And Even More
posted by Fred Mangels @ 9:02 AM
33 comments
Fred's Humboldt Blog
I'm a Libertarian living in Humboldt County, CA. I've lived here in Eureka since 1973 and joined the Libertarian Party in 1992. This blog will mostly focus on local political issues, but I may stray into state and national issues as well, when I can't help myself. Please post your comments by clicking on the "comments" link at the bottom of each post. Although I do moderate comments, you need not be a registered user to post them.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Other Local Blogs
- The Humboldt Sentinel
- Rose's Blog
- Talking Tech
- Bill's Obama Blog
- Lost Coast Outpost
- Sohum Parlance
- Redwood Coast Business
- Richard Marks
Previous Posts
- Yet Even More Cameras...
- Surveillance Cameras Coming To Arcata?
- Fall Is Here: Roofing Time
- No Harm Done
- Vote For The Mavericks
- Too Much Garbage In Southern Humboldt
- Kerrigan Heads East
- Anonymity And Intimidation
- New Parking Meters
- Cancer Society Gives Up On Cancer?
33 Comments:
I can't wait to visit Arcata again after the cameras are installed. I'm tired of well-meaning people protecting criminals. Welcome to Stage 1 in the fight to reclaim Arcata.
Too bad all the criminal activity you're talking about will be taking place in areas where there are no cameras.Then they can return to the plaza and continue to panhandle and harass if they feel like it,taking time away from officers abilities to track down more dangerous crime.Putting cameras to limit panhandling just seems like a waste of money,and a dangerous violation of civil liberties for those who do want to sit in the plaza.
But I guess Arcata has enough money to piss away on concepts that have proven to be ineffective.
Well said esquan. This is just one more way for City Hall creeps to spy on protesters. Randy Mendosa needs to be retired from the force for trying to force-feed us this bullshit for a second time.
You mean I get to have my town center back again? Yipee!!! Let's put a camera on every roof top!
Eliminate their convenient hangout (alcohol, drugs and bathrooms) and you make Arcata untenable. Oh yes, the transients do buy alcohol and do use the bar bathrooms.
Where do they go then? The forest? Nope. No alcohol, and even transients crap on the ground as a last resort. They'll do what they've already begun doing since The Revolution occurred in our last city council election. They spend one day in Arcata and keep going north. This summer has been bliss with the vast reduction in the non-local feral tribe.
I look forward to even more fair-weather travelers skipping right through Arcata next summer. These are tourists we do not want. We're just making Arcata transient-tourist-unfriendly.
Arcata is engaging in self-defense and self-preservation. About time.
Yes, lords of City Hall and their demon idol Kevin Hoover, protect us from our own privacy rights! We don't deserve to go freely about our own business without you tracking our every movement, reading our mail and seeing what petitions we sign! Go police state Arcata!
If you're one of the criminals who doesn't want to have his image captured to a hard drive and then retrieved later when we know someone committed a crime and want to find out who it was, by all means, whimper and whine and leave Arcata. It's called TAKING BACK OUR TOWN.
There are plenty of methods of ensuring the privacy of ordinary citizens while using surveillance cameras to retrieve evidence of crimes after-the-fact. Don't believe the bleeding hearts that spend so much time crying that reality passes them by. There is nothing inherent in a camera that indicates a police state. It's how the cameras are used which is the issue. I trust Arcata will be end up being a good example of how to use cameras to make the public safer while guaranteeing freedoms that, well, don't actually exist, but will be preserved as if they did.
"I trust Arcata will be end up being a good example of how to use cameras to make the public safer while guaranteeing freedoms that, well, don't actually exist, but will be preserved as if they did.".
Quite scary, the confidence you have, regardless.
"Our government is the good government...".
Hey, Fred, this may be slightly off topic, but we saw the Bohemiam Mermaid today at the North Country Fair in Arcata! She had a booth.
Exactly Fred, and besides, its not as if we haven't already seen abuses of police power in Arcata. All of which were justified or ignored by the Eye, of course, just as this latest police state move will get Kevin Hoover's rabid snarl of approval.
Fred, you forget Arcata is filled with fear-filled terror-pushing activists. They'll ensure a decent policy is enacted. It's called, oh, what's the term, oh yeah, participatory government. Sorry if that seems strange to you way over there in stinky Eureka.
Oh, I missed 7:04's ridiculous claim. OK, tell us the specific cases of police abuses of power. You can't, because they don't exist. APD is composed of frickin' puppies. That's why in leftwing Arcata all attempts at police review have failed -- no one sees or feels the need. Again, sorry if that's not the case in Eureka, but Arcata is doing fine, thankyouverymuch. And we'll be super after we get cameras.
Judging by the speakers at the open mike at the Arcata City Council meetings, I'd say Arcatans ought to think twice before calling Eureka stinky.
No disrespect to the City of Arcata was intended, by the way, when I wrote that previous comment.
This Just In... Big Brother Spy Cameras Used to Invade Privacy of Pedestrians and Drivers on Fourth Street in Eureka. Dead Man Victimized by Big Brother! Let's March! This Injustice Shall Not Stand!.
You people make me laugh. Please drum up some anti-Camera In Arcata shirts so that I know to point my camera at you.
Those cameras were owned by the Co-Op and only related to what happened on their own property or egress to and from their own property. Their money, not taxpayer dollars, paid for those. No one is trying to take any private businesses equipment away. But there's no way the public should pay for what private businesses can easily do for themselves.
You mean the public shouldn't pay to make a public park safe? The Plaza is a public park. Go away and educate yourself, then come back to talk to us.
Cameras don't make parks safer. They make them creepier. Didn't you read the report?
Small boxes creep you out? Sorry, the city cannot help you with your paranoia. Social services are a county responsibility. Try talking to a psychologist.
The Arcata Plaza couldn't get creepier. Bring on the cameras. Scare away the drug dealers so we can use the park again.
Yeah,so you can use the park.Who cares about everywhere else dealers can congregate to,then can return to the park.
As has already been explained, there is no other hospitable place in Arcata for them to go that has the foot traffic, access to alcohol and bathrooms and food (Endeavor), etc. The Plaza is a perfect storm. Install the cameras, crime will drop, not just at the Plaza. The drop will be consistent city-wide because much of the illegal business is done by transients. Those transients are already staying fewer days, or moving right along after one day, because of the perception that tolerance of illegal activity is disappearing. Cameras only reinforce that perception.
Just watch. We'll get cameras. You'll be proven wrong. Period. _All_ of the evidence is on our side. You could argue they'll move to Safeway, but then that's private property and cameras will go up, and their last refuge is gone.
The idea that scaring away crime simply moves it to new locations is a hoax. It's sometimes true. Sometimes completely bogus. It depends on the circumstances, and Arcata is ripe for vastly reducing crime.
And reducing the foot traffic, shopping,tax revenue,and hanging around the plaza, by everyday folks,because of the intrusiveness of unneeded cameras.
In fairness,maybe the city should install cameras for public use inside every room of the homes of the city police officers,council members,and city employees,to ensure that they don't become tempted to commit any crimes.
You mean INCREASED foot traffic, shopping, tax revenue and hanging around the plaza by everyday folks who enjoy not being surrounded by panhandlers and drug deals.
If it was a liability to all of the things you claim, businesses would be up in arms about it. Instead, they are pleased. In other words, you couldn't be more wrong.
You are actually arguing that eliminating drug dealing will scare away shoppers. Unbelievable! You're a troll, baiting me with absurdities. I'm done debating a troll.
It'll eliminate the deals to a minor extent,just off of the plaza.Far more people go there now to do random everyday things,other than scoring pot.If you think that the plaza is the only place to score pot in the city then you are really,really,uninformed.Panhandlers will still hang out there regardless,as they'll use the cameras to their advantage at every opportunity they can,at every city council meeting,to use as evidence that they are oppressed.You think cameras will keep Kim Starr and others away,get real.
Last time I checked, all the parking lots that are littered with surveillance cameras are also littered with parked cars and shoppers are inside the stores, and those stores are littered with cameras.
If criminals and a few ultra leftwing Dave-caste activists stop visiting the Plaza, no one else will worry.
The proof is in the pudding. Activists are up-in-arms. Everyone else varies in their responses from indifference to "it's about time," to excitement.
Look to the pike. In 1997, when Fish & Game tried to eliminate predatory pike from Lake Davis by pouring poison in the lake, locals were livid. Today the pike have decimated the lake, and locals accept a second poisoning as a necessary evil.
Arcata's tolerance of drug dealing and illegal activity has run unchecked for 20 years. It finally hit a wall in the November election. A majority of voting locals won't put up with pike destroying their lake anymore, but instead of poison, they're urging the use of the least intrusive means to shoo the pike away.
mresquan, you'd better hope the cameras work, because the next step is an increased police force and stepped up enforcement. But as has been previously stated, the criminal element seems to be on the decline due to scuttle in the transient community. Cameras should only help in that regard.
mresquan said...
And reducing the foot traffic, [...] by everyday folks,because of the intrusiveness of unneeded cameras.
mresquan also said...
You think cameras will keep Kim Starr and others away,get real.
Make up your mind mresquan. Are cameras going to scare away law-abiding citizens or not?
As for people complaining at city council meetings, I'll carefully weigh their concerns as I sit at home and watch them on TV. Or maybe I'll watch them from New York while on vacation via the city's streaming Internet feed. Oops, look, cameras!
City Council meetings are infinitely more intrusive than a walk on the Plaza will ever be. You should be more concerned about that. After all, you can choose to avoid the downtown, but if you want to redress your grievances befoe your elected representatives, you do it on camera, on high-quality video available for anyone in the world to see.
Meanwhile, the Plaza video camera will probably be something innocuous, like capturing video to a hard drive that doesn't get viewed unless a crime is reported. Big whoop. You're fighting a lost cause. There's nothing here the average person gives a damn about.
11:35 said:
"This summer has been bliss with the vast reduction in the non-local feral tribe.
Hmm-Maybe in Arcata. Have seen no such reduction in Eureka.
Would cameras scare 'em away? Worth a try.........
Eureka's transients are mostly local.
Arcata's transients are mostly travelers ferrying between San Francisco and Portland. It will be a few years before the change in vibe causes fewer travelers to arrive, but in the meantime, those who do pass through Arcata are moving north much sooner.
This is about infringing on the rights of locals, not of travelers. These high-tech spy cameras are not in the same order of magnitude as some ordinary ATM cameras. They can zoom 80 to 1, have infrared heat sensing, etc. They can read your mail, your petition signatures, even the condition of your retinas. This isn't security, its biometric tracking.
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