California Mayors Demand Surveillance Cams On Crime-Ridden Highways (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader shares an Ars Technica report: The 28 shootings along a 10-mile stretch of San Francisco-area highway over the past six months have led mayors of the adjacent cities to declare that these "murderous activities" have reached "crisis proportions." Four people have been killed and dozens injured. These five mayors want California Gov. Jerry Brown to fund surveillance cameras along all the on and off ramps of Interstate 80 and Highway 4 along the cities of El Cerrito, Hercules, Richmond, San Pablo, and Pinole.

Comments

How about

[ArchieBunker]

Withholding federal funding for "sanctuary cities"?

Re:How about

[whoever57]

You're confusing these East Bay cities with San Francisco.

No, the confusion is between San Francisco and the San Francisco Bay Area. These cities are certainly in the SF Bay Area.

Re:How about

[whoever57]

That's like claiming that Silicon Valley and San Francisco are the same place despite being 50 miles apart. They're not. Same region, yes. But not the same place. Not every place in California is a sanctuary city.

WTF has being a "sanctuary city" got to do with anything? There is no sanctuary for gang-related crime.

Silicon Valley is definitely in the SF Bay Area also. A quick look at a map and you would see that Richmond, San Jose and many other cities have shorelines on the SF Bay.

Re:How about

[HornWumpus]

The bay area as a whole is a little nuts.

But SF is off the hook, batshit insane, loony left. The further you get away, the more sanity returns. (In general and Locally, LA has plenty of it's own insanity.)

The computer revolution _could not_ have happened in SF proper.

Re:How about

[sumdumass]

What is wrong with deporting people? It is not like they have any right to be here and they are breaking the law to boot. Would you prefer they are incarcerated for several years first and then allowed to apply to be legally here?

Anyways, that is neither here nor there. The shootings aren't likely being done by most of the illegals. It is more likely either gang related or some perverted individuals trying their hand at terrorism. Most terrorist in the U.S. arrived legally either by birth or the legal immigration process. Some overstayed their welcome but I'm not positive to the numbers.

Re:How about

[sumdumass]

Why is it that all gun grabbing liberals eventually express concern about someone's penis size when they realize their arguments fail? Is that the real agenda or something? Is it an issue where you feel you cannot address it while they have what you think is compensating for their size?

How is this news for nerds stuff that matters?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see no problem with surveillance cameras on public roads. There is no expectation of privacy there, and there's a legitimate reason for the cameras to be there. Lots of highways have cameras, if nothing else to monitor road conditions. This isn't news for nerds, stuff that matters. It's a non-issue.

Re:How is this news for nerds stuff that matters?

[geekmux]

I see no problem with surveillance cameras on public roads. There is no expectation of privacy there, and there's a legitimate reason for the cameras to be there. Lots of highways have cameras, if nothing else to monitor road conditions. This isn't news for nerds, stuff that matters. It's a non-issue.

Oh, you see no issue? OK, let me explain how this is going to work. By claiming that current traffic cameras aren't "good enough" to catch criminals, they'll justify that "top-notch" next-gen camera tech while pinky swearing that they won't abuse it.

Phase One will consist of cameras equipped with night vision, and powerful enough to capture you texting while driving to receive that ticket in the mail automagically. Phase Two upgrades will consist of radar/laser tech for "traffic integrity" to ticket anyone speeding 3MPH over the limit, along with FLIR to ticket HOV-lane abusers. Phase Three upgrades will consist of license plate scanners to "catch criminals", while all of that captured data is sold to private companies that pay to know the location of 25 - 35 year old drivers for marketing purposes. Suddenly, the whole damn thing has ZERO to do with its original purpose.

Oh, and regardless of obvious revenue streams, they'll still want to charge an extra half-percent tax to pay for this, resulting in dozens of "administrators" being hired while outsourcing this entire solution to the group who bought the most politician palm grease. Ah, nothing like integrity and fairness when choosing state-sponsored solution providers.

Now perhaps you'll understand why this is here on Slashdot. Privacy is eroding daily these days, and cameras probably won't do much to truly prevent this type of crime (the criminals will simply move to where the cameras aren't), but it will certainly be ripe for abuses, as my examples show. Yes, we should look to reduce crime. We should NOT look to become a police state in order to do that. No point in calling it "freedom" if you're watched like a criminal at all times.

Re:How is this news for nerds stuff that matters?

[thegarbz]

Phase 1 and Phase 2 sound wonderful, when can they install them?

Phase 3 sounds like it's DoA. There's no marketing reason to know which road a driver of a certain road uses unless it's for generic city planning, in which case it's already done anyway. As for the rest of the important information, they have that already and can sell that whenever they want. Nothing scary from the cameras here.

No on the flip side I live in a country where there are automated are everywhere in the city and highway complete with license scanners. They don't get us for texting (yet) but they do a wonderful job of finding stolen vehicles, registration checks, insurance checks, environmental checks, and they monitor traffic continuously with great fidelity too, i.e. if someone has a flat and pulls over on the side of the highway to change his tire they automatically shutdown or speed limit the right most lane. We also get up to the minute traffic reports and very accurate predictions of how long a delay is should one arise.

The good outweighs your scary marketing scenario by a wide margin.

Re:The tried and true "whack-a-mole" strategy

[ShanghaiBill]

Putting cameras on I-80 may deter shootings on the highway but I'm guessing the bullets will start pop-pop-popping up somewhere else.

Most crime is opportunistic, not planned. If you remove the opportunity, you prevent the crime. There is no "law of conservation of crime", so better deterrence does not cause a fixed amount of crime to shift to other areas. The opposite is true: Lower crime in one area allows resources to be refocused in other areas, and lower crime leads to a positive feedback loop of economic recovery, more jobs, and stronger communities, in both the immediate area, and in surrounding neighborhoods.

Find the real reason for the shootings

[CanadianMacFan]

How about doing some real detective work and finding the real reason why people are doing the shootings? Putting up cameras will just making finding the people responsible easier after the fact. Sure the article says the shootings may be gang related but I find it may be hard to believe that the gangs are just going out to the highway and taking random pot shots. One would hope that after 28 shootings the police would be a lot more proactive but alas that seems to be too much to ask today.

Illegals have a lower crime rate

[aepervius]

Look it put. All statistic point out that illegals have a lower crime rate than naturally born American. So what would really effectively lowering funding for sanctuary cities do ? If anything if illegals are replaced by naturally born American in those cities, then crime rate would rise. The sad truth is that if you want to lower crime rate, then you better look at program which will help reintegration of ex-con and programs which helps the local find better paid job above minimum wage.

Re:Illegals have a lower crime rate

[Anonymous Coward]

Bull fucking shit. Illegals are 100% criminals by their very definition.

Re: Illegals have a lower crime rate

[jmcvetta]

In Soviet America, everyone is a criminal!

Re:Illegals have a lower crime rate

[dywolf]

Immigrants, undocumented or otherwise, tend to be either very low skilled or very high skilled. Day laborers and janitors, and doctors and professors, etc.
And because americans tend to be neither, but rather tend to be in the middle, neither very low skilled no highly skilled, because that's what our schools and economy excel at cranking out.

so the graphs of the two workforces (if plotted as population vs labor skill level) are total opposites, and the result of their combination is that they don't take our jobs, rather they only ever compliment the American workforce. and suddenly removing them wont lead to suddenly employing more American citizens.

and that's before considering that with unemployment now going well below 5% we're getting very close to maximum employment (much lower is actually a negative for the economy as it indicates several undesirable things, such as lack of employment mobility or opportunity, most which indicate or lead to economic stagnation).

and all of that is completely ignoring the massive economic stimulus from their presence (~10% of the US economy), let alone the tax dollars they contribute at all levels (fed, state, local) without receiving nearly any benefit in turn (~11 billion$ a year).

removing them only hurts our economy, not helps it.

Re:Still not enough justification

[r1348]

My educated guess is that these gangs already have access to all the pot they want.

Your gov't is not my gov't

[BlytheBowman]

Your country probaly dosen't have a vast gulag prison system, over 2 million people behind bars, or police that dress in heavy body armor, carry big and powerful guns, and burst in homes (no knock) and kill children because they raided the wrong house two doors down from the person growing pot or they were acting on an anonymous "tip". I don't trust the US gov't enough for me to believe they should have these kinds of toys.

Re:Still not enough justification

[ShanghaiBill]

You think these gangs are shooting each over pot?

No, but a joint should help calm people down. I have never seen a stoner "rage" about anything.

But these shootings are not about "road rage" anyway. They are targeted gang shootings. Innocent people are caught in the crossfire, but they are not the intended targets.

There are a lot of myths about gangs, and one of them is that they are needlessly violent toward the general public. That is nonsense. They are business enterprises, and nearly all their violence is directed at competitors.

Gang Related, not random

[amxcoder]

This has been a more recent problem, and it IS gang related. Some relevant information about the problem... there are 2 feuding gangs, one from Richmond, and another from Vallejo that are having some kind of feud between each other (don't know which specific gangs). The corridor of the freeway and towns mentioned are for the most part, all the towns in the stretch between these two locations. El Cerrito is just West of Richmond, and if you travel east, there is Richmond, San Pablo, El Sobrante, Pinole, Hercules, Rodeo, Crocket, and then the bridge with Vallejo on the other side. The majority of these shootings are happening mostly at night, not during normal driving hours and almost all of them have been in this specific corridor (with a couple outliers happening near Berkeley).

These are NOT people on foot taking pot-shots at passing cars or anything of the like. These are mostly targeted, and are between multiple cars on the road, not on foot, so the perpetrators shoot and then just drive away and get off the freeway down the road. In some of these cases, one gang will in Richmond will spot a rival gang member on their turf, and chase/follow them, until the rival members gets on the freeway toward vallejo and the ensuing shooting occurs on the freeway. I think most of the shootings that I'm aware of, have happened on the East bound side, which indicates travel from Richmond toward Vallejo.

I've also heard rumors that one of the reasons the shootings have moved to the freeways, and the 2 gangs are attacking there is because the freeway does not have any "Shot-Spotter" system installed, which some of these cities in that corridor of the freeway do. I don't know if this is accurate, but it does make some sense. So in other words, if one gang intends to attack another gang IN Richmond, the shot-spotter system would detect it and they have a more likely chance of getting caught. If they follow the person onto the freeway, then open fire on them, then the Shot-Spotter systems are useless. So this could already be a case of one "safety system" pushing the violence out of the area where it has naturally occurred in the past, to a new area that does not have the same "safety system". So there is the real possibility that putting some system in place on the freeway will just push it somewhere else, maybe a worse place (for those not involved).

Mark This Day

[davesays]

Sumdumass rightfully calls out what from this day forward will be known as "the straw-penis" argument!

Their Gun Control Isn't Working

[Danilushka]

Despite California having some of the most Draconian gun control law in the US, their murder rate is still higher than Western states with far fewer gun laws: OR, WA, UT, MT, WY. ND, SD, CO and TX and they are closely tied with AZ. So it is becoming clear with this move that they are want to disarm the citizens and promote the Bog-Brother State, so It isn't about guns, it is about the state versus liberty after all.

But not by the definition of crime impacting us

[aepervius]

You are intentionally misconstruing the argument or intentionally misstating the difference between the criminal those statistic tracks and illegally being in the US, whichever you should never have been modded insightful. They are illegal and criminal for immigration laws. But looking at violent and petty crime, theft, murder, rape, drug trafficking, prostitution and all that jazz which really count when speaking of a tract of land with too many shooting they have lower rate than the average American. You may not LIKE that fact , and it is certainly an inconvenient fact for many people especially those liking trumps, but it stays a statistical verifiable fact.