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.

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?

[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.

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.

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).