Results tagged “cctv”

As the Toronto Police Service prepares to expand CCTV coverage in the GTA, this security camera footage of a BMW SUV going alpha-dog on top of someone's hatchback, recorded last Thursday at an Extreme Fitness parking lot in Thornhill, has made us realize a few things:

Here's something awful about us: when we learned last year that the TTC's latest "Marketing Communications Plan" [PDF] would include an education campaign around "Operator Assault," we got a little giddy; how would the TTC's infamously ditzy marketing department choose to frame this serious issue? "The assault goblins didn't do this ...people did!"?

     

After a six-month pilot project by Toronto Police Services, the closed circuit television cameras placed at Queen Street West and Bathurst were removed yesterday morning. The intersection was chosen due to a higher-than-average violent crime rate, though some local residents at a January public forum felt the cameras would shift illegal activities to neighbouring streets. The CCTV tests around the city have also raised privacy issues and sparked debate about their crime-fighting effectiveness.

On Monday morning, Astral Media unveiled prototypes of its new line of "street furniture" at City Hall. Torontoist was going to review all of the items at once but decided that some merited their own posts. Yesterday, we took a look at the garbage bins. Today we look at the advertising pillars. Friday, the transit shelters, and on Saturday everything else. (Be sure to read Spacing's coverage, too.)

Over in the U.K., closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras are a ubiquitous sight: the country—led by London—has more of the tiny public surveillance cameras than any other country in Europe. They're now a part of pop culture and are referenced in songs, used as album artwork, and in the case of one intrepid band, used to make a music video.

The appearance of yet another traffic camera in the city is hardly remarkable. But it is a little unusual when that camera is watching traffic on the Don River just south of Pottery Road. Although it was used extensively for transportation in its almost-forgotten past, the Don is not exactly known for its 21st-century traffic jams and accidents.

Poor OCAP. They can't even complain about the police watching them without the police watching them. At noon on Wednesday, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty held a press conference (not a rally or an action or a march but a press conference) at the northeast corner of Dundas and Sherbourne, and there was about one police officer for each person in attendance (around twenty). As eight or so cops casually observed the conference from across the street, Beric German of the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee speculated on how much each one was being paid: "About fifty dollars an hour?"

They're in cabs, ATMs, and the Entertainment District, and they're about to be in all TTC vehicles. By next June, every one of the TTC's 1.5 million daily riders will be photographed multiple times over their journey.

When the Information and Privacy Commissioner for Ontario published its guidelines for the use of video surveillance cameras in public places back in October 2001 [.PDF], it summarized that institutions considering their use "must balance the benefits of video surveillance to the public against an individual’s right to be free of unwarranted intrusion into his or her life. Pervasive, routine and random surveillance of ordinary, lawful public activities interferes with an individual’s privacy."

"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?!"

Whether public surveillance cams make you feel all safe n’ cosy, or whether you find them an egregious infringement on your right to litter, tag, and engage in other anti-social behaviour, the Toronto Police Services Board wants to talk to you about it.

Every week (or so), two Torontoist staffers square off to debate an issue that's important to our city. We invite our readers to join the debate in the comments section following the post.