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news

Crazy Highways, the Verdict at the Ex and Downtown Businesses Want Cameras

By Ron Nurwisah, Boy Reporter

After every long weekend we wait to read the stories about the wacky things that the OPP catch on our roads. This weekend doesn’t dissapoint with a badly maintained trailer hauling three donkeys, a drunk couple that followed each other home in separate vehicles, and families moving junior to his college dorm with furniture insecurely fastened. All and all, the OPP gave out 3000 tickets province-wide with around 550 of these being in the GTA. Sadly, four people died in accidents this weekend.
If any of those 550 people who got slapped with tickets are reading remember that the roads are going to be busier, especially with kids heading back to school. Please be careful. Those kids might be small but they can leave a really nasty dent on your shiny new car.
2006_9_5gates.jpgThe Sun clearly loves the Ex with this non-story about the Ex being busy on its last day. Apparently there were a “crazy” number of visitors at the Ex yesterday. Tomorrow we’ll be reading about the “crazy” number of murders in Toronto and the “crazy” amount of money the government wastes on handouts like welfare and healthcare.
But the more curmudgeonly Star points out that attendance at the long running fair will probably clock in at around 1.3 million, better than last year but not quite the numbers expected. Many blame the weather and the fair’s decreased popularity.
With labour day now behind us it’s time to get serious about this November’s fall election. Or is it? Many notable candidates, incumbents and challengers alike, are waiting till October to kick their campaigns into high gear.
Damon Allen is now pro-football’s most prolific passer. He surpassed Warren Moon’s record of 70,553 yards and kicked the tar out of the Hamilton Tiger Cats 40-6.
The Globe and Mail profiles Mike Hyde, the man that sells recovered property for Toronto police. He apparently sells about 2000 bikes in six months and can raise almost $250,000 a year. Not enough for a helicopter but pretty respectable nonetheless.
Finally, downtown businesses are still complaining about a drop in business after the Creba shooting. Their solution? Cameras. The business associations want either City Hall or the province to pay for them, how convenient. There’s also this logic twisting quote from James Robinson the Executive Director of the Yonge Downtown Business Association, “We will let people know we are not going to spy on them, but you can’t go into the public realm, you can’t walk on to the subway platform, go into a mall or bank without being videotaped,” said Robinson. James, last time we checked malls and banks are actually private property.
Photo by Bahman from the Torontoist Flickr Group.

Comments

  • rek

    If private businesses want security cameras on the streets in front of their property, to encourage customers to give them money, then these private businesses can damn well pay for the cameras themselves.
    It’s not the public domain’s job to make private company’s business models work.

  • Patrick M

    I bet it costs more to investigate a bank robbery than it does to put up a camera.

  • rek

    It costs much less in terms of privacy.

  • Greg

    Oh, a non-story? That never happens on Torontoist…

  • Michael

    I bet it costs more to investigate a bank robbery than it does to put up a camera.
    And yet, bank robberies still happen. So you end up paying for both.

  • Patrick M

    Notionally, if a camera prevented, say, one robbery a year, it would probably pay for itself. Hence I wouldn’t be opposed to cameras on economic grounds if I thought that were the case.
    I am opposed to them on privacy grounds however, and also because such empirical evidence as exists suggests they don’t have any lasting deterrent effect on crime. Apparently even the stupidest criminals understand that cameras can’t see through baseball caps and hoodies.

  • rek

    If we were all in solitary confinement, I’m sure we’d save millions a year in stolen property and murder investigations. It would pay for itself in a matter of months.

  • Patrick M

    Well now you’re just baiting me, Rek. As you’ll note above, I value my privacy too.
    But if I were going to play devils advocate, I’d say the contra-argument to your hyperbole above is that the state has no right to any control whatsoever over the private citizen. In that case, we should disband the entire state crime-control apparatus so we can all take care of ourselves.
    Whaddya think? Is it one or the other or do you think there’s a happy medium? And if so, does it involve surveillance cameras?

  • rek

    I wasn’t baiting you, I was lampooning that line of reasoning. You don’t believe in it, but plenty of camera/invasion-of-privacy advocates do.
    I might support public security cameras if there was a civilian oversight committee to be petitioned each and every time the police or another agency wanted footage. It would be difficult to keep that committee stocked with people who put privacy ahead of moral outrage (a white girl was shot! on the holiest day of the year! think of the children!) though.
    Anyway. There’s nothing stopping Footlocker or McDonald’s from putting their own security cameras outside, on their own walls.

  • http://www.jillmurray.com Jill

    These arguments will never be resolved for the same reason that the cameras won’t make a significant difference:
    The installation of cameras is motivated by the economic needs of local businesses, wheras the crime that brought about their reaction was most likely motivated by a different kind of economy– one which is unlikely to respond to these cameras, and which will simply continue to travel where it needs to to get business done in whatever manner it deems efficient.
    None of it addresses the root cause of any problem.

  • rek

    In other words: A locked door won’t stop a desperate man from getting in.

  • Michael

    Let’s say we had no choice but to have cameras…
    From a privacy perspective, I think I would want each individual business covering their own little part of the street, rather than have one organisation watching and owning all the tapes.
    But I still think cameras on public space is wrong. And creepy.