people are also capable at times of working around incompetence when it matters. Companies really function more often than not because of the 3% of employees who know where and how to bend the rules to make things function.
Governments on the other hand are a far worse problem. There is no natural limit to failure, when you start to run out of money you just raise taxes (or fees or "assessments"). When something so massively screwed up as the total failure of a monitoring system happens NO ONE is fired (they would be in a company if it were found half the cameras were not working even after just one incident). There is no bending of the rules so things simply cannot work efficiently as there is no going around increasing red tape.
The proof again goes back to the cameras in question. Can you really imagine ANY private company where a vast number of physical security measures simply do not work at all?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
it seems that the Chief is an idiot, as 90% of the time the extended warranty is a waste of money and you come out ahead if you did not buy it and banked the cash.
The chief was just saying that he wished he could have funneled even more money to his friends in companies back then, since there is no money now and thus fewer opportunities for kickbacks.
So it really is like an extended warranty since he wanted to spend even more money at time of purchase for no reason.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sure. There's even a market for fake cameras or at least there used to be.
Putting in fake cameras is utterly different than deciding a camera is really needed somewhere and then letting it break without repair or even knowing what is broken!!
In real companies non working gates (or gates simply left open) and broken CCTV is entirely possible (does security even have a maintenance budget?)
OF COURSE physical security departments have maintenance budgets. Something like that broken is fixed in days, if not hours.
How often is the burglar alarm actually tested?
Most companies have regular tests of all security systems.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The purpose of a surveillance state is to encourage fear and intimidation and conformity and servility
Not before spending money. If they can't justify spending, the "business" is lost.
or... hey did I miss anyone else?
Yeah, apparently H through Z, minus W?
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
You also missed the Slopes, Chinks, Nips, Jerry's, Micks, Squaws, Apples, Kikes, Wetbacks, Honkey's, and probably a few others as well.
Yep...your tax dollars at work. People of LA, you need to get on their ass's to fix the situation. You pay for services, here to find out you've been duped. Not to mention all the crime thats been going on right under your noses, when it could have been stopped.