Sauron

Having gotten the new School Superintendent to cave, the self-proclaimed top-cop is advocating a set of ordinances mandating cameras at hotels, apartments, gas stations, convenience stores and in designated "high-risk" areas.  

And here's a shocker: many in the public, those being increasingly and incessantly surveilled, did not really cotton to the idea. The best anyone on council could say is "this needs more work." Understatement of the century. One remarkable and incredibly accurate comment was "all this strikes me as government overreach." Overreach to enable under-delivery. And you are not alone. In fact, one commenter in the marked up doc noted: "Need consent, a warrant, or some exception to the Fourth Amendment." Dunwoody PD has previously run afoul of the US constitution to the point you wonder if the police oath includes fealty to that document. Honestly, you have to wonder if this is an effort on the part of government to get private businesses to do blanket surveillance that the government could not do [legally] without a warrant. Doesn't a mandate make this a government operation?

Then there is the abdication of public safety and community policing responsibilities to be replaced with expensive technology paid from private budgets which is not only overreach, it is unconscionable. But one also has to wonder: when the government forces public safety responsibilities on these businesses has it also transferred liability? If so, can it provide the umbrella of sovereign immunity government enjoys, or will these companies be subject to civil litigation if a crime occurs even with all these expensive surveillance systems? Are they not mandated on the premise they reduce crime?

Another council-folk pondered the policies and procedures around "high-risk" classifications. Note that this ordinance would apply to convenience stores and gas stations regardless of risk classification. Falling into the high-risk classification requires police providing service more than six times in 30 days for a specific list of serious crimes. Note that the original ask was for 3 in 30 making you wonder: why not one? There is no provision for getting off the list either by petition or a lowered crime rate. This is supposed to result in lower crime rates, right? Sorta like police patrols did in the good ole days. There is also no requirement for the PD to report on the impact all these expensive systems have on crime. Perhaps it is also worth noting that prostitution (AKA "human trafficking") is NOT listed as a serious crime lest city hall be classified as "high-risk." 

If Dino-gate has taught us anything it is that city hall is incapable of crafting even minimally acceptable ordinances. Do you remember the before times? When everyone was getting triggered and screaming "words matter?" Well, it turns out that when it comes to crafting laws and ordinances words really do matter because it is what the law actually says that will be deliberated in a court of law. Some mistakes are silly but nonetheless symptomatic of fundamental language deficiencies. For example, writing "VSS system" is kinda dumb since the second "S" in VSS IS "systems" and that is clearly stated in the definitions. Then there are actual factual issues. A requirement for 5,017,600 pixels per image is difficult to obtain from a 4MP sensor and 1440p at 16:9 resolution is 3.69 MP. Oops. What are they asking for, upscaling? The container format, MP4, is specified but the compression format is not though perhaps they think the container implies H.264 when it really doesn't. When you are writing a technical specification into law these specs need to be complete, detailed and accurate. Laws and ordinances should not be "make it up as you go along" or so says the Dino. 

And what are the mere residents to think of this city foisting safety and protection on us? Should we all be ensuring we can protect ourselves knowing the city is not there for us? Think that is unreasonable? Over the top? Well here's a thought exercise: suppose Dunwoody had its own Fire Department and operated that as well as it does code enforcement, operates the police department and crafts ordinances? Then fire trucks would only roll in the 4th of July parade, houses would burn to the ground, but we'd have it all on video.