(UNEDITED) Ogden has decided it is a good idea to bring in a "spy blimp". I understand that Ogden's crime rate is up, but they have already have the gang injunction. Will the OPD abuse the new toy? They already operate under an oxymoronic mandate; "Zero Tolerance Community Policing". With the "eye in the sky" approach it would be easy to "accidentally" impose/infringe on people's privacy rights. I can understand targeted means of surveillance, but this isn't it.
This is the same kind of thing as the "Daytime Curfew" idea in Provo.
What is happening in our Free State? When did we ask the Police to start raising our kids? Why does the government feel the need to be so involved in our lives? We ask for immigration controls and we get citizen's rights restrictions. Both ideas are counterproductive and counter intuitive; they address the problem in the wrong way. Here are the facts:
Cameras don't reduce crime --1 crime solved for every 1000 cameras, 6 crimes solved per day, 80% of crimes remain unsolved, and the crimes solved by camera has decreased 71% from the previous year (England).
Curfews don't reduce crime -- "An Analysis of Curfew Enforcement and Juvenile Crime in California" (Mike Males and Dan Macallair, Western Criminology Review, 1999),
"The Impact of Youth Curfew Laws on Juvenile Crime Rates" (David McDowall, Colin Loftin, and Brian Wiersma, Crime and Delinquency, 2000).
These ideas waste money and stretch the already thin resources of our police departments.
David Mamanakis
Riverdale
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