Rocket Talk: Can Sunday Subway Service Start Sooner?
Newsstand: November 19, 2009
Gender Studies Coming to a High School Near You
Please Insert Station and Try Again
The Art of Not Knowing
"Oh my God, my blow-up doll has been brutally murdered!" shrieked the young woman from the southeast corner of John and Richmond as she clutched her fake-blood-soaked inflatable companion. "My only friend, and someone brutally shot her! The horror! Why hasn't the police security camera done anything about it?!"
Early Saturday afternoon, the Toronto Public Space Committee's Cameras in Public Spaces campaign performed this bit of street theatre in the Entertainment District. It was intended to highlight the ineffectiveness of CCTV [PDF], especially when compared with live, on-the-ground police officers, who are able to respond to emergencies and not just bear witness. Not that the cameras have even proven effective at doing that; two shootings have taken place at intersections where cameras had been installed (December 30 at Yonge and Gould and July 22 at Adelaide and Duncan), and in neither case did footage lead to an arrest. In the former instance, for example, the person was recorded being shot, but the perpetrator was not recorded doing the shooting. If the $100 000 to $150 000 spent on the camera had been used to hire a police officer instead, he or she would presumably have been able to react to the incident more effectively. Perhaps the shooter would have been caught, and perhaps the victim (who had been struck in the leg) would not have had to drag himself to St. Michael's Hospital.
In a letter responding to an Eye Weekly editorial that is no longer online due to a broken link, TPSC campaign coordinator Daniel Quinn says that police "would seemingly prefer to watch people get shot on TV than prevent the shooting in the first place. If the 'test' for this program's effectiveness is, in fact, this recent [July 22nd] shooting within the view of a camera, then I would suggest that the project is already a failure—unless we've collectively decided that the role of the police is not to protect, but to prosecute."
More photos after the jump.
Jonathan Goldsbie is a campaigner with the TPSC, but pretty much sticks to the advertising-related stuff. All photos (except the last one) by Torontoist's Miles Storey. Final photo by the TPSC's Stephen Young, from his Flickr set.
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A police officer on every corner eh? There's no way someone wouldn't find cause to complain about that.
yah,but police officers cost around 100K/year(with benefits and such) :) I showed these photos at my work today and we had a good laugh.
I dunno, if the TPSC can suggest where we can find at least $100 000, or better $200 000, since officers tend to hit the streets in pairs for safety reasons, for each intersection considered unsafe, then great.
The money can easily be found by cancelling the CCTV program. The trial project alone is costing $2 million and that only covers three areas of the city. The future cost to maintain these cameras alone (never mind expand the program) could pay for a number of police officers.
The important thing to focus on is that the cameras themselves do pretty much nothing to safeguard the street. Where we're currently paying $2 million for cameras that just watch people (or in this case, blow-up dolls) get stabbed, we could be paying the same (or less) for flesh-and-blood officers to be around to help.
The big idea to take away from this is that the cameras can't keep you safe and they can't help you if you need it. While no one will argue that they can (sometimes) contribute to catching perpetrators of crime, the kind of violence we need protection from (drunken stabbings, gang shootings) can't and won't be prevented by CCTV.
I've had to login as "guest", so I'll identify myself here as Daniel Quinn, the guy who ran the show this weekend's street corner doll assassination.
If you have more questions etc, there are details on our site our you can just contact me directly at dan at publicspace dot ca.
"A police officer on every corner eh? There's no way someone wouldn't find cause to complain about that."
Well, yeah, but I should clarify that that's not what the TPSC is suggesting; an officer stationed on every corner would be a martial law-like intimidation tactic. A policing alternative to CCTV could be "community policing," meaning officers on foot who could stroll through communities and interact with residents and business owners on a personal, day-to-day level, rather than only in those situations that call for some sort of confrontational dynamic.
But, of course, the money would be best spent on social programs.
Why the hell is it costing $2m to put up a few cameras? This isn't a rhetorical question - does anyone know?
First of all, the program is being funded directly by the province. Basically McGuinty went directly to the TPSB and said: "you will install cameras. Here is $2 million".
Personally, I think it's a colossally undemocratic thing it is for the provincial government to bypass budgetting decisions at City Hall so close to a provincial election and dictate to the Toronto police what they should do with that funding,
With that kind of money, the police bought 15 cameras and went about installing them around town as part of their pilot. Since the cameras cost roughly $100,000 to $150,000 each plus maintenance, plus the costs of leasing the optic fibre (probably from Bell) back to the recording centre, plus the costs of holding their non-consultation consultations, that's $2 million easy.
I think this is a great demonstration of the money that has been wasted on CCTV pilot cameras, cameras that were installed without concern to democracy or in accordance with procedures outlined in the Public Privacy conditions.
James T
(Innisfil, ON)
I totally love the idea behind this experiment, but did anyone think that maybe the reason why the police did not respond is because they saw that it was a blow up doll and not a real person being attacked? Just a thought
London finds CCTV doesn't help at all -- in fact most boroughs with lots of cameras scored below average for solving crimes: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23412867-details/Tens+of+thousands+of+CCTV+cameras%2C+yet+80%25+of+crime+unsolved/article.do